Leaving Angeles City

After a restful stay in Angeles City it's time to leave. I'm not ready to leave though since Molly and I are enjoying our beach house stay at John McCully's. I'm most sad to leave the two helpers of the house, Ging and her husband Vic. They are so incredibly nice to us...doing our laundry, always picking us up in the middle of the night wherever we may be, and giving us chocolate! They are so sweet I will miss them!

Yesterday was cool too because we got to be on Ron's radio show. (Ron was the guy who was a jazz professor in Louisiana but decided to retire in the Philippines.) I got to talk about the traditional Filapino music I've been seeing...I said my favorite was the song and dance of the bamboo sticks. I'll show you all later how to dance it. My sister Jaime, new national award radio show person, should be proud!

Later in the morning Ron was also cool enough to give me a free improvisation lesson! I learned a few new tricks!

Bahay Hay school is Rotary's project of that district and we got to visit that as well. It is a school for street children. So basically they rescue these children off the street, get them clean of drugs and give them a free education. It was really cool. The most impressive thing was that all the kids' cubby spaces were incredibly tiddy. Apparently it's always like that even if people aren't coming over!

So, off to another new city....we here it's actually Paradise there.

See you soon.

Recipee for Filapino driving

traffic jams
people pounding on your car
going 90 miles an hour and then immediately slam on the breaks
tricyles and jeep-neys
curvy thin roads
exhaust
stick shift
no suspension

Now Mix everything up. Try sitting in the vehicle for four hours like that. Can you say Dramamine?

Clark....the city, not the county in Wisconsin

So now we're in Clark which is a city also built by Americans; you can actually tell too because they have wider roads and use stop signs and stop lights...but it's rare if you ever see someone stop for a stop sign.

Molly and I are staying with John who is retired and from California. His daughter Allison is here visiting from California right now with her two adopted children from India.

In Clark our main purpose is to attend the huge Rotary convention and give a presentation and performance...that's tonight. Tomorrow there are more talks and things.

This morning though we had free so we went to our host mom's exercise class where we sweated out probably 48 pounds, and then we went to the dirty stinky market. It makes me quite concerned for food poisening!!

We then went to an orphanage...humbling experience. All the kids were so dirty and ragged. I felt to spoiled and greedy. At the market earlier we had gotten some cheap toys to hand out to the children and all the kids were so thankful and didn't ask for a different color or something else...just very thankful. Also the kids kept asking us for blessings....like as if we were some saint to them. Actually Allison brought two huge boxes from the states full of pencils and paper, chalk, clothes, and other goodies.

It was cool.

Bagio like Pan Bagio bread....except not at all Italian

So, Bagio was interesting. It felt like Wisconsin in the summer because it's up in the mountains and cooler...like only 90 degrees. My host family though was very intense...always giving me so much stuff! After a while I just said no, even though you feel bad.

So Bagio was actually built by Americans as a get away city from the heat. Now it's a get away city for tourists and other Philipino people including the president.

Here are some highlights of Bagio:

yummy organic restaurant
Philippine Treasures where we buy cool jewlry and workers make things for Macy's
Texas Instruments tour....we had to wear booties
MOOG...makes airplane parts
running track
traditional dancing...also Belly dancing
seeing people weave fabric by hand!

My favorite was Tam-Awan village where we got to see where the natives lived. They had cute dirty huts built on stilts with awesome paths and free swinging bridges.

Easter was filled with egg hunting for the host family's grand children.....

also we ate some pretty good food...pizza, halo-halo, mangos, and my favorite....RICE!!!

Laoag...I still can't pronounce it

So on Sunday night we were picked up and taken two hours north to visit the city of Laoag and their Rotary club meeting. The people are really funny there, and get really drunk, and sing way too much kareoke. In fact this whole country is addicted to bad kareoke....and Beyonce! What is up with that? Why? There's also a funny guy from Vigan who drives us around in his vintage volkswagon Beatle van but he'll only play the Beetles in the car.

Anyway, today the Laoag people took us to the very tip of the province on the coast to Pagudpud. This is definitely the most beautiful beach I've ever been too. The sand was so white and smooth and the water was so blue and cool! I got a good tan and decided to take a nap. Yup, rough day....lots of torture.

Now we're back in Vigan preparing to leave for tomorrow morning. SAD! I like this city!

Hope you're all doing great!

Vigan is different then Vegen

Vigan here has been awesome, definitely my favorite place so far! My host family is great too...eating nice food like salad and mangos and brownies!

While here we got to go on a carriage tour around the city and see some history. Way way WAY back in the 1600s the Spanish had claimed the land so there's many old Spanish buildings which add a lot of charcter to the place. There's even a law that every place downtown has to be kept old looking, you cannot add anything new.

The nightlife here is great here too...more my cup of tea literally. It's quieter and people tend to go out for a piece of cake and a beer, wine, coffee or tea....kind of European. The only bad thing is that when you walk through the downtown at night cockroches come out of the sewers and crawl everywhere....you gotta watch where you step!

Food and good don't rhyme even though they look like they should

I'm learning a lot about food here....OBVIOUSLY.

.....I cannot spell out all the foods but I can describe some:

YUMMY:
milkfish..Philipino delicacy
sweet rice in banana leaves
halo halo....ubo ice cream with gelatin squares and tapioca pearls, mix it up
choco drink....pure cocoa made into a drink
coconut dessert


Non Yummy:
rice...too bland
bitter melon....too damn bitter
any meat!!!

Adding to it later as I'm off to a Rotarian meeting!