Gary and Amy are from Canada and they're here to pick up Mark Joseph. Amy is Filipino, but she's spent more of her life in Canada than I have.

Gary himself was adopted, so he has a special understanding of what Mark Joseph is experiencing right now.

New Year's is a lot of fun in the Philippines. It's probably the second most important holiday of the year, after All Saints' Day.

Our traditional meal for New Year's Eve is tacos, and Auden was very keen to help roll out the shells with us this year...

...and then to taste his own cooking for the first time.

Loads of fireworks. Everyone probably happier than than they are at Christmas.


We always set off some rockets and fountains in front of the house. If you've never exper-ienced a Filipino New Year's, you can hardly appreciate the war-zone effect of fireworks going off in every direction. The pictures look so sane.

The haircut was a long-standing agreement with Kevin. "Come to the Philippines and you can give me a mohawk," she said. The fact is, we've all been enjoying the mohawk even after Kevin left. Aubrey turned photographer after midnight, and took several of these lovely pictures--including the group picture of us at the top of this blog.