These are more pics from that first mountain tribe... this little girl really captured my heart. They were all dressed in their finest for visitors, and later after running through the stream she was wearing this dress backward ;)
This is EMMA... when she told me her name I didn't think I had heard right! Jen translated for me to tell her that Chloe has a sister name Emma. This Emma was very shy, but she posed for a picture to show my Emma :) She is the same age as Chloe. Chloe is tall, but Emma is an average/ large size for a Filipino.

As we hiked up the mountain we encountered this woman bathing with her child. The chieftain ad a very rough toilet, but that was the extent of indoor plumbing.
This was the Chieftain's youngest son, Jo-Jo. He seemed especially eager to hear about possible farming techniques and plans.

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Hey Everybody...

I have LOTS more pictures and stories to share about our trip -- I am actually trying to upload some photos right now, but the connection isn't quite good enough -- but we have some requests that are fairly pressing and we wanted to pass them along.

In less than one week, we are planning to fly home from half way around the world (an even longer trip than coming, since we have an overnight layover), get home from an airport 3.5 hrs away, reunite with our little girls, have a birthday party for Chloe, pack for Wisconsin, thoroughly clean our house, say our goodbyes to friends and family, visit THE FAMILY one last time, and move back to Wisc. in the middle of the night so Matt can finish training for his new job as a bus driver before school starts. This actually involves a lot more details than it seems, and there's no way we can get it all done on our own! Throw in a tropical storm (not yet a typhoon) here/ along our travel path, some serious jet lag, and the Grandma factor as our girls readjust to our care... and things could get pretty hairy! Oh, and when we left home we had a broken water main (outside, luckily) that was hopefully repaired while we were gone and our family vehicle was being repaired after a motorcycle ran into us. So please petition for our strength and stamina in the next week, as well as for adjustments as we head back to Wisconsin and school.