Dionne, Joven and Issie

Dionne’s friend and officemate, Chloe, requested that for her birthday, in lieu of gifts, we instead would donate medicines, school supplies and toiletries for the kids at Kanlungan sa Er-Ma.  So for the past week, they were busy collecting donations and collating them for the big event.

Last Saturday, February 6, Dionne and I went to McDo Quirino to meet with the rest of the TM-Volunteers (Chloe, Ryan, Dulce, Brymac, Malou, Mau, Irish and Ricky).  From there, it was only a few minutes’ travel to the venue.

Dulce, as usual, was the host and game master.  Brymac, as usual too, took most of the photos.  While the rest of us teamed with the kids.  There were four groups in all: Sun, Moon, Star and Cloud.

Before anything else, group pictorial

To start with, each team had to come up with a cheer.  Dionne and I were assigned to Team Cloud.  We couldn’t think of anything remotely related to clouds!  So we just made up for it by shouting loudly and doing some lifting.  Well, it was me lifting one of the kids while he was holding some pose.

One of the games was called “Paint Me a Picture”, where we had to pose to depict a scenario.  2 out of 3 scenes, I was a policeman: at the supermarket, then at the bus terminal.  On the last scene, I was assigned as half of a door by one of the kids.  I still wanted to be a policeman but anyway…

This was supposed to be the Market scene... ??? (LOL)

Our "Bus Terminal" scene. Yep, that's a policeman back there.

The other game may be called “Save the X”.  Basically, the groups were divided into demographics and assigned a label.  For example: adult males were the water, adult females were the wind, boys were trees and girls were flowers.

When the game master says, “save the X”, whoever X were, their feet should be off the ground as soon as possible and until the game master says otherwise.  So everything was fine until Dulce said, “save the water!”  I sat on the floor, raised my feet, then everybody just took hold of my arms and my legs, and I was off the ground!  Up to now, I still can’t imagine how that was possible.  Haha!

After the games, Ricky the Storyteller regaled us with a tale about Hermy the Hipon and friends.

Ricky the Storyteller

By this time, everybody was sweaty and quite hungry.  We had spaghetti and chicken from Jollibee courtesy of the birthday girl.  Sarap!

During the short time that we were there, seeing the kids smiling and laughing and having a great time, made it all worthwhile.

Happy birthday, Chloe!

(View the rest of the pics here.)