Larry Memmott's Blog

Here are some photos from the past couple of weeks. These cover shopping in the pearl market at Greenhills, visiting the old fortress in Intramuros, and stops at Mall of Asia and at Baywalk at sunset. Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of the photos.

We really did have a great time (again, this is our forth time in Baguio). We visited the Bell Chinese Church and the Tam Awan Village and wandered around Camp John Hay. However, in the end, the best thing about Baguio is the incredible Ambassador’s Residence and its grounds. It is just sooo relaxing there. […]

We went to Baguio for the weekend of February 7. As always, it was lovely. We took our friends, Anya and Sasha, and their cute little daughter Masha, and stayed at the cottage on the incredible grounds of the Ambassador’s residence there. The residence dates from before World War II. In fact, all of Baguio […]

The Embassy held an Inaugural Ball to celebrate the transition to a new President. Tatyana had a dress made for the occasion. Unfortunately, the photos leave something to be desired, but they give an idea, anyway.

We had a very nice Christmas.  Our Christmas Eve celebration was short, given Aliciya’s attention span.  We read a few stories, sang a few Christmas carols (Aliciya proposed, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”), read the Christmas story from the bible, and hung our stockings, that was about it. Christmas day we unwrapped presents.  Most of […]

Continuing the theme of balls, here is a photo from the Marine Corps Ball.  The Marine Corps Ball is an important embassy tradition.  Almost all U.S. embassies worldwide are protected by a detachment of Marine Security Guards.  Every November U.S. embassies around the world hold Marine Corps Birthday Balls to celebrate the founding of the […]

We had a really nice Thanksgiving.  It started when I was asked to give the “Thanksgiving Message” at the annual Thanksgiving Ball put on by the American Chamber of Commerce Foundation (a charitable organization).  They asked me, I expect, because neither the Ambassador nor the Deputy Chief of Mission were available.  Still, it seemed very […]

Our last weekend in Washington Tanya was feeling well enough to get out more. The doctor had told us on Friday that we could go back to Manila. We decided to take advantage of the incredible fall weather and go out to the Pumpkin Festival at Butlers Orchard in Germantown, MD. It turned out to […]

After the surgery I spent my time running back and forth to the hospital and trying to keep Aliciya entertained. I quickly found that the best way of keeping her happy was to take her to the big Borders Bookstore one metro stop away. There were stuffed animals to play with, and when she got […]

Since I didn’t get any blogging done in Washington, here I am playing catch-up again. Anyway, we left Hawaii on September 15 for Washington to have Tatyana’s brain tumor removed. It was a pretty stressful time, but as you will see, we had some fun, too. Tatyana didn’t have her appointment with the brain surgeon […]