Earthquake

About two weeks ago on October 15th, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 hit a neighboring island called Bohol.  Check out this map to see where we live compared to where it hit.  We live in Cebu City on the island of Cebu.  Our city is approximately 50 kilometers north of the epicenter.  If you look at the zoomed in picture of the top right corner, you can see how close we were.

When the earthquake hit on October 15 around 8 AM, we were both asleep.  The noise woke us up.  It is nothing you can imagine – like a jack hammer was in our bedroom, maybe?  We awoke immediately and went out into the living room in confusion and just stood there, trying to figure out what to do.  Immediately after it was over, we realized we should have gone under something in case things began to fall (thankfully, our lack of earthquake experience and understanding of what to do did not jeopardize our safety).  The earthquake lasted about 30-40 seconds.  Once the shaking stopped, we checked the house for any issues and called our parents to let them know we were fine. It was surreal, scary, and hard to describe.  Seeing and hearing everything shake like that and watching things fall off the bookshelf was a rush of lots of emotions: panic feeling totally out of control of everything, knowing that what was happening was really bad, and praying that it would stop.

Though they have finally subsided, the aftershocks were a bit unsettling.  I’ve read different news articles about there being over 2,000 aftershocks since the earthquake, with around 100 being felt.  Each of those times, I’ve sat quietly and waited to see if they accelerate or get louder and it is time for another earthquake.  There have even been small earthquakes since – we experienced one at the mall on two weekends ago and Billy woke up to one last Monday morning; both reported around a 5.0 magnitude.

Thank the Lord, we are fine.  Our house is safe, Billy’s 14 floor office building is safe, and the school/shelter I am working at is safe as well.  We’ve seen only minor damage in the city and heard multiple stories of people having cracks in their houses, but nothing close to the destruction that occurred in Bohol.

According to this newspaper report, the most recent fatality count is at 215 people – 201 in Bohol, 13 in Cebu, and 1 in Siquijor, another small island off Bohol.  Here is a link with images and an article of some of the destruction, in both Bohol and Cebu.

We are very impressed with the outpouring of compassion and donations of the Filipinos who are giving back to the victims of the earthquake.  In the past two weeks we have seen benefit concerts and donation collections in multiple places.  It has been a difficult time for many people, so please join us in praying that the people of Cebu and Bohol will recover.

My new schedule

You all deserve an update because my volunteering schedule has changed quite a bit!

Remember Children’s Shelter of Cebu, where I had been going in the afternoons to play with the children?  The shelter has a school attached to it that is exclusively for their kids called Children of Hope School.  I am now at the school teaching on a half day schedule in the afternoons every day!  After school three afternoons a week, I go to the shelter to play with the kids and then stay to help three high schoolers (who go to a public school in Cebu) with their homework when they get home at 5.

The classes that I am teaching are called American Studies – it is for the kids who are about to be adopted and is a 6 month (or however long it takes to finalize their paperwork) crash course on everything they need to know about the USA.  I currently have four students and I’m pretty sure their ages are 8, 10, 11, and 13.  I also spend one period each day in a science class being an aide for a boy with special needs.

In American Studies, we learn things like the pledge of allegiance, information about the state they’re moving to as well as the geography of all the states, American history, and customs and norms that Americans have that the kids aren’t used to, like using a fork and a knife (people here use a fork and a spoon).  Last week we covered holidays and seasons and it has been so funny to hear their reactions when I explain things – for example, they were very confused and worried as to why people would pinch them if they didn’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day!  They were also disappointed that it might not snow every day of winter.  It’s really fun and the kids are so excited to take it and learn because they are so so excited to be getting adopted.

Check out my students!  On this day we were working on memorizing the states:

And learning the 50 Nifty United States song so they could work on the pronunciation of each state:

We are starting our American history unit next week!

Happy Anniversary to my dear husband!

Three years ago today was a very special day!

