Pre-Christmas Activities

Ok, I'm a bit behind on the blog as I have actually been doing things :)
I'll break it into parts though to make it a little more manageable.
Class was class and things didn't start to get interesting until around the 19th of December when a friend, Nikki, flew in from Manila. She's from Iloilo originally and had come back to spend the holidays with family (as all Filipinos do) so I was able to spend a few days hanging out. Little did I know where we'd be hanging out together though... One of our mornings was spent with her brother who was doing some volunteer work (he's a nurse) in the local city jail.
This is actually the first time I have ever been in a jail. Very strange. It seemed more like a community centre with all the family members there visiting in a big open courtyard area. It was obviously a special day for them with a medical mission on hand and then some of the army there giving haircuts too. We chatted to a few of the guys as they stood in line waiting for their vital signs to be taken. They seemed nice enough I guess, but it was also strange to think we were taking photos of the tattooes of murderers...
Dec 23rd was the first day of our school's holiday and also the school Christmas party. The party was fun with all of us being divided up into 2 teams for various games. The break for us was to last for the next 10 days and unlike everyone else, I planned to go away. I think in the end only 2 students actually left the city for any period of time. Sad, I live with a bunch of non-travellers.... If I hadn't already booked tickets to go to Palawan for the break, I probably would've gone over to the volcano, Mayon, which was putting on a show and looking like it was going to erupt for a while. But Palawan was one of the main reasons I came back to the Philippines in the first place so I was not about to miss out.
Ammon