Tales of a Missionary Midwife: Holly's Birthday Part 2.

So... for Holly's real birthday surprise.... the one the bowling was covering up... :-)

So the plan was... the bowling was a decoy... the real surprise was a weekend (ok, well, sunday and monday) getaway to another island where we spent a lot of time in the water, and swimming, and eating, and riding on the back of some super swell motorbikes.

Here's how it went down.....

Holly was working day shift (6am-2pm) an I was "working" Night shift (10pm-6am)... So Holly was at work, and I was at home frantically getting together a bag of stuff, clothes, snorkel stuff, food (cause there is no food at the place for sleeping), etc, etc... So I told her that if she caught a baby (which she did, by the way, her first one!!) that we would go to the pool, and then go for a really stellar 3 dollar massage... That was my excuse to get the bags... and so she got home, and I was trying to get her to hurry... but we didn't get out of the house until after three... sigh... It works much to my benefit that Holly has no idea how to get around Davao; and we got on a Jeep and started riding... for a long way... well, not long, but MUCH longer than it would have taken to get to the pool... and we go to the ferry. The whole time Holly is like, what pool are we going to, Sar? And I was like, oh this new pool the big girls told me about... and she was like, hmmm, ok. And we get to the port... and she's like... ummm, Sar, are we going to the beach or the pool? and I was like... yeah... So we get our tickets onto the ferry... and she's all excited. and I was like, well, it's like 3:30 now, so we don't have THAT much time... sorry friend, I thought you wouldn't take so long to get ready... So we hire two motor bikes to take us around, and we went to this sweet waterfall, but we didn't have that much time there, cause it was already getting late. So we left there an traveled across the island to Canibad, the place we were staying.

We got there at a little after 6 and it was definitely well on the way to darkness, the whole time we were on the bikes, Holly was thinking... why are we going here? It's getting so late... So my driver, who I had been talking to the entire time, was like, Ok, you will just text me in the morning when you are ready to leave, and Holly looked at me and was like "WHAT???" It was hilarious! And all the questions about my night shift, and had I thought about ___ or ____... :-) It was grand. So we got a little open hut on the beach for about 4 dollars and slept there right on the beach, and had some wonderful food (that had gotten a little smushed up in my backpack... oops... and slept early and woke up early, and played in the water until about 9:30. We snorkeled and picked up some really cool shells and stones for our fish tank. Our next stop was a cool bat cave. It houses one of the biggest bat colonies in the world. it was seriously HUGE. And really smelly. And also loud... Kinda gross. But it was cool. Then our drivers took us to Paradise resort and we spent the rest of the afternoon eating and swimmin g there, and got home about 4:30. It was SO grand, and she was so surprised! It was a wonderful day!! And because we did the "local" stuff, it was crazy cheap too! Yay for 1/4 century birthday surprises that aren't expensive!! Waa hoo!!!