Day Three: Tootsie Rolls and Cinnamon Scrolls

Friday is a great day at KIM, because Friday = Cinnamon scrolls for breakfast! After devouring those glazed baked goods, it was time to hit the rotations. Red Team (now known as Dragon Fruit) were out at construction. The task at hand was to clear the clay, rubble and dirt. It was sweaty, dirty and difficult task. Fortunately, there were some community kids willing to lend a hand, what they lacked in size and strength they made up for in energy and sheer determination.

Blue Crew were off to the children’s home. This always sounds like the restful rotation but it’s anything but. There were babies to be held, guitar jam sessions going on and Wayne tri-wielded the swing set with 3 eager kids wanting to go higher.

Yellow Team had the envious task of washing all our clothes. After all the sock, jocks, sweaty shirts and smelly shorts were laundered it was off to Angono for a feeding. The piping hot Lugaw was served to the beautiful smiling faces of children who are now imprinted on the heart of our team. Children like Steve who was loving having a balloon hat on until the moment he scratched his face with a pipe cleaner… BANG! No more hat, no more smile until his hat was replaced and the cheeky smile was back.

Lunch time brought us a spectacular chicken stew and what can only be described as a phantom poo. We would tell you more about it but understand some are reading this while eating your breakfast so we will save the gory details for when we get back home.

Instead of an afternoon rotation the whole team made their way down to Tay Tay (you may remember it featured in last night’s blog) but today’s reason was far greater than buying ourselves snacks and Starbucks. The task at hand was to purchase enough items to create the 150 hampers that we are taking up to Smokey Mountain on Sunday.

The shopping list included:

300 books

150 packets of soy sauce

1200 baby wipes

150 crayons

40 matchbox cars

30 toy planes

10 plastic animals

30 bouncy balls

1500 lollies

250kg of rice

Toys were surprisingly difficult to find at Tay Tay so the Blue Crew went on the hunt for the perfect gift. After securing their prize they headed home, but as they were overwhelmed with the spirit of giving they decided the drivers, passengers and passerbys deserved Tootsie rolls. Those not close enough to be simply handed the sweet treats from the car windows got to experience the power of a Jack Pleysier fastball. One of which involved the Toostie roll flying through the passenger window, pass the driver who was scrambling to catch the airborne delight and out the window on to the busy Manila streets. Said Tootsie roll was never to be heard of again… RIP.

The late afternoon and evening involved collating and packing hampers before making our way up to Journey for Hope. It was movie night at Journey, and Secret Life of Pets was the main billing. The team got to prep and hand out a dinner of chicken and rice, served with a choccy milk and candy for dessert. Some might say that the combo of choccy milk and candy had an effect on little Dan Dan (only 4 years old) as he decided Matvey and Mr Butson were now play equipment for him to jump on, run into, climb over and leap at.

Quick stop at Maccas, quick debrief, quick showers and quickly to bed as it is a 4am wake up tomorrow.