Spent Chrismas Eve at Nolan's Uncles - good grinds and caroling!
For Christmas eve, Nolan's uncle was kind enough to invite all of us over to his place in Sampaloc to celebrate. They cooked us up a great meal and the traditional caroling took place, where the neighborhood kids go from house to house singing Christmas songs for money (or in our case we gave out candy). Midnight mass is a popular tradition here too, churches get packed in this Roman Catholic dominated culture - we passed by one Catholic church literally bursting with people inside and outside sitting on the lawn, on walls, sidewalks and fences.
A lot of Filipinos travel out of Manila to the celebrate in the provinces, but there were still plenty of parties as we passed through streets of blaring karaoke machines, and even grown shirtless men dancing to the beat of Rihanna. Most people stay up passed midnight celebrating, but unfortunately with jet lag still haunting us foreigners, we couldn't keep our eyes open past 11pm (5am in Hawaii), which is probably the latest we've stayed up since we've been here!