And I had the great plan of uploading a ton of wedding photos for you all to see until I realized that they are all in a disk in my in-laws garage!  Instead, you can enjoy this slideshow put together by our photographer:

Wedding Slideshow

Three years of marriage has given me more happiness and and given us more opportunities than I could’ve ever imagined.  If you would’ve asked me on our wedding day if I could see myself living in another country by our third anniversary, I would’ve said no way!  I am so thankful for the intelligent and hardworking talent of my amazing husband to have gotten us here today.  He has excelled so much in his job and I am very proud of him for all that he has done to get this far.  Our marriage has grown so much every day because of this unique opportunity that was rewarded to him.

If three years of marriage has brought us such an exciting opportunity to live abroad, I am so excited to see what many more years will bring!

 

 

Singapore

“We are American citizens, living in the Philippines, on holiday here in Singapore.”

That was the line that we told everyone who asked us what brought us to Singapore.  It was always interesting to see the reaction!

People say holiday here instead of vacation.  Is that a British term?  They also use the avail as a verb, like to use or take advantage of.  I hear it all the time at the stores when they are talking about discounts or sale items, if you want to avail of the sale.  It took us a few times to figure out what they meant.

Anyways, a few weekends ago, we traveled to Singapore for 4 days.  It was a much needed and appreciated trip.  Life is busy here.  Billy works a lot and holds a crazy work schedule (he is swing shift, so he goes into work around 3 PM and comes home around 1 AM) and daily life here in an overcrowded, developing country is a bit more…chaotic than we’re used to.  We’re doing fine, don’t you worry, it was just nice to get away.

Singapore is strategically located between India, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan.  Because of this, Britain colonized the island in the early 1800s.  Today, it is an enormous shipping and banking center of Asia.  It has one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world.
Note: I did not type those four sentences.  Billy did.  I don’t even know what per capita GDP means.  When I admitted this to Billy, he exclaimed, “what did you do during social studies classes growing up??”  I don’t know, tried to think of ways to change the world by helping people instead of boosting their financial means?  The information that was important for me to understand about Singapore is that they have really good public transportation, air conditioning everywhere, safe food, and a GAP.

Here’s a rundown of all that we packed into 4 short days.

Singaporean people are obsessed with food – quality, flavor, abundance, diversity, cleanliness.  So naturally, we fit right in!  The street food there is safe and cheap to eat, so we would often plan our days based off of when and where we can get food (which is ironically, what I think about all day, every day…doesn’t everyone?  It might be just me…)  They have what are called hawker centres – basically food courts, set up all throughout the city.

Whenever we’d approach a centre, we would walk around first to look at what each stall offered.  Then, we’d go back and buy one little dish at a time, share it, discuss it, then buy some more.  We probably spent about 1-1.5 hours on each meal, which is ironic because it takes them less than five minutes to prepare everything.  The types of foods offered were from all over SE Asia.  Billy’s favorite was the Indian.  My favorite was whatever was the least spicy.

Mmm, so many vegetables.  I miss the variety of veggies that you get back in the states.  The reasonably priced vegetables in Cebu, because they aren’t imported, are lots of leafy greens and eggplants and I’m not quite sure how to cook them.

Singapore people are big into food and shopping.  Since I haven’t gone shopping since we left the US in December, I was more than happy to experience (or should I say avail?) that part of Singapore.

I was one happy girl.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for Billy), buying anything other than tank tops, shorts, and t-shirts is not necessary for my life here.  I am too sweaty and dirty all day to worry about nice things.  Because of that, I was the only adult shopping in the teen section of H&M…

We did a bunch of sightseeing.

Toured the waterfront while a regatta was going on.

Remember, this was the first time we’ve left the Philippines since we moved five months ago.  We were in shock and awe of how vastly different it was as compared to our current lifestyle.

We went to the Singapore Zoo to have breakfast with the orangutans…like literally, a buffet next to where orangutans were eating their breakfast.
 

And we were able to rectify Billy’s belief that rhinos are not extinct.

