Manila Pictures

I'm home! Hurray! I got some great pictures. I want to share them with you. They tell the story pretty well. You can click on any of them to see them large size.

We'll start with introducing the girl I traveled with. Her name is Karly. She is about my same age, and she and I are a lot alike. She works for the same department as me and she and I both stayed at the same hotel. She worked at one center in Manila, and I worked at another. Here is a picture of us in front of the hotel we stayed at. It's called the Makati Shangri-La.

On our only weekend off, we went shopping around Manila to see the city. Here are some city shots. The city is big, with lots of tall buildings.

After walking around a bit, we went to some of the Malls. There are SO MANY malls in the business district of Makati. One of the highest class malls in Asia is there, and it's known as Greenbelt. They have Gucci, Prada and other high class stores. This woman is from one of the malls. They have these crazy life-size cutouts of people everywhere. She made me smile.

Here is me in front of one of their Fast Food restaurants. I thought the bee was really cute.

After we went to the Mall, Karly said she was craving a salad with real iceberg lettuce. We decided to go American and eat at the Hard Rock Makati. It was pretty good! Here are some pictures of our drinks and the bar staff. Don't worry, everything was non-alcoholic! ;)

During the rest of the weekend I had a wonderful massage and a relaxing day of doing nothing but sitting around in my hotel room. I ended up not leaving my room for almost an entire day. Because of this, the cleaning staff didn't get a chance to come into my room and do the daily housekeeping. They were so happy when I finally let them clean my room that they left me chocolates!

One day after work, Karly and I went to the pool to relax and have a drink. I worked a little and called my husband. You will be able to spot my work laptop by my feet. It was a beautiful morning!


There was a delicious breakfast buffet in the hotel called Circles. Usually we ate dinner when we were headed to work and then ate breakfast after work because of our flip-flop schedule. I would wake up at 6:00 PM, get ready, and then meet Karly for dinner around 8:30 PM. We would leave around 9:45 and then work until 8:00 AM. When we got back, we ate breakfast together. I had Salmon and jasmine rice for every meal! Delicious!

I worked at a location in Manila called ePerformax. They are a 3rd party outsourcer who takes phone calls for eBay and PayPal. Here are a couple of pictures from there. The first is with one of the agents. He immediately called me his "BFF". He was so sweet.

Here is the sign you see when you enter the floor that the call center is located on:

Here is my name on a sign to welcome me. It was there for the whole 2 weeks I was in Manila! I felt pretty special.

The last few days we were in the Shangri-La, they put the Christmas decorations up. In the lobby, they set up this amazing display with a gold chair. I couldn't wait to sit in it and have my picture taken. Check out my fancy face!

The very last day we were in Manila, we went to the Manila Temple. It was a very pretty Temple and the grounds were gorgeous. Here are some pictures from the Temple. This first one is of Karly and me in front of the Temple.

Some of the most beautiful palm trees I saw in Manila were on the Temple grounds. Here are some of the palm trees.

Here is me with some sister missionaries.

This is a side shot of the Temple.

Here is the other side!

These Philippino men were sitting outside of the Temple. I thought they were cute and so I took a picture of them.

There were a lot of Jeepneys parked in the Temple parking lot. The Jeepneys are popular in Manila because people use them for public transportation. Karly and I were so excited to be in a picture with them! Here we are in front of a Jeepney!

I have a few more pictures that I will be getting from Karly from our trip. She will be posting them and I will get them uploaded here as soon as I can.

I had such a wonderful time and I can't wait to go back sometime soon. I am pretty tired, and will be taking tomorrow and maybe Tuesday off to start feeling normal again. The flight home was pretty intense, and so a few days to recenter and feel like I can work hard again will be good for me. Sorry I didn't blog the few days I was traveling, but I figured a big post was better than 2-3 little boring posts. :) Thanks to all of you who commented on my posts so far this month! See you tomorrow for another NaBloPoMo!