Where we were and what we observed in the Philippines October 12, 2008
Posted by Jeff Block in Adoption, Travel.Tags: Dingras, Laoag City, Makati, manila, Philippines
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In addition to daily blog entries, I thought I’d throw out a series of observations that I made while in the Philippines, just in case anyone is interested. To kick that off, I want to cover where were and give you an index of the observations I’ll discuss over the next few days, just to establish some context.
Faith and I spent time in four distinct areas of the main island. There are like 7000 islands that make up the Philippines. I’m sure that some are no bigger than your kitchen table, but that’s still a daunting number. We were on one of the few big ones, where the capital Manila is located.
Here’s where we were during our trip…
- We were in Makati for 6 days. Makati is the prosperous financial district of Manila, the capital city.
- We were in the outskirts of Manila for a half a day, so we got to see the conditions along the roads and in the districts between Makati and where we were in the burbs (about 90 minutes outside the heart of the city).
- We were in Laoag City for 1 day. Laoag is the capital of the northernmost region of the island, called Ilocos Norte. It’s a much smaller city than Manila. In terms of number of people, I’d compare Manila to Chicago and Laoag to a Naperville or maybe a St. Louis. In terms of land area, I’d compare Manila to St. Louis and Laoag to a Collinsville or an Elk Grove Village.
- We were in the country just outside Dingras for 5 days. Dingras is a very small rural town. We were out in the countryside 10 minutes away from the heart of Dingras at John’s orphanage for a significant part of the trip.
I made the following observations while in country. I’ll do my best to elaborate on these in brief entries over the next couple weeks.
- The socioeconomic conditions of the country
- The weather
- The people
- The roads, vehicles and general driving conditions
- The pork … er … I mean the food
- The technology
- The language
- The diverse cultures
I’ll get to it asap.
Philippine Travel Log: John’s First Plane Ride October 5, 2008
Posted by Jeff Block in Adoption, Family, Travel.Tags: airplane, Laoag City, manila
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After church on Sunday in Dingras, we dropped the bulk of our full van off at Shekinah Home, and headed for the airport. Our flight was at 7:35PM, and we left Shekinah for the hour-long trip at about 5PM. We were advised that we should get to the airport 90 minutes before our flight, so we were pretty much right on time.
The only thing we had to do besides get to our flight was to somehow get John dinner. Faith and I could deal, but we wanted to deviate from John’s schedule as little as possible. The answer was simple: McDonald’s, baby!
We stopped at the McDonald’s in Laoag City. I have no idea how many McD’s there were in this part of the world, but I didn’t care that much. Any would do. This one had a drive-thru, but we didn’t use it – which I thought odd. This was the first cultural practice in the Philippines that I didn’t relate to, so it was a massive shock. Oh wait, haven’t you been reading these posts!?
Anyway, I went in and ordered food for the three of us, figuring it would be quick. I wanted a bit of a variety, both because I didn’t know what John would like and I wanted to try things there to compare them, so I ordered way too much food… 2 McDo burgers, 2 chicken sandwiches, 1 chicken nuggets, 1 fries, and 2 apple pies. They forced me to take the 2nd apple pie; I guess they only come in pairs. They laughed at me (I’m serious) when I asked for grilled chicken. And they made me wait like 7 minutes for the friend chicken. Ugh. I wouldn’t have cared, except that everyone was out in the van waiting for me. It wasn’t even the airport, it was keeping everyone waiting that stressed me out.
Finally, with food in hand, I got back to the car. John-John tore into some nuggets and fries, I had a chicken sandwich, and Faith waited (no idea why). John ate half the nuggets, all the fries, and tore through an apple pie. Go figure. Eats the fries and dessert first. I fear we’re bad parents. The rest went into our duffle bag for later use (in theory).
By the way, for the record… The chicken was good, but had a funky sauce on it that I definitely could have done without. I’m typically very against ordering the deep fat friend sandwich with fat sauce, but I had little choice in this situation.
We got to the airport right on time. As we got out of the car, everything went blurry. People were grabbing our bags, saying goodbye, waving the van to move on, etc. I abandoned concern for everything but Faith, John, and our travel documents. Well, I kept an eye on the bags too, but they were fine. They went in ahead of us, and we went through almost no security at all to ultimately be standing at the ticket counter. There was only one – for BOTH airlines. This was not a big airport.
