Laughlin Turn Around Trip to Golden Nugget Hotel What a weekend for those who joined us to our first LAUGHLIN TURN AROUND  TRIP. It all started the morning of Saturday, 2 Aug 08. I'll give kudos to most of you, who were actually in the bus by 0600 hours. We have a few "NO SHOWS"!!! We departed the St. Thomas Aquinas parking lot at 0630 hours as scheduled. Thirty one folks were on board. Our first and only pit stop was two hours away, in the town of Wikieup.  On the way there, I tested our folks knowledge of PHILIPPINE HISTORY. I distributed test papers containing 10 questions and one tie breaker question. Questions such as, who is the 13th President of the Republic of the Philippines? What is the largest city in the Philippines? How many islands are there in the Philippines during low tide? And more. I'm happy to announce that no one had a zero mark. The score varies from a low 1 to a high 8. Honorable mentions as follows: Judge (retired) Tom Rodriguez scored 5, Caloy Chua scored a high 7. The winner was Hilda Chua who scored 8 out 10. She received the grand cash prize of $30, however, she happily donated it to the FAAAZ fund raising funds. After I stirred their brains, I made it easy and just gave away the prizes thru picking the ticket numbers from a bag. Three prizes were given away. The winners as follows: Wooden Desk Calendar - (made in the Philippines) - Reggie Gesmundo San Miguel t-shirt - Cheopela Mendoza Imitation COACH purse - De Chavez family Before you know it, we made it to our pit stop. Here we spent 20 minutes to stretch, used the rest rooms and of course had breakfast. Ninety minutes later we were in Laughlin at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino. Here we have 8 hours to play, eat, drink, shop... It was an exciting day for some of our team mates. I can hear the cheers across the big room. Ron Pangan, Jojo Concepcion, and Freddie Malapit played the craps (dice) and they have plenty of people cheering for them. Luckily all of them won with Ron taking the big win with about $600. Yours truly won at the blackjack table and Alicia Rosales and DeeDee Stewart left the casino too with more money on their pockets. As scheduled we left the hotel casino at 7pm sharp. On the way home, people talked about the experienced they have, how much money they lost and how much money they won. Overall, the spirits were good and on a positive note. We got home safe and sound and we arrived at the St Thomas Aquinas parking lot at 11pm. We didn't achieve our goal because of many cancelations/NO SHOWS, a total of 15. We were negative but we have some donations from our winner circles, the PANGAN, MONTOYA and CHUA Families...The fund raising trip earned the association a positive $20.00 and a lot of good memories. PRICELESS!!! We will do it again next year! Have a great day! TONY L MONTOYA FAAAZ Public Relation Officer 2008