Arrived in the Philippines/Day 1

February 13 (East Asian time zone):

Our 23 hours of travel from Hollister, CA, ISA to Manila, Philippines summarized...

• Left ALFC at 9pm Pacific time. 
• Checked in at San Francisco Int'l airport around 10:30. 
• Flight departed SFO at 1:10am. 
• Arrived in Hong Kong around 8:00am, HK time (4pm Pacific). 
• Original layover of 1 hr was lengthened another hour, so it was nice to have more time to stretch before our connection flight. Feeling crummy with a raging head cold and sinus infection. Coughing too. It felt good to be able to have access to facilities where I could take care of my health needs before the next flight. 
• We boarded our flight to Manila around 9:44, and finally departed HKG around 10:15am. 
• Landed in Manila at noon. Quickly passed through immigration and retrieved all luggage with ease. By God's grace I passed through immigration, despite on my declarations form the fact that I clearly admitted I was unhealthy. 
• Met Pastor Miranda at the airport and our adventure continued from there!

Then, we sat in a minivan for the next 7 hours, as we ran errands. Just getting out of Manila was a chore. Saturday traffic was especially congested due to the recent Chinese New Year holiday. We stopped for lunch at a Jollibee franchise and then got back on the road to head for Pampanga province, where we exchanged currencies and then traveled on to Clark airbase where we reserved our accomodations for later in the week. There was lots of traffic there because of the hot air balloon festival that is taking place this weekend. Lots of traffic in nearly every direction we were traveling this afternoon/evening. Finally, as the sun was setting around 6:30pm, we drove back to Olongapo to check into our hotel for the next few days. We settled in, rearranging furniture in our small room to make everything for, getting the aircon and the safe fixed by maintenance, and spreading out. We showered and the girls hit the sack about an hour ago, as I have been updating social media; check out the links to photos found on the ALFC Team Philippines16 facebook page!