September's School Trip by St. Gabrielle Academy.

Field Trip Tarp

When you ask young students about good memories, good times, what comes to their mind quickly is the field trip that they went to recently or should I say few months back or a year ago. Right?One day before the trip, my kindergarten daughter acted like a local radio announcer telling to everyone in house and her friends outside that we're going on a field trip. Very excited and so do I for her!

The awaited day finally came over, Field Trip Day! Students with parent/guardian/relative companions of St. Gabrielle Academy arrived early at Mahalo, the meeting place. The upshot? We thrived to be on time too!=) That's good thing but the downside was I fallen to nap as the tour bus went our way to first destination, Gardenia Bread Factory inside GMC (General Milling Corporation) premises.

At Gardenia Bread Factory, everybody in the group wore complimentary hair net and disposable footmop for Php 6 pesos for those who didn't wear close footwear. The tour guide headed us inside the factory, we happened to pass by several crates of Gardenia bread ready for distribution as we moved to the heart of bread making area. There we saw automation of the entire process of breadmaking from mixing the dough down to packaging. Very cool tech! Few minutes later, the tour guide called the attention of everybody inside to listen his brief introduction about the company, the automated bread making process, and lastly the sweet marketing of their bread products. What I've learned that all of their bread goodies are enriched with folate, good for the brain. The toasted bread of 2 variants (butter or cinnamon) are freshly baked meaning to say they're not left-over breads so can be stacked for longer period of time. Before exiting, he spoke to us about the give-away bread good for one sandwich and 10% discount of all bread products when you buy bread inside the factory. These offers are limited only to tour visitors as he added. So I grabbed 3 packs around less than P200 pesos (high whole wheat, whole wheat with cranberry, & black forest) for my siblings waiting at home. Outside, the Gardenia school bus photo booth was filled with passengers receiving cam flashes of different angles. Of course, Tinker and I rode the bus too. =) More photos here.

Gardenia School Bus. More PHOTOS @ GARDENIA .

Inside Crocolandia. More PHOTOS @ CROCOLANDIA.

Going to 2nd destination, University of San Carlos Talamban Campus Museum. Along the way going to campus, busy city scenes captured through your eyes your natural lens can elevate your stress level to spike. Not good for your physical health fellows. But as we entered the school premises, the eco friendly environment equated your stress level to zero, you can see green lushes in every turn. Tall tress and elevated buildings gave you the feeling that you went to should I remind of deep yoga meditation. Students of all levels and buddies were so busy to take snap shots anywhere and posed in every animal stuffed inside the museum. Speaking of museum, the campus has I think 6 rooms where preserved animals are displayed. Young learners saw various insects, butterflies, wild birds, snakes and sea animals. Some read the info posted below the stuffed animal while most audience were delighted to capture photos instead.

Michael Richartz Center behind her.
More PHOTOS @ USC TALAMBAN , STREET SCENES.

Teacher Queenie, K1-adviser, at her side.

Lastly, we went to Crocolandia, the final stop. Somewhere in Talisay City, people within or outside Cebu come around just to see for themselves the man-made habitat for crocodiles and other exotic animals the so-called, Crocolandia. Before the strolling begun, we sat down at the canteen near kid's playground for a while to take our lunch. Since most of the seats were occupied and there's one left near the foreign parent so we asked him to joined with him in the table. He replied ok, so we had our lunch there. I spoke to one parent near to us around the table in what school they belonged, she said they're from Nissi Academy in Lapu-Lapu City too. For the time we spent in there, I noticed 3 children's schools that were having an excursion and 1 adult group. After lunch, we went around the area and saw 5 crocodiles I think. The one that really amazed me was the crocodile named Lapu Lapu (great local Hero name), incredibly huge in size and the oldest crocodile in the house. According to the tenant, LapuLapu was the male spouse of the primary crocodile pet and all the others are his offsprings. She said the 1st crocodile was gone so I think now an air of melancholy surrounds LapuLapu. Does he? Well, just see him here çoz as what the famous phrase goes, "Picture paints a thousand words". See him and be the judge! As Tinker and I finished roaming around and of course taking pictures too, the tour guide started to tour the group so we didn't go with them anymore. We'd seen crocodiles, big fresh water fishes, exotic birds like the Eagle and the like, turtles, lizards, and etc. More PHOTOS @ CROCOLANDIA. We waited at the play area for others who we're still tripping around. As we turned ourselves in to buses waited outside nearby, my daughter asked me "Ma, where's the tiger and lion? Why I didn't see them? OMG, I paused for seconds don't know how to answer her queries and I don't want to disappoint her with my answers" Good thing to know there's a Magnolia Ice Cream cart along the road as we walked going to our courier. And then I quickly diverted my answer to suggestion of buying an ice cream since it's so hot at the moment. Indeed, she forgot the lions and tigers as we ate yummy cold ice cream inside the bus. More BUS PHOTOS . Happy thoughts! We spent I think more or less 2 hours in there then we moved back to place where we started our journey.