Day 7: Farewell Nantangalan, Hello R&R!

10th of June 2016 marked the last day of us staying in Nantangalan Elementary School.

All of us started our morning with the usual construction work. Without speaking much, everyone chiong-ed and worked as hard as they can - we really wanted to build a new school canteen, as promised to the kids and villagers!! 

Not much words were being said.. maybe it's because we all knew everything is going to an end after lunchtime - the usual chore of passing heavy buckets of stones via human chain, digging up for stones, while bickering and joking around with the Filipino volunteers.

Showing off black henna tattoos - kudos by a talented volunteer, Jerven!

After lunch time around 12pm, we finally packed our stuff. At this point, so much mixed emotions started to sink in..the kids were writing messages for us on small cards, folding paper flowers as gifts, and squeezing in with us for big group photos!

Chicken with malungay (moringa) leaves soup

Luscious Filipino mangoes..we are still missing it in Singapore!

Red flesh papaya which made everyone asking similar questions, "Is this a watermelon or a papaya?" LOL

Adeng Calvin!!! The cutest boy on the block!

We parted our ways and headed back to Tapuac district, where the headquarters of YMCA Pangasinan is located at. It was quite refreshing to see the busy, jam packed streets again..as we were OUT TO A SHOPPING MALL!! Yayyy!!!

Happy faces going to the mall!

Loaded with pesos on hand, everyone was super excited to try awesome Filipino snacks and delicacy(we mean, fast food chain haha)! You know, Filipino fast food chain was really good! After having a nice breakfast experience at Jollibee's, most of us decided to try another popular Chinese style fast food chain - Chow King. 

Team Water @ Chow King

 

Pancit Canton - Filipino's take on Chinese style fried rice vermicelli

Halo-halo was so gooood! It is like a creamier ice kacang loaded with fragrant ube paste (purple yam) and drizzled with heavy toppings of condensed milk. The Chow King version had a slice of super decadent custard pudding! Or leche flan in Spanish.

See those flakes on top? It's called pinipig, crispy rice bits to add more texture to this creamy concoction!

 

Personal haul from the trip HAHAHA - with mandatory Goldilocks polvoron

After few hours of crazed shopping (hmm, there was a bunch of tourists who bought all the dried mangoes in the supermarket lol), we headed back to YMCA for reflection and evaluation session.

That's all for now. More fun and exciting stuff in the next post as we went 100 Islands hopping at Alaminos City!!!

Signing off,

 - Ee Va