"When I was a kid..."

We've all heard the joke that goes something like "When I was a kid we had to walk uphill to school in the rain.... both ways!"  Well, check this out    - ->

Today, I traveled out of Lagonoy proper to attend a meeting at one of the barangay's located on the eastern coast.  I was happy to go, as I was offered a chance to speak to local authorities on evacuation issues.  Also, with this tropical storm approaching (doesn't look like it will make typhoon status after all, thank goodness) the weekend looks to be extremely wet.. Anyway, thats the background.

The real story is what I witnessed WAITING for the meeting to start!  So, first understand that all children attending school in Lagonoy (Im sure pretty sure all of the Philippines is like this) wear formal school uniforms.  Having said that.. here is a picture of two girls who passed me while I was waiting:

As you can see... formal uniforms... Notice the long skirts.  Ok, so as Im sitting there waiting... about 50 children go walking past me and I got to thinking... where are they going?  After all, I had been down that beach already and there was nothing there.  Well, as it turns out, they were heading for school!   Here is where they went:

That's right... their path to school has them walking thru the surf!  The girls wear shorts under their skirts... then they remove their skirts and shoes, place them in their backpacks, place the backpacks on their heads, and then they cross the surf... a little more than knee deep at this tide.  The boys are wearing shorts under their long pants... same thing....  I suppose they have towels in there too, although I couldn't see what happened when they got over there... nor do I know how far down the beach the school actually was.  I can only assume this just happened to be high tide, and of course, the exact depth and time of high tide is always changing.. so maybe this is the worst it gets... or maybe not.

In any case, that's quite an interesting way to get to school, huh?  I thought so anyway!