We also met up with some of Billy’s friends from Cebu that transferred to Singapore and spent a day with them.  They took us around Chinatown,

Little India,

shopping in a cute neighborhood called Tiong Bahru,

to the Botanical Gardens, and out to dinner to try chili crab, another famous food.
 

They also took us to a fruit stand so Billy could sample durian, this crazy bad smelling (and arguably bad tasting) fruit.

I argue that it tastes horrible.  I tried it once and spit it right back out.

National Geographic has a great little video that might help you understand it.

He thought it tasted fine!  It was very anticlimactic.

On our last day, we took a cooking class and squeezed in a tiny bit more shopping on Haji Lane.

Have I mentioned that my husband is amazing for doing all this shopping with me?!

The Singapore airport is incredibly nice.  They even have a station where you can take a photo of yourself and send it as an email to family or friends!

Don’t worry, it’s a temporary tattoo 🙂

Did you know that I’m a piano teacher?

I bet most of you didn’t know that I could even play piano!  And while it has been about 15 years since I’ve taken piano lessons myself, teaching lessons was how I’ve spent the last four weeks.

I’ve been volunteering at Children’s Shelter of Cebu for a few months now and had been going to their playtime after they got home from school.  I once told Billy that it was like going to Disney World for me, because I enjoy going there that much!  Summer break began for the kids in May, and the older kids were given the opportunity to chose an activity to participate in.  I was asked by one of the staff members if I knew how to play the piano and would be willing to teach basic piano for three kids.

The way that I viewed these lessons was that while I am by no means highly qualified to teach piano, I was very excited to give them some one-on-one attention.  The kids are so so so very well taken care of at the shelter, but since there are around 80 kids there, they don’t always get special individual time with adults.  I was more than happy to provide that while hopefully sharing my love of piano with them.  And thankfully, they provided me with a really good series of lesson books.

Check out my super cool students:

I met with each of them individually three times a week, 45 minutes per lesson, for 4 weeks.

Once I taught them the basics and how to read music, their favorite songs to learn to play were always ones that they recognized.   I realized that the American classics that were in their piano books were not ones they were familiar with.  I tried convincing them to play those songs by singing it to them…maybe my singing was why they chose not to play Yankee Doodle and On Top of Old Smokey…

Here is something we had to take into account during our lessons:

Our piano lessons were in the school, which is open air so we had a fan to point at us.  We had to use these pens as paperclips because the fan would blow the pages the whole time.  The fan apparently didn’t help too much though, because Billy would always make fun of the sweat stains I had on my pants everyday from sitting and sweating for two and a half hours.  But I digress…

These kids worked so hard during the piano lessons and practiced so much on their own.  They loved it when they could take home songs they knew how to play, and I often would make copies of songs they knew from church.

I thought I had enough piano skills to teach them, but little did I know, this boy here is a piano prodigy.

I was able to teach him new things for the first two weeks of our lessons.  He always asked a lot of questions about everything new he saw on the music, and for the most part, I was able to answer them.  Around the third week, he’d ask a question and I’d have to give him a new piece of music to work on while I tried looking it up in all the lesson books.

One day, I asked him if there were any songs that he wanted to learn to play and he chose the song One Thing by One Direction.  Once I found the piano sheet music for it, we both discovered that a song that was written for the guitar doesn’t sound so good when it is then transposed for the piano (did I even use that verb right?), so he took the guitar chords, found out how to play those chords on the piano, and rewrote the piano music.  By the fourth week when I realized that he surpassed my abilities a few lessons ago, our lessons consisted of me putting pieces of music in front of him that I wanted to hear, like Beethoven and Bach, and listening to him play it.  I was able to help him figure out a note that he missed every once and a while though!  So, I can claim that while I might not have been the reason he got to that level in piano, I was the one who planted the seed that is currently sprouting into a California Redwood.

