Please don't flip out...

The Philippines is a great place to live and the Filipinos are an amazing people. As a rule they are very polite and friendly. When we pass people on the street they slightly bow their heads and say 'hello ma'am/sir.' We respond similarly and it's quite nice.

We live in Binictican in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Binictican is up on a mountain and it is where the American armed forces resided when they were stationed here. The housing is all similar and fairly nice. Some nicer than others but that's to be expected. The people of Binictican would be considered upper class (including us) whereas at the bottom of the mountain, down by the bay (off-base) is Olongapo. Olongapo is a third-world city. Many of the workers in Binictican live in Olongapo.

The workers are the people building an addition to the school, cleaning ladies, drivers, gardeners, etc. They come and go from Olongapo to Binictican as their jobs require. The average wage per day is 350 pisos...~$5. Most of them are hard working, trustworthy individuals. Some, however, are desperate. Some have starving families due to the rise in grain prices and other factors. Theft is not altogether uncommon.

At first we thought we just misplaced our things...as it turns out someone broke the lock on our downstairs sliding door and stole them. It's more of an inconvenience than anything else. They took our camera, my American cell phone, my travel bag which contained my passport and driver's license, Jordon's wallet (which had his driver's license, around $200 american, and a family heirloom opal that he was going to have made into a necklace for me.)

As soon as we realized what happened we let the school know and they leapt into action. The maintenence man went over and put bars in our windows and the sliding door so they couldn't open and changed our locks. They are also going to put bars on our windows on the outside as well.

Inspectors came by, took pictures, and insurance is going to reimburse us for the camera and phone. So that's nice.

We cancelled our credit card and are working on getting me a new passport.

We're kind of poor until we get our paycheck so that's a little frustrating. We went to a large mall in San Fernando with the intention of purchasing a new camera only to discover we didn't have the money for it.

On another note, that mall was insane. It was huge and there were thousands of people in it. And it was exceedingly loud. The shops are tiny and specialized...there was one that only sold CD-Rs... And each little shop has at least as many salespeople walking around as customers.

Anyway, we're getting by until we get paid and we're doing fine. We're really enjoying our coworkers. Different groups of them have invited us to do something every day this weekend.

The dynamics of the school social network is interesting. Nobody really seems to know where we fit in. At lunch we sit with the Filipinos (though they don't really invite us to do stuff.) Then there are the married expats and the single expats. We have been trying to get together with the singles but it has yet to occur. We keep getting invited to spend time with the couples. Which is nice, they're all really great...but they're all at least 15 years older than us. The singles are younger and live about 20 minutes away, walking. We're hoping to play wii with them tonight. We'll let you know how that goes.

Once we get a TV we'd like to invite singles and Filipinos over to play and hang out...one of our coworkers that we'd really like to become friends with is Bam. She's from Manila and really fun. She's a city girl so the same things that we're getting used to (monkeys, bugs etc...) she's also coming to terms with. Anyway, we share similar senses of humor. But we think we need to find someone else so we're not just courting this single girl. It makes me feel creepy...like the Nobles...but not...yuck....pretend I didn't say that.

Anyway, that's one thing we are working on now...making friends.

Also, we finally saw the monkeys! And they were terrifying. I first saw one across a field and of course smiled, pointed, and squeeked in delight. It didn't like that. It stared and behind us we heard scary monkey noises. We quickly moved along without turning back.

The next day we spotted some across the street. There was a whole family, 6 of them. We were so in awe that we didn't mention their presence to the men walking on that side of the street, much to their dismay. One of the larger monkeys lunged out and hissed at them showing its teeth. The men shrank back, obviously terrified. Then they slowly curved out past them to safety. It was pretty scary. I thought there was going to be a rumble. I had my switchblade, er, nalgene ready to use if need be. We told them to 'sit on it' and hurried to school. The Fonz would have been proud.

That's about it. We're at school now to plan for our week. It's a shortened week because today is a holiday Ninoy Aquino Day. And next monday is National Heroes Day so we're off as well. Pretty nice.

We love you all. Thanks for your emails...they make us happy and keep us from getting too homesick.

Until next time,

The Quattlebaums