This was the final day of the "structured" part of the trip, and was the incredibly special trip to Ocean Park with our sponsored children.... but first, church!

Now, I'm not sure how this happened, but we were somehow quite early to church. The service began a bit later than the scheduled start time though (the filipino life!) so we had a decent amount of time to chat with the pastor and others who were there on the tech desk... we had three Windsor techies on the trip so I suppose that was inevitable! Bert also managed to find the churches facebook page so had a sneaky look at their livestream to see if he could spot us in the pews.

After the service it was straight back into the bus and off to Ocean Park. Bert and I had been pretty nervous about this day in the lead up, specifically how would we manage to split our time among all four children when there's only the two of us??

There were quite a few of the kids, their parents, and their development workers there already by the time we got there, but some hadn't arrived yet. Specifically, one of our sponsored children who we hadn't actually met yet, Ken. Fredz was following up with Kens development centre team to get an update but in the interim we gave Cassandra, Justine, and Lance the gifts we had brought from home before taking some group photos and going into the park. One of the gifts we gave each of them was a Kiwi soft toy. Lance loved it and held onto his one all day!

The park was mainly fish/sealife of various descriptions, but also birds, reptiles, snakes (!!!).... and guinea pigs? Turns out filipinos don't keep guinea pigs as pets which I suppose explains why they were featured in an animal park but it was quite surprising to see them right next to the snakes.

As for the snakes - they had an enclosure which seemed quite small, and was housing two male burmese pythons. I'm assuming there was more space behind the wall for them to go or something but they were positioned in quite a small spot and the snakes were massive which added to the appearance of being cramped in there. Not far from them though was a table with a park staff member inviting people to come pat the snake he had on his table. Bert and I walked up and sort of poked it gingerly with one finger.... then Lance strolled up with his Kiwi and essentially wrapped his hand around the snakes belly. That boy definitely had no fear or hesitation! He was also pretty excited about seeing the fish because they were the same types that his brother catches for work and they had eaten the same ones for dinner a night or two earlier.

From there we were led out to an aviary where there were a bunch of parrots. Cassandra and Lance got some photos feeding them but Justine didn't want to so he was off to the side watching, although I think one of the birds landed on his head anyway.

Back inside... it's possible that I might have strategically placed myself in front of the GIANT fans. There was a bit of drizzle so the weather was particularly humid that day. We spent some time around a circular/doughnut tank with clownfish etc inside. It was a really cool tank because the children could crawl into the centre part and be surrounded by the fish. They loved it in there, watching the fish floating by.

We headed through to the restaurant for lunch from there. This was going to be an interesting feat because we were now somewhat restricted to our seats and still trying to interact with our children, their parent, and their development worker. By this time Ken had arrived too so all four of our children were there (Ieiazel wasn't able to come) so Bert and I ended up having an entire row of tables purely for our group. I was at the end closest to Ken and his mother so was chatting to them mainly. Bert was able to get Justine talking a bit more (all the children were very shy) and they were discussing a console game that Justine plays at a neighbours house sometimes.

After lunch we speed-walked back a bit as there was a bird show starting. It was cool to see the different birds but I gotta say, I was a bit nervous about them flying overhead all the time seeing as they're not exactly toilet trained! After the show we had a couple of group photos with someone holding one or two of the larger parrots. Throughout the day there had been strategic displays designed for photo/selfie opportunities so of course we had a lot of photos at these places too!

Sadly, this was as much time as we could have with them. We'd been there a few hours but time goes quickly! We headed inside to a cafe area right before the gift store at the exit so we could all say our farewells, exchange any final gifts, take any last photos etc. This was the part where we got our photo with the four children. It was an odd feeling, Bert and I standing there surrounded by "our" children for the photo - I had a very maternal feeling come over me, as though they genuinely were my children. It was a very special and emotional experience... and not just for me. As we were about to leave, Ken's mother gave me a big hug and she started crying, which then set off the tears for Cassandra's mother. I was slightly concerned that if I didn't leave quickly then the entire room might start crying!

We all loaded ourselves back into our bus and settled in for a couple of hours driving to our next accommodation - a resort by the ocean. We took some interesting "roads" to get there... at one point we even seemed to be creating our own road but I think it was just roadworks. Honestly, it was a little hard to tell. Once we arrived, we sort of wandered around a bit waiting for the rooms to be allocated, then loaded ourselves into a truck to be driven to our rooms. Gotta admit, these rooms were not quite the same as what we had become accustomed to. Bert and I wondered quietly if it were perhaps a lesson in humility after all we had seen in the preceding days!

This is where I became a bit unstuck. By this time we'd had a few hours to reflect on our time at Ocean Park and how special it was. It was the sort of thing I would usually have been sending mum a lot of photos and messages about, but of course I couldn't do that anymore. I felt her absence deeply. When we assembled for dinner and debrief I could feel myself becoming upset so I quietly excused myself from the room but there wasn't really many places to go so I ended up standing in the doorway to the bathroom. I'm not entirely sure if it was male, female, or a unisex bathroom, but either way it was a bit of an awkward spot to stand and cry! I messaged Bert to let him know what was happening, and when I came back into the room he read out my reflections to the group because I wasn't really able to speak at that point. Thankfully everyone was really understanding of the situation though.

After dinner we headed back to our room - it was a long day so everyone was more than ready for bed. One problem though, Bert and I had a visitor... meet Gary.

After a few messages to Fredz asking what we should be doing with Gary we had a hotel staff member arrive at our door to evict him. It didn't take him long to catch and release but did make me wonder if this was a common occurrence. We're not actually sure how he even got in, but there he was all the same. It's entirely possible that Bert had to check the bathroom for surprise guests each time I needed to use it after that.... I cannot confirm, nor deny.