Enjoy one of my favorite songs I used to play on the piano that I taught them on our last day of lessons:

I forgot to teach them how to end the song before I recorded the video…

If anyone could name that song, please do.  When they asked me the name of the song all I could think of was the movie Big, one of my all time favorite movies, and that Tom Hanks and that old guy played it on the piano on the floor at FAO Schwartz.  They didn’t get my movie reference.

I also love the little suggestion videos that Youtube provided after you watch our little clip.  Watch out, I may be making one of those next 🙂

MIL Visit

We just had our first international visitor!  My mother-in-law, Cindy, came for a week and a half.  We kept her busy, trying to pack in as many sights, sounds, and well, smells, as we could.  It was interesting to introduce all the new things with her; to re-experience all the weird things that go on here that we have come to view as normal, that really aren’t normal at all (from a Western perspective).

Cindy’s flights were delayed/cancelled due to storms, so her total travel time was 55 hours (she beat my record of 40 hours when I came to visit Billy here last summer!)  She arrived Saturday morning around 1AM.  After a few hours of sleep, we got up to drive to Moalboal for the weekend to stay at Club Serena, where we went for my birthday a few months ago. Our plan Saturday morning was to drop off Cowrie (our dog) with our friend who rescued her and boards her when we take trips.

We then started off on our 3 hour drive to Moalboal…which then become our worst day in Cebu so far.  To make a long story short (and it was a LONG story!), we ended up with a flat tire on a mountain in the middle of literally nowhere, with a spare tire with no air and a tire wrench that didn’t fit our tires.  We were so so lucky and blessed to be rescued by a very helpful Filipino named Raul, who ironically spoke English, ironically had a friend 1 kilometer away who could fill our tire with air, and ironically had a tire wrench that fit our tires.  I say ironically, but he really was our guardian angel.  Ok, drama aside, we didn’t get any pictures of that ordeal because we were all just trying to get out of it, but here is a picture from the market:

Some native cooking with some native man’s belly.

After getting lost just one more time trying to find the resort late at night, we arrived, ate a ton of food, and crashed.  Enjoy some pictures of our favorite resort!

 

 

After the weekend was over (and thankfully after a calm trip back home), I took Cindy to the Children’s Shelter where I volunteer.  On the way, she noticed the insane telephone wire situation the city has going on.  Apparently the wires are sturdy enough to prop your ladder on when they need to be fixed!
  

Ok, pictures of kids are way cuter.

     

The next day, we took a 5:30 AM trip to Carbon Market and to see the Cathedrals and Magellan’s Cross downtown.

 

 

We also had a traditional Filipino dinner with Billy’s coworkers.

Oh, here is another unusual thing that she found, which we now see as normal…this sign was in the parking deck at Billy’s office complex:


We witnessed a lot of political activity:
 

Got her cell phone fixed after I dropped it in water:

Pampering is cheap here, so she got a new haircut, a mani/pedi, and a massage.

On Saturday morning, we got up at 4AM to take a boat to Bohol, an island next to Cebu.  I was a bit tired…

I blame my Mom’s side of the family…we all sleep like this when sitting up.

It was a long day of traveling.  Since I just posted a video of myself being tired, it is only fair that I post a sorta, not-so embarrassing picture of Billy being tired upon our arrival:

The next day we hired a driver for the day to take us around to see what Bohol is famous for.  We saw tarsier monkeys which are the world’s smallest primate, chocolate hills, their cathedral downtown, and of course, beautiful beaches:
    

Billy had taken the day off work on Monday, so when we returned from Bohol, he was able to come with me to the Shelter!  The kids had been asking about him for a while and were very excited to meet him.
  
Since I’m always trying to explain how hot it is here, here is another example: once the boy in the yellow shirt climbed off of Billy, he was confused why his shirt was soaked…it was from Billy’s sweat that had soaked through both shirts!

Billy also took Cindy to Dr. Fish…a place where you can have hundreds of little fish suck at your feet and legs.