There had been some concern about John’s ability to travel without a passport. I started to explain the situation to the guy behind the counter, but he just stamped the tickets and waved us through. It was ultra trivial.
Next came the guy who makes you pay an airport usage tax. We got that done easily too.
We then walked through one more metal detector (I’m not sure our bags ever got scanned – at least not while we had them), and found ourselves in the gate area. There was only one of these two. I think it took us a grand total of 8 minutes to get through everything to our seats, leaving us a good solid hour to wait to board the plane. Why again did we hurry?
We sat down, and almost immediately met a very nice pair of Chinese women who sat down next to us. They were traveling around the Philippines, and were very friendly to John. Faith swears he had a crush on one of the girls, Mi Mi, but I’m not as big a romantic. Either way, it helped to pass the time, for which I was grateful.
John, Faith and Mi Mi. Mi Mi let John wear one of her souvenir hats.
Eventually, the plane pulled up, which got John all manner of excited. We had continued the “we’re flying on an airplane today” routine all day, and John was excited pretty much every time we said it. Now that he was watching a real life airplane taxi in, he was thrilled. The gate area was just as small on the outside as it was on the inside, so when I say that the planed pulled up, I really mean it. It taxied in from the runway, and pulled up to the gate parallel to the windows we were looking out. A couple guys then rolled steps up to two doors on the plane, people walked down them, and in the door. It was more the way we’re used to bus terminals in America, not airports. But then, I’m not sure I’ve been in an airport this small in America either.
John watched every aspect of what was going on with great interest. I got a big kick out of that. I also got a big kick out of walking John in front of the powerful fans on the big air conditioning units in the room, and making funny faces when they suddenly chilled us. I discovered them by trying to reposition John for better views of plane-related activity, but soon started making excuses to get in front of them to hoard cold air.
When the time finally came to walk out the door, across the tarmac, and onto the plane, John lost confidence. It was dark and damp outside (had been raining), the planes engines were very loud, and everything was pretty big. He had expressed fear at a couple points before, primarily upon noticing the size difference between a real plane and the little toy plane we’d given him that morning. So, Faith and I were ready for his objections. I carried our carry-on bags (mostly with a bunch of stuff to feed and distract John if necessary), and she carried John, and we made a beeline for the plane, giving him as little time to be afraid and (especially to express his fear) as possible. It worked swimmingly, and before we knew it we were on board.
I knew instantly that it was all downhill from there. John was wild-eyed, excited, and playful the entire trip. He turned every knob there was to turn short of the cockpit. He checked out the bathroom, other seats, the windows, the chairs, the tray tables, the seat covers, and on and on. His absolute favorite item though was the safety information card. He got all three out of the seats in front of the row we were in, and shuffled them and “read” them and played with them and handed them out and hid them and found them and it went on and on for the whole flight. It was 10x easier than some of my early fears had thought it might be, and I praised God for yet again making the whole thing easy on us.
We got to Manila just over an hour after we boarded the plane. John was all about the baggage claim and every other aspect of the new, much bigger airport experience. However, it was clear he was starting to wind down … until he saw the luggage carts that is. Then it was off to the races again. He pushed the cart, then Faith pushed him, then he pushed the luggage, and then (my favorite) he pushed mommy on the cart while I was taking care of getting us a car to our hotel.
John pushes Faith on the luggage cart at the Manila airport
Once in the car, he tried to play the familiar flip-every-switch-there-is game, but tiredness got the best of him and he was pretty mellow by the time we got to the hotel. I don’t remember if we put him through our night time routine. I think we did. But either way, it was fairly uneventful, and we all slept soundly after a big day. I for one was thrilled to death to be back in Manila, which felt to me like a return to civilization. At the very least, it was a return to a real bed, a real shower, and air conditioning. And for Faith, morning couldn’t come fast enough, because a nice outdoor pool awaited her and her new water buddy!
BTW, in case you’re wondering, we got a room with two double beds, rather than one king. The plan was for John to take one bed and us to take the other. That worked most of the time we were there, but it definitely didn’t leave much in the way of privacy.
