10 year anniversary! Sept. 1, 2010

A boat being built right on the shore. I thought it looked very cool.


We just happened to notice this sign off the side of the road while we were driving. There was no other information about it anywhere, but we decided it must be valid because we haven't seen a fence that nice anywhwere else here.


This is the way cemetaries are here. They can't bury their dead because since it's an island, there's too much water underground. Instead they bury them in cement above ground. Some only have a cement box, while some have very fancy rooms complete with ceiling fans, outlets, and even a bathroom in some. They also put up pictures of the buried person. There's a special holiday when the people go to their loved ones' grave and spend the whole day and possible all night (I can't quite remember for sure) at the gravesite. So, the nice comforts are for the family members that visit.






I'm still missing a couple of pictures from this trip, but I'll add them later. Here's the main idea, anyway:


Jeremy and I went to an island called Malapascua (meaning Unfortunate Christmas...not sure why it's called that) for our anniversary. We left all three girls home and our good friends Tata and Ajie took care of them for us while we were gone. We weren't sure exactly where we were going when we left, we just had a small tourist book of ideas and our car. We drove for a few hours, and decided to head to Malapascua--we were headed that way anyway, so we drove for another couple of hours until we reached the port and could drive no more. Then we hopped on a boat and rode for 45 minutes across the water to the island of Malapascua.

The tourist book we brought described Malapascua as the way Boracay (now a famous resort island) was 10 years ago. I'd say that's right on the nose. We enjoyed an amazingly peaceful, beautful white sand beach along with a laid back attitude of the Filipinos. It was SO nice. The downside? Well, it is still very Filipino. The place we stayed at had a field next door where people were living in a shack and had fires going for cooking most of the time. Also...it took us a good couple of hours right from the get go to find a hotel to stay at that had both hot water and air conditioning. Jeremy was a bit put out with me because we could have had the most amazing view from a room at a neat hotel, but the room had no hot water, so...I decided against it. The guy who owned the hotel was European. He had the whole place set up pretty cool. The food was good and the workers were friendly. We walked along the beach followed by a delicious buffet right on the beach. The restaurant had nice music playing, candlelight, and perfect weather.

Jeremy took me scubadiving the next day. I hadn't ever done it before. We were able to find an instructor, a boat with a crew, and all the equipment for around $60! We went for a couple of hours and it was awesome! I wasn't scared like I thought I would be. We saw lots of fish and HUGE starfish. Nothing too extreme-just the way I like it :)To round out the day we had an in-room massage which I enjoyed, and Jeremy didn't so much. Something about rough hands or the lady was so old or something...
Anyway, the next morning we loaded up and headed home.

It was the perfect experience for our 10 year anniversary. Funny how for the last few years Jeremy talked about us going to a tropical island for our 10 year ann., little did we realize we'd actually be living on one for the whole year! Ha ha.