 
I can’t stop laughing at that picture.  I hope you don’t find this embarrassing, Cindy…Billy insisted I post these!

We all had a great time!!

New things at month 3

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here, so I will jump straight to the updates.

1. We flew to Palawan, another island in the Philippines, a few weekends ago.  I will write another post about that soon.

2. I am also volunteering at a children’s shelter here.  It is called Children’s Shelter of Cebu, and you need to check out their website or find them on Facebook.  They have the cutest pictures and videos posted!  Upon entering, you would think they simply transplanted all of the happiest kids in Cebu into this shelter.  Once you spend more time there, you realize that these kids are so happy and loving because they are so well taken care of.  The shelter houses about 80 children that have been abandoned, surrendered, or orphaned.  I go there two days a week during their play time after school.  Oh man, I love that place.  Spending time with the kids there is probably my favorite part of living here.  I will post pictures later once I take my camera sometime.

3. I have been taking a language class.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  English is well spoken in Cebu (hence the call centers that brought Billy to Cebu) and we’ve gotten by fine with it.  However, I still wanted to learn the native language because the teens at one of the shelters I am working barely speak English – they understand what I’m saying for the most part but have trouble answering back.  In doing research about the language here, you can see that in the Philippines, there are about 120-170 different languages, with each area usually having a different dialect.  The language spoken here is Visayan (named for the Visayas region that we live in) and our dialect is Cebuano.  Since the language is not common outside of Cebu, there are not a lot of companies teaching it and literally no books, other than a dictionary, to learn the language from…that won’t help you much with sentence structure and grammar.

The class itself meets two days a week for two hours at a time; I am in a class with three other people.  We are following a curriculum the company designed, and being a teacher myself (especially being a special ed. teacher where I analyze how people learn and adapting lessons to fit that), being in the class really tries my patience.  I am picking it up quickly, but the classes move at a snails pace.  We aren’t given a book because they want you to keep paying for subsequent levels of classes.

The love part of the class is that the kids I am working with LOVE that I am trying out their language.  They like to study with me, help me with my homework, and quiz me on the colors, numbers, adjectives.  None of them have asked me yet how to compare which window or door is bigger or how to ask for 4 tables in a store, but I did learn how to do that when they’re ready.  I’m telling you, this curriculum is random.

4. Init ka-ayu – very hot!  It has gotten much hotter here.  We are now officially in summer and, oh wowza.  I wish I could describe the heat.  How about a mental picture (I really should’ve gotten a real picture of this).  When I was at one of the places I volunteer at, we were sitting in their living room doing an activity.  Picture two little windows, no fans, and no breeze.  I was sitting on a leather couch and when I got up, someone exclaimed, “It looks like someone dumped a glass of water on your back!”  They then pulled a fan out of the office and set it up in front of me.  I bet you’re glad that I didn’t take a picture.

5. We tried hiking this weekend.  It turned more into a 2 hour hike up a hill through many villages asking where the hiking trail supposedly was, but it was some good exercise either way.  We kept asking where the trail was, and I don’t think we found it.  Once we got off the road and were redirected to a trail, I did a lot of this falling…running shoes are not good on steep, dusty hills:

When we go into small villages outside of Cebu that aren’t used to random white people walking through, I feel like a walking museum; that I am expanding their horizons with my white skin.  It does help that we always have the most attractive getup to keep the sun away.  Good thing there is not zoom on this picture.  We got a bit sweaty…someone must’ve poured a ton of water on our backs.

6. Our stuff that we shipped from the states finally came!

Only a few things exploded in the boxes…sea salt and oatmeal.  Cowrie loved to help clean up the oatmeal.

Billy also tried putting Cowrie up onto of the boxes like he did to Gomer; she was not as afraid to try and jump off immediately!

I feel warmth and happiness inside every time I look at our stocked pantry shelves now.  What is the item that sticks out the most to you in here?

