Thanksgiving in Manila

Thanksgiving turned out to be kind of awesome. We had a condo full of guests that included dear friends as well as people I just met that evening.  Sure I missed my family, turkey, pumpkin pie, celebrating my parents anniversary, and our sibling tradition of Black Friday hiking, but this Thanksgiving was full of laughter and happy memories too. Our adventure here has been full of so many ups and downs, and this is one of the greatest ups. 

I'm thankful we've made it this far (minus one appendix) and that we've experienced the joys and challenges together. I'm thankful I have friends who are like family. I'm thankful that my family is healthy and will be here soon. I'm thankful that this year has shaped my goals and changed my perspective. 

I'm also thankful for construction paper crafts, chocolate mousse pie, and the Hobbit House. I hope you had a lovely holiday as well. 

Share your story

Story Corps is one of my favorite broadcasts on public radio. It's an oral history project that is made up of interviews of people sharing stories with their loved ones, often talking about important issues that had been left unsaid. My brother and mom recorded a Story Corps conversation when one of the mobile units was in their area, and I love that my family's voices have been captured in that moment. I have a CD of that conversation and I imagine it will bring me comfort years from now, when I am missing my mom's voice, or yes, even Roy's. Story Corps is promoting the day after Thanksgiving as the National Day of Listening, and encouraging people to set aside an hour and record a conversation with someone important to them. For all of you who are lucky enough to spend this holiday with your family, I hope you have a chance to do this. For those of you looking for a thoughtful Christmas present, I'd like to add that their compilation of stories, Listening is an Act of Love, is one of my favorite books. (Even though it made me feel lots of feelings and many tears were shed...but they were happy tears) 

Thanksgiving in Manila won't be the same, but we'll celebrate nonetheless. There's been talk of a craft hour where we make those fancy Indian and Pilgrim costumes from elementary school. Now, I just need to find a  paper bag large enough for me to fashion into a Native American vest with lots of pretty fringe. 

Andy is living my dream

This guy is pretty much my hero. He is on an around the world journey that has taken him to 36 countries in 38 months. He's immersed himself in communities by working, teaching, and volunteering in the places he visits, and in doing so, has truly learned what it means to be a citizen of the world. I find myself lost in his blog entries and photographs, even his tweets are fascinting, and I usually think tweeting is stupid. Though I can't set off on my own round-the-world journey yet, (The Man aka Uncle Sam wants his student loan money back), I can live vicariously through Andy, and daydream about whatever travel adventures are next on my horizon. So, check out the blog, though I promise it will make you want to jump out of your cubicle and book lots of plane tickets you can't afford. At the very least, it will make you look out the window and wonder what else is out there. 

Here's a sampling of some of his adventures:

-teaching English classes in a rural Kazakhstan village

-organizing and raising funds to take 10 local Tanzanian children (current and former street kids) on a hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro

-searching for orangutans while living in the jungles of Borneo

-living like a monk in a Buddhist temple in South Korea

-working at a gourmet cupcake factory in Hong Kong (obvi, i love this one)

Go forth, my friends, and step outside of your comfort zone. 

http://noboundaries.org/

Updates from the field

We are seven days in, feeling happy about what we have learned and the amazing people we have met. I didn't know I was interested in community health financing or microfinance until now! More thoughts on this later, but for now, some tidbits from the past few days.

1. There is a caged bird outside of our hotel room. He says good morning at 5 am, can bark like a dog, meow like a cat, and whistle at you like he's hitting on you. I don't usually want to hurt animals but this one is really asking for it. 

2. Aside from the bird, we are also dealing with some cockroaches, ants, and lizards. In our hotel room. I wouldn't be so irritated if we weren't paying beaucoup amounts of pesos for this place. 

3. Dumaguete was a lovely surprise, I sort of wish I lived there instead of Manila. We met an amazing family, the mom is a physician/community health financing pioneer in the area and has really devoted her life to helping the poor access health services. I was just really inspired by her enthusiasm, dedication, and wisdom. Her daughter is an attorney and started a program to offer HIV/AIDS education for prostitutes. We actually went with her to meet a young lady she has worked with, and it was a really startling experience. (First prostitute I've met in Asia, but Julie's second....you can ask her about that if you want). The young lady looked about 15, was pregnant with her second child, and had psychological challenges that resulted from being abused as a child. It was heartbreaking to see first hand what some people do to survive and what opportunities are lost for a child who is just trying to help her family. 

4. As always, we are still eating well here in the Philippines. The in-laws of our boss at WHO own a Japanese restaurant here in Bacolod so we hit up Inaka last night for some miso soup and sushi. It doesn't beat my favorite, Fins, but was still delicious and a nice break from our usual Filipino fare. And tonight we found an amazing cafe where I had a crabcake and mango salad, we never eat salad here so I gobbled down every vegetable on that plate.  But the main event was dessert, an inside out profiterole and mango cheese ice cream. Yes, you read that correctly, mango cheese! It's delicious, for serious. 