Philippine Travel Log: Outing to Laoag October 3, 2008
Posted by Jeff Block in Adoption, Family, Travel.Tags: Fort Ilocandia, Ilocos Norte Museum, Laoag City, Shekinah Home
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Day 3: Friday, October 3, 2008
Outing to Ilocos Norte Museum and Fort Ilocandia
Fort Ilocandia
Of the 5 days we had planned to spend at the orphanage, there were three outings scheduled. Today, the plan was to visit Fort Ilocandia, a resort outside Laoag City, about 40 minutes from Shekinah. I don’t remember who it was that suggested that we also visit the Ilocos Norte Museum in Laoag, but that ended up on the itinerary as well. At the suggestion, I was immediately unsure how John-John would handle a museum. Doesn’t really feel like a good fit for a 4 yr old. Also, I knew it’d be incredibly hot, and as per their customs I’d be stuck in jeans.
We got John up and went through our morning ritual without incident. Sadiri brought us breakfast at our cottage, which we greatly enjoyed. We then headed over to the main building, gathered up Jackie and her things, and headed into town. We were dropping Jackie off at the bus station in Laoag City to head back south; she was willing to stay with us the whole 5 days, but we sent her packing so that she could visit her family, from whom she’s away for two weeks at a time for work. If she could get extra time with her, then go for it. We were doing fine.
We had to stop by the market, because I wanted batteries (for the flashlight in our cottage with which John-John loved to play) and some chewable candies (for John-John on the airplane flights we’d be taking over the next few days, so that in swallowing he would equalize the pressure in his ears). Travel tip #9: Always have something for the children to chew on and have to swallow. Gum works, or if they’re young, then it’s hard or chewy candies, like Starbursts. Jackie had introduced us to Mentos, which were fruit chews that we really liked, so we got a bunch of those.
Jackie was my guide to the market, while Faith stayed with John-John in the van. Sadiri was driving of course. After the market, we went our separate ways. She took a tricycle to the bus station, and we continued on in the van to the museum. We drove past the parking lot, so Sadiri circled back through a number of alleys to get back to the parking lot. This was probably the least comfortable I felt driving the whole time I was in the Philippines. The alleys were congested, both with tricycles and pedestrians, so we moved at a snails pace. This meant three things: the frustration of driving in gridlock (which we’re familiar with in Chicago), no relief from the heat due to open windows, and breathing the exhaust fumes from the tricycles. Also, I didn’t feel safe. The people staning in the alleys stared at us (look at the white people!), and they didn’t look at all friendly. If they had wanted to make trouble, they easily could have. But they didn’t, and I was very relieved to finally arrive at the museum and get out of the van. We even found a tree to park under.
We went through the museum fairly quickly. As I suspected, John-John really didn’t care all that much. Honestly, I didn’t either. It was hot, as I predicted, and of course John wanted me to carry him (doesn’t make it cooler). So, I wasn’t particularly interested in reading plaques about the region’s history, etc. There were a number of interesting artifacts there, and I imagine for the region it was a very nice museum. We did, however, make it to an air conditioned gift shop at the end of our time there, which I found much more interesting. 
Not only was it a chance to rest and cool off, but John-John found many more interesting things to touch and play with that he shouldn’t have been picking up. Faith also found a number of souvenirs for people there, which were extremely affordable. John-John particularly liked this hat, but I wasn’t sure how we’d fit it in our luggage…
John tries on hats at the Ilocos Norte museum
From the museum, Sadiri took us to Fort Ilocandia, a local resort frequented by (particularly Chinese and Japanese) tourists. It was a very upscale place, at least the lobby, restaurant, and courtyard were. We didn’t see the rooms. Ironically, this was another place Faith had discovered in her online research, so it was vaguely familiar to us even prior to arrival.
We played in the lobby for a while. John-John was all about running up and down the steps (must have done so 12-15 times), and watching the fish swim around in an indoor pond. The hotel had a beautiful indoor courtyard area where both the pond and the steps were. We took great joy in listening to John-John say “Hi, Fish!” in his enthusiastic voice over and over. We were also thrilled that he counted with us when we walked up and down the stairs. With some help, he was able to make it over 20, but I think on his own he starts getting stuck at about 12 or 13. This was all great fun (and indoors out of the brutal sun, so dad was happy).
We then went to the mini-zoo in the outer courtyard. John wanted nothing to do with that. Even the statues of animals scared him, let alone the real things. With monkeys, tigers, alligators, etc, that didn’t surprise me. But he didn’t even want to pet the little chicks or the bunnies. I guess he *really* doesn’t like animals. So much for Faith’s theory that he’ll want a dog. *whew*!
