cebu day 2 and 3

on our 2nd day, we went out to lunch at cmt lechon, where they serve hhmmm... i wonder.

im not a fan of lechon so i dont have any idea if it was good or bad, and gail is out on a wedding shoot as of writing so i dont have anybody to testify to its goodness or blahness.

what i liked though are the rice packs that they call puso (emphasis on the second syllable, not like puso the heart). gail didnt like it though, ayaw nya ng kanin na malata.

jampacked CMT lechon. find gail. hehe.

we then went to the capitol (which looked like the white house. knucks!) to wait for the bus that would take us to the CPDRC.

it was my least favorite thing in cebu. the inmates who danced had heavy faces all throughout, like they dont like that they were there and us free people were watching them and we would all go home afterwards and theyd be left behind of course. sure they're being punished by the law because of some crime they did, but it doesnt take away the fact that they are not happy. at one point the "host" of the whole dance program even said that "don't worry, all our inmates are friendly," like we were in a zoo! and i felt so bad i wanted to walk out and go home. if you have the same tendencies as mine, skip it skip it. you'll just feel sad and sorry and you'll have questions. hay so uneasy. i had a headache just recounting that.

winner for fakest smile

when we got back to the capitol, gail insisted on walking to crown regency, where we would stay the night. it was quite nice, i have to say, to walk streets that seem foreign but at the same time are not. anudaw. we also tried barbecue at larsian, where it's mausok and noisy but nonetheless sobrang sarap ng barbecue nila don. i need to regain writing skills soon ano? haha.

anyway. our accommodation included buffet breakfast and dinner, and a ride on either the edge coaster or the skywalk extreme. we got the skywalk although gail wanted to ride the coaster. im sorry but no. im afraid of heights! roller coasters i love, but being on high places for long periods of time is not my piece of cake. just imagine how little my steps were as we walked around the hotel. 37th floor! ouch.

day 3 was spent figuring out what to do. hahaha. we even considered wasting money in a casino, but then we realized we didn't have money to waste. so instead, we went to church. hahaha! this is such poor writing i kid you not. we went to victory cebu to listen to cebuano preaching. :p we understood it because 1) we already heard the preaching back in manila and 2) the pastor spoke english at times.

overall cebu was the indicator and confirmation that we really were able to exhaust our travel opportunities in 2011. cebu deserves better than what we did and where we went, so we promise to come back with new found thirst for the water on the shore and the hunger for more lechon. anomnomnomnomnom!

ps: please do check out my handsome hubby's blog, and get him for your wedding. because you should. :D

missing gail day 1

i remember our wedding reception fondly. all couples took to the dance floor, perhaps pulled by the beautiful music by feb and erwin, surely feeling the love radiating from all the hearts. :)

ps: night 3 please come fast.

love is spelled J-e-s-u-s

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!

Romans 8: 1-17, The Message

it was such a revelation, the recently concluded p&f. the last prayer meeting was sooo thick with God's presence that i was fighting off tears right after i stepped off the escalator and on to the crowd of people outside the center. we were at the overflow area all right, because God's love and presence was overflowing. and really, it still is. we just always need to be in tune. let's go! 

cebu: huling travel hirit

hhmmm... i honestly don't remember our cebu trip as clearly as the others, because during that time, we were already excited/anxious about gail's photography steps. dont get me wrong though, we had f-u-n!

cebu was unique because we had zero plans! ok we planned ahead, but only like two or three days before our flight. talk about crammers. so mas relaxed ang travel namin dahil wala kaming kaplano plano. it was also a sign that we were a bit exhausted from the marathon of destinations we had last year, at inaamin ko naman yun. ganun pa man, #itsmorefuninthephilippines. im sure we'll miss all the traveling soon, but i cannot be more thankful for our lack of enthusiasm about traveling these past months. hashtag tipid mode. :p

gail's distant relatives jhong, JR and pappy were our guides during our first two days around the city. they were super kind and nice because they spent time with us without expecting anything in return. nevetheless, we couldnt help but bless them with gifts, sobrang bait talaga nila. :)

on day 1 all five of us listened to ka bino's snippets of trivia as he toured us around cebu and mactan. i highly recommend him versus going on a tour on your own. there's so much more appreciation for something when you know the story behind it. check him out here.

1st stop: shrine of lapulapu

2nd stop: alegre guitars

3rd stop: plantation bay

cebu-mactan bridge

4th stop: lunch at casa verde. in picture: brian's baby back ribs

5th stop: fort san pedro

6th stop: magellan's cross

there was also a BPI Museum in Cebu! It was closed though :( 

7th stop: Basilica Minore de Sto. Nino. there were lots and lots of churchgoers!

8th stop: museo sugbo. this is also where we reserved our slots for the next day's trip to CPDRC

ka bino noticed that the photos were not arranged properly, so gail helped him rearrange them :p

we also had a taste of corn coffee, which was a winner by the way. ate right here was also super friendly. :)

 
9th stop: heritage of cebu monument, where ka bino summarized everything he told us during the day in 5 or 10 minutes, as we went around the kewl monument. each part represented a milestone in cebu's history! (pardon my posture)

last stop: hotel pier cuatro, where gail and i stayed the night.of course, souvenir photo with ka bino :)

and one with the boys!

PS: up next is day 2 and a pictureless day 3. also, please check out my gailee's photography site. like his FB page and follow him on Twirrer. he's present and very visible like that. also also, ill promote him nonstop so bear with it please please please. and refer him to your friends! :)

gaining ground

we are transitioning from one life season to another. it is the most exciting phase of our married life yet, going through what-ifs and laying out plans for the rainy days. 

when we were preparing for the wedding, somebody told me that it's impractical to build a family without being this or that, without having this or that. after that, i was even more encouraged to go on ahead and beat the odds. and we beat the odds all right. not because im good, not because we're some perfect couple straight from fiction, but because the God of the universe loves us.

we hold on to that same faith that got us through planning a wedding and enriching a marriage, to that same God who works so majestically that we have no other reaction but awe. the coming days/months may require more energy, but our God is greater than anything or anybody else.

please pray for and with us as we take this single plunge and hope to land on dream clouds. with that, id like to formally announce here in my blog that gail now works as a wedding photographer! see his works here! im beyond excited (read: occasional tears) that God allowed him to pursue this passion. this is all for the glory and honor of Jesus, the author of the love that we share. more love from Jesus = more relationships = more proposals = more weddings = more gigs. ;)

ps: tonight's the first time he's spending the night away from me because of work. can i get used to this? never. to the tune of umuwi ka na babyyyyy. 

pps: im not pregnant. thatll need a bigger blog entry with party poppers and wine. :)