For me, it is the Hershey’s cocoa.  So many delicious possibilities can come from that little box 🙂

7. With having my Bloomington kitchen transplanted to Cebu, I have spent countless hours in there this past weekend creating yummy things for us because I’ve felt deprived for the past 4 months without my favorite things.  My most recent project: homemade yogurt!  As I’m sure you remember me complaining about the lack of Greek yogurt and of any healthy yogurt options here, I finally took it upon myself to figure something out.  I used this recipe in my Le Creuset (if you don’t have one of these babies, I would suggest you go to the store right now and get one…Chris and Rachel, thank you so much for this amazing wedding present!).  It will take a little tweaking since I used skim milk which made it too thin.

Here it is with some homemade granola and mango.

Don’t worry, I won’t be talking about growing dreadlocks in my next blog post 🙂

This weekend I also made chocolate chip pancakes with gluten free flour, rotisserie chickens (I was able to fit two little chickens in my crock pot with this recipe – since there aren’t any hormones added to chickens here, they are tiny), chicken broth, and gluten free pizzas.  I have more recipes on the docket today.  Can you tell I love having my kitchen back?!?!?!

Now that my beloved kitchen appliances are here, we have to match up the wattage of everything to these adapters so we don’t blow out the appliances that are made to work in the U.S.:

That little blue box moves from the kitchen (coffee maker and currently mini food processor) to the bathroom (electric toothbrush) every few days.  You don’t have to use it on appliances you purchase here so our rice cooker can go directly into the outlet.  I am torn though; our regular food processor didn’t have the wattage listed so when I called Kitchenaid, they said that I shouldn’t try to use it because it will short circuit even with an adapter.  Anyone have any experience with taking those puppies abroad??  I am dying to make some hummus.

Ok, sorry, you didn’t read this blog to hear about food.  You read it to learn about our life in the Philippines.  Back to reality.

8. An ant bit me on the lip the other day.  It was gross once I realized what was going on.  We have ants in our car (any suggestions how to get rid of those??) and they were crawling on an apple I left on the seat while I was volunteering.  When I came back, the ant must’ve felt threatened by my impending teeth and decided to defend itself.  Minimal swelling, just a lot of confusion while driving.

Stay tuned for a post on Palawan!  Here is a preview:

I know, it’s ok to be jealous 🙂

 

Swimming with whale sharks in Oslob, Cebu

One of the must-do activities in Cebu is swimming with whale sharks.  What is a whale shark, you ask?

Here is some helpful information from National Geographic:

As the largest fish in the sea, reaching lengths of 40 feet (12 meters) or more, whale sharks have an enormous menu from which to choose. Fortunately for most sea-dwellers—and us!—their favorite meal is plankton. They scoop these tiny plants and animals up, along with any small fish that happen to be around, with their colossal gaping mouths while swimming close to the water’s surface.

We traveled to Oslob in Cebu island two weekends ago to go swimming with these sharks in hopes that they were content with just eating the plankton.  We stayed the night at a town close to Oslob so we could get there around 7AM on Sunday morning.  Upon arrival, they put you through orientation of the whale sharks which included a threat of 4 months in prison and a fine if you touch the whale sharks.  I was elbowing Billy at this point.

They then take you out on a 4-passenger bangka boat and attach the boat to a line of other boats:

They hand you a snorkel and tell you to get in and wait for the whale sharks to come over.

A man in a smaller boat then paddles around with bait to get the sharks to come near you/

Hey, guess what.  I didn’t use zoom on that picture.

You get to sort of chase them around and view them as close as you choose.
  

Sorry my eyes were closed…being so close to the equator makes the sun a bit brighter.  Or maybe avoiding eye contact with the sharks helped me convince myself that his open mouth in this following picture was not meant for me.

Upon about 5 minutes of inspection via snorkel, I climbed back into the boat to take some pictures of the beautiful shoreline (translation: got the heck out of the water once a whale shark swam fast and close to get past us).  

I mean, I was really thinking of you all at that moment, wanting the capture the entire experience for my wonderful readers.

