Christmas in Naga with the Nacions

Christmas in the Philippines is quite a fun event. This was my second Christmas in Naga, so I knew a bit of what to expect. As a bit of a downer we spent a fair amount of our time at the airport getting to Naga, and then coming back to get our baggage, then coming back to pick up a friend and then leaving the next day to Manila. Basically there was a daily trip to the airport for the entirety of my time in Naga but luckily the Naga airport wasn't far. As for actual points of interest over the Christmas period, there was a fundraiser being done by the young people of the church that was pretty good and then the next day was a reception held for Joy and myself/birthday party for Joy and my brother-in-law Darrell.(he's the big white guy in the pictures -- yes he did play football, specifically center for ole miss). I chose the picture below to show the somewhat humorous disparity of size (sorry Darrell).


It was supposed to be a few people, but as you can see in true Filipino fashion it turned out to be about 100 people (there are a lot of people out of the camera range on both sides) stuffed into the living room of mama and papa Nacion's house. But it was pretty fun, and we had good food and talked a bit about how we came together and Glenith (Joy's sister) and Darrell talked a little bit about how things were going in their lives. The next day was Christmas Eve (the big day in the Philippines) so after wandering around Naga a bit we had a wonderful dinner out on the patio including one of my favorites: barbequed pork (I highly recommend Filipino barbeque). Here are a couple pictures from that evening:

Barbeque in action:



The Nacions plus adopted Nacions taken by Matt Jennings:



Joy's two brothers and Matt Jennings:


We had a good time hanging out with the Nacions and one of my childhood friends (Matt Jennings). And then left the next morning for Manila to meet my sister at the airport. Of course it was slightly more copmlicated because there were no flights out of Naga on Christmas day so we had to take a van to Legaspi to catch a flight to Manila, so we also stopped along the way to see the remains of a historic church that was buried by a volcanic eruption 300 years ago from the volcano Mayon.