We had an interesting cultural experience while there. While we were wandering around amongst the animal cages, without a word, Sadiri ducked a fence, crossed a road, and headed off the property. We weren’t sure where he was going, but went ahead and followed. He had a head start on us, so we were trying to catch up. I was carrying John-John, so naturally it was Faith who first noticed that he was trying to get somewhere to relieve himself, and here we were following him. Faith was so embarrassed. It was kinda funny.
After that, we headed back inside to the hotel restaurant. It was wonderfully air conditioned, and the food was very good. John-John, Faith, and I all had spaghetti, and Sadiri ordered some pork-laiden Philippine soupy dish. Ugh. Not to worry though, when we got the spaghetti, it had pork in the sauce. lol
We also got fruity drinks with lunch. I got a watermelon shake, while John-John and Sadiri each got mango. Faith sampled mine and John’s. You could tell Sadiri was uncomfortable through the whole meal, not used to the environment of the semi-posh western-style restaurant. It created more than one awkward pause during lunch.
Another funny experience came with our drinks. My watermelon shake came with a piece of melon as garnish. I know John likes watermelon, so I asked if he wanted it. Of course, he did. So, he’s happily eating that and Faith and I are talking with Sadiri. Suddenly I hear a nice strong *crunch* come from John. I look over, and he’s eating the rine of the melon right along with the meat. We thought about stopping him, but he was more than content, so…. at least it wasn’t a catfish head.
After lunch, we wandered the grounds. We wanted to go to the beach, but the security guard wouldn’t let us. Only for those staying at the resort, he said. That was okay. We were about to leave when he – I think took pity on us; I was sopping wet from sweat again – told us that there was a playground that John might want to play on. So, we walked him over there, and he and Faith had a BLAST playing on it. He climbed and slid, and had a generally great time. He was tentative at first about everything. Don’t know if he’d ever played on a playground like this. He loved crossing the rope bridge too, but never got up the nerve to go himself. Mom had to carry him. Where was dad? Well, the sun pretty much wussified me again, so I spent most of our time at the playground sitting in a bungalow provided for us weaklings, cheering John on … especialy when he’d do something he previously hadn’t been willing to do.
John plays on the jungle gym at Fort Ilocandia
John was not at all happy when it was time to leave, and threw a bit of a tantrum. It was also due to the fact that when I asked him for a water bottle, he refused to give it to me, so I had to explain to him that although I love him greatly, it’s unacceptable for him to refuse to do something I ask him to do like that. Between that and having to leave, he got all withdrawn (as is his custom), and Sadiri had to jump in afterward and pull him back to the land of fun.
We left the fort at about 2PM, and headed back. John fell asleep in the car for a while, but still needed a nap afterwards. He wasn’t too thrilled about going down for his nap, though. He cowered in a corner, and Faith had to sooth him back into letting us lay him down on the bed. She stayed with him until he fell asleep.
Faith read while he slept, and I was able to sneak over to the main building and get some time on their office computer to send out a “We have John” email, and update Facebook. When John awoke, he and Faith came over to get me, because he had been asking for me. We played there with the other children for a while, and eventually headed back to our cottage to get ready for dinner, which they brought over to us. We clearly observed that John got jealous every time we devoted too much attention to the other children at the orphanage. I became very sensative to always making John feel special. I rarely held other children, and when I picked John up, I always did so in a unique way (tossing him up in the air) and told him he was special.
Dinner and the remainder of playtime went well / were somewhat routine. Before bed, John refused to go potty, which put a wrench in the evening routine. Came out of nowhere, since we were having such a good time with other things. He just got it in his head that this wasn’t something he was going to do … to the point that he plopped down on the bathroom floor and cowered in the corner by the toilet. Yuck! I’m thinking “Not there! It’s disgusting down in that corner!” We tried to coax him out, but eventually just pulled him out of the corner. We played for a little while to snap him out of it, and that worked until we said we were going back into the bathroom. Then back to tantrum mode. So we took his clothes off him (he wasn’t happy), and put him in the shower. He *loves* the shower (water in general), so he warmed back up immediately. Guess there’d just be no potty tonight.
