SNOW - Right here in River City (SHANGHAI!)
Yes, it is true, it DOES SNOW in Shanghai!!! I am looking out my window and watching the snow (flurries) fall as I type! They told me it snowed Sunday and I said flurries, they laughed and said yes, BUT IT SNOWED!!! We're from Colorado so to see snow is really a welcome sight! Laughing!
YES!!
ALTA WAS UP TO 106 inches with two fresh this morning. NOW 103" after a day of skiing! NICE BASE for the middle of January!!! A week and three days and I will be IN Salt Lake City! UUUuuuuTTTTAaaaAAHHHH!!
Oh, a little unfinished business - the signature massage was amazing! She used hot stones on the knots in my shoulders and a hot pad later, one and a half hours ... soo nice that I just HAD to get another massage on Saturday night! I was just a little sad, but not really, as I didn't get much out of the Atlantis compound! Except of course to dive around the entire dive area!!! Six totally fantastic dives in six completely different sights! (See below)
IT IS GREAT TO BE HOME! One of those, excellent trips that you wish you could have stayed longer but had business to do still at home. I am very blessed to be able to take a nice little trip and still continue my job without skipping a beat.
ACTUALLY, it was quite amazing to bring back a 500 and 200 Philippine Peso (PP) note. So I taught "Forex" to the 125 students using the Philippine - U.S. exchange rates and then we converted them into Yuan. WHY the U.S. you might ask? Because that is still the currency of preference the world over!!! As I related to the students, Atlantis does not take Chinese yuan (that is convert renminbi into pesos), but they do take U.S. dollars, Euros, Yen and sell pesos to you. I easily passed around the notes as they were worth $12.50 and $5, respectively!
Another interesting aside is that the 200 PP has a picture of Aquino being inaugurated on the back, with what looks like hundreds of thousands of people in the background! The People Power that brought down Fernando Marcos has been emblazoned on the currency!
Oh so much more, like you can not drive without knowing English in the Philippines!!! Tagalog is not written on ANY signs!!! English is required! Also, almost EVERYONE speaks in English often! Yes, they talk often in Tagalog too but most are very fluent in English! Also interesting was the Spanish influence that still exists today, even though we beat the Spanish in 1898 and they "lost" the Philippines (along with Cuba and Puerto Rico) to the U.S. Examples: San Miguel beer and beirnes (Friday)!! (See Spanish-American war in your history book.)
A MAP! Two hour drive by bus (sometimes three) from Manila to Batangas port then a half hour boat ride:
Sabang is where Atlantis and most of the dive shops are, right in the middle of all the dive spots and the reef (notice you have to travel by catamaran from Batangas pier to Mindoro island). We dove all the way over at the Manila Channel (left side) to the other side of the peninsula (on the right). Three of the dives were just two to three minutes by speedboat off the coast from Atlantis (and the Sabang beach). Talk about handy, easy and close - what a wonderful resort. (I borrowed the above from Marco Vincent Resort as you can tell.)
YES!!
ALTA WAS UP TO 106 inches with two fresh this morning. NOW 103" after a day of skiing! NICE BASE for the middle of January!!! A week and three days and I will be IN Salt Lake City! UUUuuuuTTTTAaaaAAHHHH!!
Oh, a little unfinished business - the signature massage was amazing! She used hot stones on the knots in my shoulders and a hot pad later, one and a half hours ... soo nice that I just HAD to get another massage on Saturday night! I was just a little sad, but not really, as I didn't get much out of the Atlantis compound! Except of course to dive around the entire dive area!!! Six totally fantastic dives in six completely different sights! (See below)
IT IS GREAT TO BE HOME! One of those, excellent trips that you wish you could have stayed longer but had business to do still at home. I am very blessed to be able to take a nice little trip and still continue my job without skipping a beat.
ACTUALLY, it was quite amazing to bring back a 500 and 200 Philippine Peso (PP) note. So I taught "Forex" to the 125 students using the Philippine - U.S. exchange rates and then we converted them into Yuan. WHY the U.S. you might ask? Because that is still the currency of preference the world over!!! As I related to the students, Atlantis does not take Chinese yuan (that is convert renminbi into pesos), but they do take U.S. dollars, Euros, Yen and sell pesos to you. I easily passed around the notes as they were worth $12.50 and $5, respectively!
Another interesting aside is that the 200 PP has a picture of Aquino being inaugurated on the back, with what looks like hundreds of thousands of people in the background! The People Power that brought down Fernando Marcos has been emblazoned on the currency!
Oh so much more, like you can not drive without knowing English in the Philippines!!! Tagalog is not written on ANY signs!!! English is required! Also, almost EVERYONE speaks in English often! Yes, they talk often in Tagalog too but most are very fluent in English! Also interesting was the Spanish influence that still exists today, even though we beat the Spanish in 1898 and they "lost" the Philippines (along with Cuba and Puerto Rico) to the U.S. Examples: San Miguel beer and beirnes (Friday)!! (See Spanish-American war in your history book.)
A MAP! Two hour drive by bus (sometimes three) from Manila to Batangas port then a half hour boat ride:
Sabang is where Atlantis and most of the dive shops are, right in the middle of all the dive spots and the reef (notice you have to travel by catamaran from Batangas pier to Mindoro island). We dove all the way over at the Manila Channel (left side) to the other side of the peninsula (on the right). Three of the dives were just two to three minutes by speedboat off the coast from Atlantis (and the Sabang beach). Talk about handy, easy and close - what a wonderful resort. (I borrowed the above from Marco Vincent Resort as you can tell.)
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