Life in the Philippines

Those of you who know me personally know I travel a lot. Today I happen to be sitting in the Dallas Fort Worth airport. About 5 years ago I crossed DFW off my list of places to pass through. DFW and Atlanta airports are about the only two I seriously work to avoid. Since it had been 5 years since I flew through here, I thought I would give it another chance. I landed last night. At 9 PM it was 102 degrees and ground services are in the parking garage where it was probably 110 degrees. I can tolerate that, I adapt to about anything you throw my way.

Traveling so much I’ve gotten pretty good at check in, clear security, get to the gate and just camp out until time. I usually arrive 2 hours early because I can sit at the airport just like I can sit in a hotel room. So this morning I started out from the hotel. I had boarding pass in hand but when coming to DFW just knowing your airline is not enough. Apparantly some of them are split between terminals and my boarding pass didnt say what terminal. So that’s strike one in my book. If an airline is split between terminals, they should at least tell you which terminal to check in. Even if you have to take a train to your gate, knowing where to be dropped off would be nice. I found where to be though, waited in line and got checked in. I wont comment about the attitudes of the workers of the airline I am on because I personally would not want thier job, but it wasn’t a banner morning for customer service for sure.

So I make it to my gate and prepare to wait. On the plus side, there was a Dunkin Donuts so I have coffee. On the downside, there are a couple of flies who just dont want to leave me alone. Annoying but I’ll survive. I normally find a seat and wait till close to boarding time before I get up again. I dont see the need to be roaming around. At any other airport, if anything important is happening they’ll tell you. Some folks don’t take that approach though and they are up and down watching the screen constantly.  Today I am thankful for those people. A lady was watching the screen and noticed our destination was no longer listed.  She had a few conversations with her travel compantion, and checked more monitors and decided to leave the gate.  I’m thinking hmmm I remember why I no longer travel through DFW.  Five years ago I had a meeting to go too. I sat in the DFW airport waiting and waiting for them to load my flight.  I finally got up when it was almost time to depart and asked when they were going to board and they said “oh it moved to another gate”. I missed that flight, and my meeting.  I thought it was because the airport was under construction.  This morning’s event tells me that wasn’t the case.

So here I sit, at the new gate, thanks to the lady who watched the monitor constantly. I cant decide if the correct approach is to just show up at the last minute so you only have to go to one gate….or be paranoid about the possible gate changes and watch the monitor more carefully. I know that if you come in more than an hour before boarding time on this flight, you may be sitting at the wrong gate and even though boarding is 20 min from now they still have not announced a gate change.

For me, the moral of the story is Cross DFW back off the travel thru list! 

Some of the most beautiful buildings in the Philippines are the churches. Coming from a small southern Baptist area, seeing the structures of the buildings here is amazing. I have to admit it troubles me to see such gorgeous buildings particularly when they stand in the middle of a community where the children are living in the street, or the parents are struggling to feed their kid or houses are formed from whatever can be found. I know it is not my place to judge and I try to bite my tongue over the issue but it is tough. But even with that said I still see the places of worship here to be such beautiful facilities and perhaps having such a nice place to worship is comforting. I hope to visit some of them and learn the history of the church. I know many have been here for years and years and there are stories of their roles during the wars. I need to learn something positive about them so I can move away from my opinion about spending money to the extremes on buildings instead of food and shelter for those who have none.

During a recent trip to Korea, I looked around at some of the different knick knacks they market to tourist.  I was looking for something for a teen boy and the totem poles caught my eye.  The sales lady explained to me they were Village Guardians, and they ward off evil.  I thought these would be something he would like so I bought them, and told him what they were for. His comment?  “Cool, if I put them in my room will they keep out the people I dont want in?”

 I think next time I will think about my souvenier choice a bit more!

It was a strange thing to see a roadside side in the middle of the Philippines which said Mexico 500 Meters. What country are we in again?

God Bless America,

Land that I love.

Stand beside her, and guide her

Thru the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,