Misc JASHS Activities

We've been having meetings (two so far) with our JASHS Class '70 alumni association here in the Philippines trying to plan for our 40th Grand Reunion next year. The date has been set - February 6, 2010. Donna and I had the Rene Medina Hall of PHS reserved through the kindness of the school Principal, Mrs. Imelda Macaspac, who by the way waived the fee for us. From the results of our meeting last month, however, the venue may change. We'll have to talk about it some more. Our President Willy Sapnu, suggested we meet every last Friday of the month to focus on our reunion. I've requested the annual December 30 get together be postponed for this year so we can have our united effort for next year's reunion.

In the mean time, my USA group had their annual picnic held at the Cerritos Heritage Park last month.

"It was held last July 26, 2009 at Heritage Park in Cerritos. As always we had a lot of food. Everyone was happy to see each other despite seeing each other almost every week for most of us. The park is a scenic one with water falls, vast beautiful lawn/garden, tower and separate cottages."
Elaine Castillo-Lababit

Below are pictures sent by Elaine.


We have a classmate over here, Precy Manalastas (couldn't remember her married name) who's been ill and in and out of hospitals for the last several weeks. Donna and I visited her recently at her home in San Jose along with classmates Myrna, Beth Simeon and Consorcia Santiago, all of which including Precy, I went to elementary school with.

Here she is during our get together August of last year when another classmate, Rolando Canlas, visited from the UK.


And this picture was taken in our music room during our get together last March when another classmate, Erlinda Simeon (foreground, in white), visited from Italy. Precy is in the background, in yellow.


Precy has now lost quite a bit of weight. Please include her in your prayers.


As promised, before Boy Dizon, wife Remy and daughter Mary Jo left for California, we took them to one of our favorite spots here, the Monasterio de Tarlac. Since we've known in the past that they don't sell food at the site, we brought some lunch with us. We left at the usual time, 8ish, to make it at the daily (except Thursday) 10:30 am mass. I noticed the road on the way up to the mountain has gone considerably worse.


On the way back of course, we passed by Capas National Shrine, the WWII Memorial similar to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.


When we left California last May, we took some of our funds to continue refurbishing the PHS classroom which JASHS Class '70 USA has since adopted. We had the room painted and floor tiles installed. Last week, the two fans and one window type air conditioning unit have been delivered. Hopefully, we may have some money leftover to get one, maybe two, more PCs.


Incidentally, we recently found out, Rolly Yumul, our main contact in the school who's in charge of the class room, is the first cousin of our classmate, Imelda Yojuico-Danganan. Small world, indeed.

This week, I'm planning on dropping by to see if the AC has been installed.