It was here we learned / made a vow that we would not ask him if he wanted to do things which he had no choice whether or not to do. Duh! Aren’t we brilliant.
He wasn’t too thrilled to go to bed either. Got all sullen while we were having story time. We tried to snuggle with him and tell him we love him repeatedly, but he would have none of it. This little guy just doesn’t like going to sleep. Eventually, we left him in his bed to just fall asleep, and he did.
Before I close, I thought I’d share a few other observations we made of John that day that I think are worthy of note:
- We started worked on “Please” and “Thank you”, which is new to John. He’s doing pretty well, but that’s going to take a while I’m sure.
- He started posing for pictures today, which is really awesome, because now we actually have a few non-candid shots were he’s actually smiling.
- He played by himself a couple of times. That’s huge, and would prove to be an ongoing struggle. He pretty much wants constant attention frommom and dad.
All in all, John-John is such a good kid. He’s well-mannered and compliant 90% of the time. He shares with other kids, is fun and energetic, and has the best facial expressions ever. There were quite a few (new) challenges today, but we made it through. We’re also fairly convinced that the challenges will only increase, so welcome to parenthood, right?
Either way, there was evening and there was morning the third day.
Philippine Travel Log: Meeting John-John October 1, 2008
Posted by Jeff Block in Adoption, Family, Travel.Tags: Auring, John Block, Laoag City, Sadiri, Shekinah Home
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We barely slept the night before meeting John. I was up even more than Faith was, racking up a total of 3.5 hours of sleep that night. I slept from 9PM-12:30AM, and that was pretty much it. The rest of the night was filled with journaling, prayer, reading Scripture, studying up on my Ilocano (what litle I know), and watching TV. Faith did a little better than me (scoring 6 hours of sleep), but we were both running pretty much on adrenaline by the time we got to breakfast.
We showered (I hated that shower) and packed early, so we could have breakfast, check out of the hotel, and have nothing else to do but wait for John after breakfast. We were meeting Jackie at 8AM for breakfast, and the van from the orphanage was supposed to be there about 9:30AM to retrieve us. We had so much leftover time pre-breakfast, that I got an hour’s quiet time in the restaurant before Jackie met us. As is often her custom, Faith met with God out in nature – which meant the pool area, since there was no leaving the hotel (compound) for us foreigners by ourselves.
Jackie had told us that John had woken up early the previous morning talking about how his parents were coming tomorrow. We spent a lot of time wondering how that morning was for him. Was he anxious? nervous? scared? still excited? all of the above? We were. I had long imagined (and prepared myself emotionally) that his initial reaction to us might be pretty bad. Having heard Jackie talk about how excited John was, it was tempting to let my guard down there, but I was trying to maintain a very realistic perspective.
We had the exact same breakfast as the day before: Longanisa, rice, eggs, fruit, and juice. Jackie talked to the orphanage right after breakfast to confirm schedule, etc, and they confirmed that John was indeed going to come with them to pick us up and that he was excited. That’s when the minutes started to drag. We checked out, piled our bags at the door, sat in the lobby and waited. I couldn’t help but fidget with the two matchbox cars I had in my pocket, ready to engage him with toys if he was nervous or scared when we met him.
When the van finally arrived (like a half hour late), it was just Sadiri, who was John’s house father and official orphanage driver. No John-John. I was immediately disappointed, including because now I had to spend yet another 35-40 minutes (the time it takes to get from Laoag to the orphanage) in anxious waiting before I met John. But just a few seconds later, John and Mary Jane (his social worker at the orphanage) walked up the hotel sidewalk to the door. It was weird that he arrived not in the van (were they trying to surprise us?), but we were really glad to see them. This was the moment we had prayed and waited and prepared for for years.
He immediately demonstrated fear. He clung to Mary Jane and wanted very little to do with us. After shaking hands with the adults, I immediately squatted down so that I wouldn’t be such a giant in his eyes. Sadiri and Mary Jane tried to encourage him to go to us, but it was obvious immediately that this isn’t how his personality works. The more they pushed, the less he wanted to do with us.
Faith and I spoke softly to him. I gave him one of the cars, which he took without hesitation, but immediately separated from me. Pretty much conveyed, “I’m all about the car, but you keep your distance.”
