I am awful at updates

And taking pictures.  Luckily, many folks have done similar things to what I am doing here, and Google images exists.  Both these things will help us out here.

First things first.  This company is now the bane of my existence:

They didn't let me on the plane because I didn't use my credit card to purchase the ticket.  (I'll be honest and say that I just ran out of steam because I pushed some button, so google navigated away from this page and just deleted 45 minutes of a post.  this will probably be abbreviated now.)  Any way, the guy at the counter didn't know what he was doing, so he wasted 45 minutes giving me inaccurate information about needing a visa to get on the plane.  It wasn't until he was inches away from putting my luggage on a plane to Manila without me that the computer then prompted him to tell me I needed this f-ing card.  had I listened to them and magically gotten Don to come to the airport on a Saturday to show the card (it was purchased through the business office at UIC, which is how most businesses purchase tickets, I realized I would have been stuck in Manila when trying to get back home, since this is a Delta policy.  I had to rebook a flight the next day, which was $700 more expensive at this point, to travel with the far superior American Airlines.  Use them.  They are wonderful.

My longest layover (10 hours) was in Hong Kong.  This is what the international airport looks like:

But is filled with high end stores, like 3 Armanis (don't worry, it promises that the fourth will be opening soon), Cartier, any number of French stores, cosmetic counters, and some designer phone store (they were all really shiny and only let beautiful people buy them), among others.  It was fascinating and lonely from decadence.

My view from inside the airport (such an awesome landscape around there!):

So, after 33+ hours of travel, I finally landed in Cebu.  This is what my condo for the month looks like:

But more sparse and with more ants.  The picture doesn't capture the smell of burnt eggs I added to the space this morning either.  I almost don't want to go back to it today because it smells so awful.  There are also brown specks in my water of undetermined origin.  Only in the cold water.  i suspect that some sort of bug got into the dispenser on that side.  Nasty.  Luckily bottled water is super cheap.

I went grocery shopping yesterday at one of the many malls in the area.  Turns out I am even worse at grocerying here than back home.  I forgot to both pack and buy toothpaste.  I have definitely covered the noodle food group.  Little else though.  My milk comes in a box and lasts until October.  To get there, we rode one of these:

The morning rush on the trains in Chicago has nothing on the cramming capabilities of the Jeepney.  Each time I thought we were super full, someone else would still get on.  Nuts.  They are super cheap, and all of them are painted with different bright stuff.  An unfortunate thing I noticed at the grocery store was a slew of bleaching products.  In much of Filipino culture, light skin is considered more beautiful.  It is an interesting and sad thing that is a throw back to status and Spanish colonization.  I came here hoping to get a tan on weekends.  It seems that every culture has a beauty standard relating to skin color, and that often times it is different from that which is natural.

Enough about that.  I have had so much food.  The ladies here in the office eat so many sweets, which is so wonderful to my sweet tooth and so awful to my belly reducing goal.  That and my crappy cooking are battling right now.  Stay tuned to see which one wins.

I cannot lie; I am really starting to like things here, but I miss all y'all folks back home a ton and being around people who look like me.  I definitely take that for granted back home.  Though I don't purport to understand the intense experience it is to me a minority in a space, I think this is an important experience towards some sort of insight about that. 

Time to get back to work showing folks my presentation on cutting these guys up:

Oh, and my favorite phrase just this afternoon became Summer Affair.  The office plans some fun outing each summer, and they have chosen to do it while I am here.   I think we are taking a boat to some other islands and swimming and bird watching and just generally awesome stuff.  I will definitely try to take pictures then.

Until next time . . .