We survived!!

Before heading home, we drove up to a baranguay (village) to see their vegetable market.  Check out the view!

Part of the vegetable market:

We bought (and kept going back to buy more) this amazing snack called banana-que (pronounced banana-q, like bar-b-q).  It is a saba banana, comparable to plantains, that is coated in sugar and grilled.  Mmmm..

Oh, let me educate you with another new favorite dessert: halo-halo.  Halo-halo is shaved ice, fresh fruit, fruit preserves in the shape of jelly beans, and regular beans topped with ice cream.

It is not pronounced halo-halo like what an angel wears; the “a” makes the ahh sound.  Try saying it.  I bet you didn’t know you’d be learning Cebuano!

Moalboal – a weekend trip for my birthday

Two weekends ago Billy planned a overnight trip for my birthday.  We traveled south in the island of Cebu to an area called Moalboal and stayed in a little boutique resort called Club Serena.  It was so nice to get away from the hustle of city life and breathe fresh air for a little bit!

Before we arrived at the resort, we drove around the southern perimeter of the island to see what the rest of the island looked like.  I wanted to include a picture of our car so you could see the tinted windows that I mentioned before:

Pictures from the drive:

This was actually the first time we’ve really seen a beach since we’ve moved here.  We joked (and often hear other expats joking) that when people hear we are living in the Philippines, this is what they imagine our life to be like.  I wish I could breathe in fresh air like this everyday!

Local traffic – far more peaceful than traffic in Cebu City.

The resort that we stayed at, Club Serena, was incredible.  It was very quaint, right on the ocean, and extremely peaceful.  The resort has about 12 small cottages that are each uniquely designed based on how big of a room you want.  Our room was Casita II:

We arrived late Saturday afternoon and hung around the resort for the evening.

This was their octagon bar and pool which overlooks the ocean.
 

And some local wildlife hung out with us throughout the weekend.  Check out that white dog…his legs are so short for his body that he almost looks like a cartoon character!

On Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast on the beach.

For my birthday breakfast, I had mango pancakes.  They do not look half as good as they tasted!  I will seriously eat mango in anything.

Mmmm I LOVE the mangoes here.  I put them in my salads at home, will order anything off the menu that has mango in it, and would eat 2+ a day if I could buy enough that wouldn’t ripen too quickly.  This is sounding like Billy’s obsession with pineapple…

As we ate breakfast, we watched this scuba diving ship come and go.  Thankfully it was not on the agenda to go scuba diving.  Billy was very kind to not try and surprise me with that, as I had a rough experience scuba diving on our honeymoon and plan to never do it again!

We each explored the ocean in our own ways: Billy went snorkeling for a little while.

And I walked out into the ocean, walked back, and then sat by the pool and had a mango margarita.  It is perfectly acceptable to drink before noon, on vacation, on your birthday.  Don’t judge.  You would drink before noon too if you had a mango margarita.
 

We then rented and shared a motorbike to explore downtown.  Billy became a pro pretty quickly.

I’m not quite sure why the helmets had that face guard.  It did become useful when Billy was learning how to brake and shift gears…it stopped me from headbutting the back of his helmet each time with my face.  Instead I just headbutted him with my mouthpiece.

A view from the pier downtown:

Our goal with the motorbike was to find a restaurant to eat lunch at and then go see the Kawasan waterfalls.  Since we didn’t find the restaurant we had in mind right away, Billy decided to take us to the waterfall.

Now, I am a very patient person.  But if there is one thing you need to know about the limit of my patience, it is that my patience stops when I go too long without any food in my stomach.  For all my friends and family that have been affected by this:

We hiked to the waterfalls and Billy took these pictures.  With it being around 3PM and I hadn’t eaten anything since the two pancakes (and does the margarita count?) all day, I was in full shut-down mode at that point.
  
Looking back at the pictures, I can see that it really was a beautiful spot.  I was just not in the right stage of my life to enjoy it.

