23 Days!!!

Just 23 days until I am off to the Philippines! Today I finally got the paper back from my supervisor. She had submitted my vacation & leave without pay request back on August 21st. Monday she said our department head had said "Yes". But I really wanted the copy back from him signed, so I had proof I was actually approved. So Thursday she emailed him and today before I left for work she gave me the signed copy back. So I am approved for my vacation, because it doesn't look like we'll be getting furloughed there is too much work this year... and now hurricane Ike is looking like it may be bad and whenever FEMA needs assistance with the phones, we take the overflow calls that FEMA can't handle. The last time we did that was with hurricanes Katrina & Rita, 3 years ago. It was pretty tough and emotional handling calls from people calling for disaster assistance that had lost everything....

But... I am approved and I am leaving for the Philippines in 23 days! Started getting stuff for my trip last week and ordered some clothes. I have to go shopping next weekend for some jeans & maybe a few new t-shirts. Picked up some snacks for my flight. I usually take a dried fruit mix, with yogurt raisins. And I got some rice crispy treats too. Usually I get granola bars, but I wanted something different this time.

F.B.'s grand mom & aunt were visiting from Mindanao last week. They went to the Manila Ocean Park, the new Aquarium on my birthday. F.B. & I are going to go there when I visit. I saw on the website they also have a glass bottom boat ride, that sounds pretty neat! And I also want to visit the Zoo at some point. Something different for us. There's a new mall that opened in Marikina City that we can check out. The malls in the Philippines are just crazy. They have so many and they are soooo huge! Mall of Asia is one of my favorites. And also the smaller malls near his house.

I'm excited, the trip is getting closer. I'm not looking forward to traveling for 24+ hours though. It's a full day of travel and the worst flight is my 15 hour flight from Chicago to Hong Kong. I will have several flight changes. You can click here to check out my flight itinerary.

Just a note: I try to include alot of links related to each blog post. So if you click on the links in my blogs it will give you more information on what I'm posting about.