Shopping, Construction and School lunch, oh my!

It's Sunday here, which makes it a full week since we left home. It's interesting here...everyone is very polite, and whenever I go shopping or even say hello to the guards, it's always "hello sir." The school organized a trip to Clark (where Dr. Long used to live.. it's roughly an hour drive from Binictican, our housing area), and I bought several things for our house. The malls here are amazing. I was informed by someone that out of the ten biggest malls in the world, 6 of them reside in the Philippines. They employ a huge number of people in every store, making it impossible to go down any aisle without someone there to offer you help should you need it. The most notable purchases were a microwave and a big rubbermaid garbage bin with a lock top so the monkeys don't get in and scatter our trash all over the yard. I got some smaller things as well, duct tape (to seal up the gaps where our wall unit AC's are installed), and some Combat to deter any creepy crawlies from becoming our roommates.

The other night I woke up in the middle of the night startled by the three loud "THWACK!" noises coming from the kitchen. Melissa crawled into bed a moment later informing me that she had just killed the biggest roach she'd ever seen. The next morning I woke up to find a cockroach a good 3 inches long and 1.5 across. Needless to say, I spread the combat as soon as I got home with it.. we haven't seen any crawlies since. Good riddance.

We still need a lot of things to really feel at home.. but we're managing. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese would be at the top of Melissa's list, while I'm jonesing for the internet so I can skype with everyone and play some games with my friends back home. However it looks like the soonest we'll be able to get an internet connection from our house will be about 2 weeks (rough estimate)... so we won't be Skyping anytime soon unless we get to school early or stay way late.. the thirteen hour time difference makes things difficult. A TV and DVD player are also on our list.. but then we'd also need some DVD's. Getting settled in has been a little expensive, but it's all expected. We're wondering about a used car or scooter so we can do a little traveling on our own without relying on others. It's sort of nice to have to rely on others for rides because we're forced to be social.

Melissa came down with a tummy bug, so I went to Clark without her... I came back 7 hours later with some medicine for her. They sell presciption medicine in little doses, like the trial packs back home. A couple of doses of two different meds ran me about 2 dollars US. Not a bad deal at all. She's feeling better now, a little tired, but otherwise good. While I was gone she wasted no time in watching the 6 hour Pride and Predjudice movie on our laptop in bed. Unfortunately that's one of only 3 movies we brought.

We have open house wednesday evening, and we're getting excited to meet our students and their families.. there's ongoing construction at our school, they're building a new wing that's 3 floors... it's been a little delayed and won't be opening for another 3 weeks or more, so we're temporarily teaching from the old classrooms. It makes it hard to make our classroom a 'home' for our students, knowing that any decorations will be taken down in just a few short weeks, but it will be wonderful once the new classrooms are completed. As it stands, our rooms have a restroom and sink in the class, which is a big step up from last year.

Another surprising twist.. our school has a chef. School lunches are AMAZING. On friday we had tuna steaks with a terriaki sauce, white rice, FRESH steamed vegetables, and a lipton iced tea. We found out a lot of teachers eat school lunch everyday, and often times buy two lunches each, taking one home in a to-go box to have for dinner. We might very well hop on that bandwagon. They are -that- good. Definitely beats the sloppy joes back home.

More to come soon, please write us at melissaquattlebaum@gmail.com with all of your updates. We miss all of you and look forward to hearing from you. -Jordon and Melissa

PS. In Honduras a lot of the workers called me Harry Potter... Philippinos on the other hand, refer to me as spider man. Personally, I think I'm moving up in the world.