After the waterfall, we found the restaurant and then found that it was not serving food because the whole island was in a blackout!  So Billy quickly drove us to a gas station and we both at two ice creams for lunch (this gas station was running on a generator).

Such a relief!  Things were looking up after that ice cream.  We then headed back to the resort, packed up our things, and headed home.

Thumbs up to my wonderful hubby who planned such a great birthday trip!

Happy Valentines Day!

I have always loved Valentines Day.  Not the mushy, I expect expensive jewelry side of it, but the I work with kids and I get to celebrate a fun happy holiday with them side.  I just love all holidays and celebrations, so for me, it is just another reason to celebrate!

My plan was to make Billy some gluten-free pancakes when he got up for breakfast.  Since we still don’t have our shipped items yet, I had to give up my go-to healthy gluten free pancake recipe that we LOVE and buy a boxed gluten free mix instead.  It was not yummy, so we tried many different combinations of adding cinnamon, chocolate chips, sugar, and pineapple to it.  Pineapple and cinnamon have conflicting tastes.  I do not suggest you try it.  Things also went downhill when I used this cheap pan that we bought which I had to spray with Pam before every pancake.  This hurts me inside to share this with you.  I take pride in my baking!

We even tried baking the pancakes in the oven.  Turning on the oven, with no A/C and a full day of heat by 11AM, signals desperation on my part.  Still looking weird…

If you are wondering what those round brown things are, they are the yummy chocolate chips they sell here.

Every time I see or talk about these chocolate buttons, I think of the gingerbread man from Shrek: “No, not the buttons!  Not my gumdrop buttons!”  Please, enjoy.  We watched it this morning already.

Cowrie was also on standby for scraps.  We don’t give her table scraps anymore (as in we only tried once) because she goes CRAZY for them once she gets fed.  She then feels entitled to any food that you ever eat and then she barks at you and runs around the house, barking.  There is no calming her down either…she’ll just keep barking until she gets distracted.  Not a habit I’d like to indulge her in again.  This is the look of an insanely food-motivated dog:

Thankfully Billy will eat almost any of my baking failures as long as there is a ton of chocolate in it, so the Valentines pancake mishap was still appreciated.

One big milestone of V-day was to drive our new car!  We got a 2000 Honda City.  When you get a car here, you need to have extremely tinted windows because we’ve been told that cops like to pull foreigners over to come up with silly things to charge you tickets for.  The way to get out of it is to pay them off (with only like $5 US).  The best alternative is just to you know, make yourself invisible with tinted windows.

Let me tell you, driving here is kinda insane.  You have got to be on your A-game at all times.  It is like sitting in rush hour traffic at all times of the day…with only about 1 traffic light on your commute.  Now imagine throwing all traffic rules out the window…with hundreds of mopeds and pedestrians that are weaving in between every car!  You have to make left turns across packed intersections (again, no traffic lights!), avoid cars taking up two lanes, and forget being courteous and letting anyone into your lane because you will not get anywhere.  I got comfortable with my horn and hypersensitive senses (is that a phrase?) really quickly.  However, with this comes a HUGE sense of relief that we finally have a car.  I finally feel safe with not having to worry about what kind of taxi driver I will get, making sure that they set the meter as to not rip us off, and convincing them that yes, your car can make it up our hill if you just try.  I am also looking forward to the freedom of (hopefully) less-stressful grocery shopping!

Back to Valentines – Billy had to work this evening, so we’ll get to DRIVE!! to our Valentines dinner tomorrow night.

These pretty feet were my dates for the evening.  Well, I guess the girls attached to the feet were my dates for the evening.  Due to confidentiality requested by the social workers I cannot post pictures of faces.

Highlight of my Valentines Day?  Painting valentines cards and writing sweet notes to some beautiful girls during a group therapy session at the center I’ve been volunteering at.

My Valentines Day is coming to an end, but yours is just starting!  Happy Valentines Day, everyone!!