Trip to Lukang

During my orientation, I met another Fulbright person Nicole. She's a pretty nice hippie rockclimber. Currently, her friend Eric is staying with her on vacation. They're both very much in culture shock here, so I decided to play tour guide. I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to get around as well as I am. I'll post later about that. Anyway, last weekend, I took them with me to visit the hometown. We went to Lukang Beach on Saturday with Ate Liza and Kuya Ojit and fam. I also got a chance to test out my underwater camera case. fun times, except my battery ran out pretty early so I only got a few pictures. Later on I'll post some pics that Nicole took.


the port at Bayview. Ate Liza got the company boat to drop us off at Lukang, a private beach right near the power plant (scary just a little? )


Lukas at the ferry


deboating


gotta make sure we don't get any cooked lobsters

cave












corals! pardon for the blurriness. I forgot to set the "underwater" feature

monsooooooon

So, I just spent three hours on the bus going from my fortress of solitude to Makati riding next to a leery sketchy guy. He kept trying to make conversation but i was not having it. I was supposed to have a meeting at 9am but i had to cancel since I didn't even get to Quezon City (about an hour away from Makati) till 9am. What's more is that it's been raining nonstop since 5am this morning. Commuting in this rain is not pretty. I ended up riding the tricycle to the mall parking lot but then still walking about 6 blocks in the rain to get to the bus stop.

Let's backtrack a bit...

here's a few shots of my travel here and my first few days in the 'pines.


my ancient Boeing757 with a craptastic projector and even better service.


Fuji-chan came along for the ride with me. I think I'll start a mini-blog series of our adventures.


After more than 24 hours of travel time, here I am waiting for my baggage to arrive. Since I checked in so early, my bags were the absolute last out.

Our cab ride from the airport.

sounds good except for the last one... drives with care my ass!

For the first three days, I stayed at BSA Sutes on the 21st floor.

here's the bedroom..


living area


kitchenette

Apparently I had a nice posh room. The other fulbrighter's room was half the size of mine.


here's my smoggy view There was also a nice little pool on the roof with a view of the smoggy sky, but I didn't get a chance to take pictures.


This is the fulbright PAEF building. It's pretty snazzy.

just met my "roommate"

This morning, the water was still being funky. I turn on the faucet and it spurts. I had to take another bucket shower. While I was doing so, I caught a 6-legged peeping tom. One of those supersized post-apocalyptic-nuclear-holocaust-surviving 2 inch roaches. After screaming bloody murder for a few seconds, I realized that there was no help to be found. I managed to maim the bugger with a toilet bowl brush. Then I continued my bucketshower.

Life in the Suck-Lane

I've been here exactly one week, and it's just dawning on me how spoiled I have been. I've had a rough adjustment to my life here, despite the fact that I'm familiar with more here than most of the other fulbright people. In my haste and greed, I had picked housing that was way too far to commute. Since there was already a down payment on the house, I can't leave until the end of January. Although the house itself is quite lovely, I have a difficult commute and it is isolated from everything and everyone I know. After I get off work, I hesitate on doing anything else because I don't want to travel that far at night. It takes about an hour to get to Makati, and since the fulbright office is there, I'll be suffering through it.

After my meeting at the shelter I work with, I took a jeep ride half an hour to my neighborhood. I think I have about a coat of grime on my face and have shortened my lifespan about a year because of all the smog. Not to mention the jeepney driver was insane. Oh, and it helped that I had to grab the overhead bar on the jeep and feel my armfat jiggle for half an hour. As much as I complain though, I thank my stars that I can have alternative means to get to work. Not that many people can even afford my daily commute.

Oh, did I mention that though I am thankful to have water, it was not cooperating this morning. I held off on my morning coffee because black particles were floating around in my mug. I showered with a bucket because the shower was off an on.

I guess I'll end this post now, as I'm a bit tired and nauseated from the ride.