Philling You in on the Philippines: A Phantastic Adventure: Send Off Party

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Send Off Party

On Saturday, my lovely fellow teachers and principal of MCS threw a "Send-Off Party" for me and two teachers who have recently retired. They rented a banquet hall in a restaurant and hotel in Naga, and had a whole program all planned out. I arrived at 5:57pm for a 6:00pm start and was one of the first three people there! The program ended up starting around 6:30pm-- I should have learned by now!

The program began with some "testimonials" from the teacher friends of the first retiree, Ma'am Gie, and was followed by a "farewell message" from the retiree herself. Next, we had an "intermission number" from the grade 1 teachers: they sang a videoke song and dedicated it to Ma'am Gie!

There were an incredible number of pictures taken throughout the night as Filipinas love to have their picture-picture sessions!

Even though the second retiree, Ma'am Tina, wasn't able to attend the party, her two "testimonials" were still shared with the group and a song was sung in her honor.

I was the last honoree to be ... honored and my "testimonials" came from my two counterpart teachers: Dinah & Karen. Dinah spoke for a long time and mentioned pretty much every act of 'service' I've committed in my two years here. I was holding up pretty well throughout the whole thing until the end when she said that "if every family in the world had a Melissa Clouser, the world would be a much better place". I couldn't keep it together anymore. I bawled.

After a song for me, everyone finished eating and the picture-picture taking began! And there were A LOT of pictures taken!

It turned out to be pretty funny when I tried to take pictures with individual people because as soon as other people saw what was happening they came to jump in the photo also! It happened at least 5 different times and I have so many huge group shots and only a few individual shots.