Life in the Philippines

On the way to Wawa Dam we saw a number of businesses working with bamboo. These shops had harvested and appeared to be preparing to transport the bamboo to other locations.  Bamboo can be used for many things, such a furniture, crafts, and even food when the shoots are harvested.  You can see examples of bamboo crafts online at this site. I never thought about the variations in size of bamboo or what all it was used for until arriving here.  Recently on a trip to Subic Bay we bought a bamboo rain maker stick. Of course here you certainly do not need to do anything to encourange the rain this time of year!  This photo shows the large bundles of bamboo being prepared for transport.

Wawa Dam is located in Rizal Province and is about an hours drive from where we live (depending on the time of day you travel of course!).  The Dam was built in 1909 by the Americans as a Reservoir. It sits in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains.  Wawa Dam is a beautiful nature trail area which lets you get away from the polluted air of the city and takes you back to the basics of life. The beauty of the waterfalls, caves, huge boulders resting in the river, and chickens walking on the same trails is breathtaking and relaxing.  We parked at the entrance and walked  to the area where the watch tower was. We’ve seen pictures on the web of people diving from it but it is current said to not be safe structually.  But then, there isn’t much in the way of safety considerations while hiking up a nature trail with cliff like edges over a flowing river and waterfall. It rained as we were driving so the trails were wet and slippery but we managed to get through them without any of us taking a plunge in the mud or below to the river. This is definitely a place I’d like to return to just to spend more peaceful moments with nature.

Here in the real world
Cowboys dont cry, and heroes dont die
Good always wins, again and again
Love is a sweet dream that always comes true
Oh, if life were like the movies, I’d never be blue

 Ok so it’s an Alan Jackson song and the rest of it talks about hearts being broken.  That’s definitely not what this post is about but I love the song and think of it when ever I do the “back to the real world” adjustment.  It has been a hustle and bustle of a summer. The kids and I went to the states. We visited Florida and family in Georgia and I worked in San Diego for about 10 days. All total I drove 34 hours, and spent more than 70 hours on airplanes and in airports.  Frankly I dont care to see a plane for a  while but we know that’s not how my life works! On the way back, Anthony and Kayla came to visit with us so we spent more hours on the road seeing the Philippines.  Now you can see why there have been no Life In the Philippines updates lately.  I would update you about the trip, Ariel’s birthday, Ethan’s birthday, and all the neat things we’ve done here but Sky Broadband cable has decided it does not like me so I will be lucky to get this update posted. I plan to do more updates over the next few days. I have over 800 new pictures to choose from ranging from the Filipino Taho guy, eating Balut, and Wawa Dam to Correigidor Island and Tagaytay and the Taal Volcano.  More to come if Sky Broadband decides to cooperate!

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.