5. And speaking of food, I discovered today that Coolio has a cookbook and cooking show called The Ghetto Gourmet. Google it or youtube it. It's providing much needed laughs in this nasty prison like hotel room. If you act now, you could win a pepper with his autograph on it, sell it on ebay, then use it the money to buy dime bags to measure out your seasoning salt. Clearly, I am starved for entertainment here. 

Some things I miss (in no particular order)

Sweaters and scarves

Starting my morning with the John Richards morning show on KEXP

One stop shopping at Target

A Portalian

Pink Lady apples

My down comforter and jersey sheets

Strolling around Boston

Manchego cheese

Crackberry (I need that qwerty business for texting)

My magazine subscriptions (Newsweek, Self, Real Simple)

Running into friends around the city

Trader Joe's

My favorite cafe Flampoeira

Having an oven (Thanksgiving here should be interesting)

Calling anyone, anytime

Maybe when I'm back in the States I'll make a list of things I miss about the Phil. Or maybe I'll be too busy baking funfetti cupcakes, buying things I don't need at Target, and layering on a third scarf to face the bitter cold. 

Break from Manila

I always love breaks from Manila, but this one comes in the form of a 10 day community health financing class. We'll be traveling to Bacolod and Dumaguete with our teacher, a nun! I hope we're all on our best behavior. My mom used to tell me crazy stories about the nuns that taught her in school here so I hope I don't make this one angry. It's hard to leave the internship because I'm in the middle of a big project, but hopefully I'll be able to keep working on it while we're away. Even though my project is stressing me out, WHO is really making life easier here. They have an awesome gym that we can use for free, I eat 2 of 3 meals a day in their cafeteria (so cheap and pretty good), and they even arranged for someone to pick up my care package at customs! That was fabulous because I avoided 2 scary taxi rides to an unknown location, and I heard foreigners have to bribe the postal workers to get their packages. Thanks to my authorized WHO rep, I am now in possession of two tubs of rainbow and butter star cookies from Ukrops :) Merci ma belle Shelley! 

Off I go. Back on the 21st!

Hong Kong-o-ween

If I wasn't living in Manila right now, I might hate Hong Kong. It's flashy, a bit touristy, and dripping with riches-all things I usually scorn in my travels. But after a few months of walking through trash, exhaust, and dirty puddles (I'll let you imagine what makes them dirty), Hong Kong was a nice change of pace. It's just so darn clean in comparison, I wanted to run barefoot through the streets. It was a refreshing few days of dim sum, strolling in fresh air, and spending lots of time crossing the Harbor on the Star Ferry. The journey from Kowloon to HK Island is quite lovely, the skyline never fails to impress. 

We hopped on another ferry to Lantau Island, home of the Tian Tan Buddha (GIANT Buddha). It's 85 feet high, hovering high above the trees. We climbed the 268 steps to reach the top, which despite the crowds, was very serene and peaceful. It's surrounded by six other statues that are offering gifts such as flowers, music, and fruit that represent charity, wisdom, and other things that help you reach nirvana. My budd(h)y Tian Tan is definitely one of the favorite sights I've seen. In life. 

Along those spiritual lines, we were in HK over Halloween and had no idea what sort of celebration to expect. We underestimated the place because I've never seen a bigger street party, the city literally erupted with streets full of costumes and people watchers. To reach the main drag of fun on Lan Kwai Fong we joined the masses in this strange parade that weaved us through the city for miles and miles. We literally walked for over an hour just to reach the bars, thanks to the orderly crowd control. It felt like a death march of sorts with the heat, congestion, and furry costumes surrounding you, but definitely a cool experience. And our cheap last minute costumes? Lady Gaga and the Poker Faces. 


The must see attraction in the city is Victoria Peak, which you can reach by a funicular tram. (Side note, I love a good funicular i.e. Sacre Coeur in Montmartre ooh la la). At the top, you have panoramic views of the city, and it's such a strange sensation to be higher than the sky high towers below. 

For those of you wondering how in the heck Meena can afford to hop around Asia, I present to you, accommodations for the poor grad student. Our first night we crammed ourselves into a prison cell of a room and this is the bathroom. Where's the shower, you ask? The shower head is hanging over the toilet. Yes, to take a shower you have to be sitting or standing on the toilet at the same time. Luckily, we got a different room with a (slightly) larger bathroom the next night. 

I sometimes wonder what it's like to travel the world, sans budget, sleeping in the fancy hotels and eating in the trendy restaurants. Hong Kong is definitely a city that makes you want the finer things in life, it's almost intoxicating to see how the other half lives. Who knows if the fancy travels are in my future... but for now, I'm just going to laugh at the shower water splashing into the toilet and enjoy every bite of my $4 noodles, sitting outside on a plastic chair down a side alley.