Gretchen V. del Rosario, wife of Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert F. del Rosario, and Rowena A. Domingo, wife of Trade and Industry Secretary Gregory L. Domingo, jointly hosted a day-long APEC Ministerial Meeting (AMM) Spouses Program for the spouses of the visiting APEC Foreign and Trade Ministers and high officials which featured visits to the Ayala Museum and Kultura Filipino.

Del Rosario and Domingo welcomed the wife of ASEAN Secretary-General, Le Luong Minh Nguyen Thanh Huong, the wife of APEC Executive Director, Alan Bollard Jenny Morel, and other guests at the Ayala Museum, where the participants viewed the museum’s extensive exhibits featuring pre-Hispanic Philippine gold artifacts, Chinese pottery, fine Philippine art and the dioramas showing key events of Philippine history.

The guests included the wife of the Vietnamese Ambassador to the Philippines, Dinh Thi Thu Houng, the wife the Canadian Ambassador, Irene Reeder, the wife of the Honorary Consul of Peru, Betty Chua (who came with her daughter Dr. Beatrice Ang), and the wife of Deputy Chief of Mission of Indonesia, Ade Petranto.

The viewing was followed by a luncheon catered by Ilustrado Restaurant.  At the luncheon, the guests were serenaded by Triple Fret, a trio of talented women guitarists who played classic kundimans, ballads and other Filipino songs, and was followed by a fashion show sponsored by Kultura Filipino featuring modern Filipiniana clothing.

The participants then proceeded to Kultura Filipino at SM Aura.  There, they were welcomed with a performance of the traditional maglalatik dance by some of the Kultura Filipino staff.  The guests also witnessed a cigar-rolling exhibition and browsed through the fine Filipiniana items carried by the store.

From the Department of Foreign Affairs