Philippine Tour Bus Tragedy

Many of you watched the Hong Kong tour bus tragedy in Manila as it unfolded on your televisions two days ago. Hong Kong is reeling. People here are shocked and dismayed. The whole episode is taxing Hong Kong's already complicated relationship with the Philippines. Reactions vary. The Hong Kong government called for Hong Kongers to cancel their travel plans to the Philippines. A friend overheard a man in a local restaurant call for all 250,000 Filippino maids in Hong Kong to be sent back to the Philippines.

The international Christian school community in Hong Kong is a relatively small, interconnected community. One of the girls killed on the tourist bus was a former student of my colleague when he taught at Christian Alliance International (CAI). She was a student of his in AP Calculus. Information is sketchy, but the word we are getting at this time is that the girl, her siblings, and her father did not survive. Her mother was the only survivor from her family.

One of our school's flagship programs is our Week Without Walls during which the kids spend one week in November learning and serving outside of the school. While some of our students stay local many of them travel overseas to China, Malaysia, and elsewhere. I will be leading a group of middle schoolers to Indonesia for six days.

This past week I have been helping the Week Without Walls coordinator get all the information together in anticipation of rolling out this year's WWW offerings.

The two of us spent Friday evening making 250 copies of the twelve-page catalog to be distributed at the Tuesday morning WWW kick-off assembly.

Between printing our booklets on Friday and our kickoff assembly on Tuesday, the tragedy in Manila happened.

One of our thirteen Week Without Walls trips is planned for The Philippines.

We still had our assembly. We still distributed the catalogs. We are still offering The Philippines as one of our offerings.

Once the shock wears off from recent events, I am confident the trip will still be a go.

But in the meantime, we are all a little rattled, to say the least.