We told his caregivers that we were okay with his being shy, and that we should just head back to the orphanage. So we piled in the van, and headed out of town. We gave him his 2nd teddy bear (I’ll explain in a second) in the van, which he also took readily and held the entire trip, but it didn’t warm him up to us at all.
What’s with the bear? Well, we were advised by a book we read to do the following to help reduce your child’s fear in meeting you… Long before traveling to pick up the child, you buy two identical stuffed animals. You send the first one over in a care package, as far ahead of traveling there as is reasonable. The second animal you keep with you. When you go, take the second one with you. The child will have (theoretically) fallen in love with the stuffed toy by the time you get there, and your showing up with an identical one will essentially confirm your identity to the child. He’ll recognize the bear as familiar, even if he doesn’t recognize you as familiar. Then, when you leave the orphanage, take the one that’s been there the longest with you. The new one can be left behind so that the orphanage will experience a net gain of one more toy, and your child will have a familiar toy with him/her that smells and feels like the home he knows.
I found all of this to be a genius idea. Where it unraveled was in the reality that John doesn’t particularly like / care about stuffed animals. 
Like I said, the orphanage was a ways from Laoag. More than that though, it was in a pretty remote area in general – out in the country. John clung to Mary Jane and paid very little attention to us (despite our occasional efforts to connect) the entire ride.
When we got to Shekinah (John’s orphanage), he lit up and called out to the other children. Not only do I think he loved to play with them and is generally pretty social once he warms up to you, but looking back on it and knowing him a little better now, I think he was also showing off that he had something they didn’t – parents.
We filed into the small building (view pictures of Shekinah Home on Facebook) and met Auring, Sadiri’s wife, who was the last adult to meet until the orphanage director and his family showed up the following Saturday. The kids all called Sadiri and Auring “papa and mama”, and the orphanage director and his wife “grandpa and grandma”. I’ll share more about them later.
After a very brief chat with the adults, we turned our attention back to John, who was now playing on the floor with his new car. The bear had pretty much gotten discarded. I was in dress clothes (dockers and a nice button up), and Faith was in a skirt and nice blouse. We had been advised that it is culturally-approriate to dress up when meeting someone in this context, so there we were. Blazing sun, high humidity, 90ish degrees out, and of course the dog jumped on me with muddy paws the second I stepped out of the van. It was clear that whoever started the dress up in the Philippines rule should be drug out in the street and beaten.
But in a way it was a blessing. By the time I got to the moment where John was on the floor ignoring us at the orphanage, I was dripping sweat and had paw prints all over my nice tan pants. So, the decision was easy. I remember having the conscious thought that even if I had to throw these clothes away, I’d get on John’s level. So, I prostrated myself on the floor belly-down, facing John a few feet away. I rolled the second car to him, which doubled his toy quota. He was thrilled (not with me, but with the car). There was also a pair of rubberbands from somewhere; not even sure where they came from. John had one, and I guess I had the other. He took the 2nd car, and began to try to use the rubberband to attach it to the first car. I inched closer and offered help. It took about 15-20 minutes, but eventually we were playing together, dragging rubberbanded cars around the floor together.
And the rest is history. He kept warming up until ultimately we were playing and laughing, holding him, swapping sunglasses, throwing him up in the air, and swinging him around. We took some awesome pictures of all the fun. Here are a couple of my favorites…
The moments he smiled for the first time and let us pick him up for the first time were huge. The first real hug happened that day too. After all we’d read about attachment disorder, we were prepared for it to take months for him to bond with us and consider us to be special adults who could be trusted. As it turns out, God gave us the gift of having all that take place in a couple hours. How amazing!
Ultimately we ate together, and finally headed back to the cottage where we were to stay as a family that night on the premises. I’ll tell you more about our accomodations and the next several days of just getting to know John-John soon.
Philippine Travel Log: Laoag City September 30, 2008
Posted by Jeff Block in Adoption, Family, Travel.Tags: Laoag City
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Following our death defying, icy bus ride, we arrived in Laoag City, capital of Ilocos Norte. The sun came up at 5:30AM (having no affect on the temperature in the bus), and we rolled into town at 6:30AM. A big “Laoag City” sign and a pair of golden arches greeted us as we drove over the bridge into the city. I didn’t get a picture of them due to the loss of feeling in my extremities. The McDonalds sign tried to tell me (can you halucinate due to extreme cold) that there would be civilization there, but it pretty much lied to me.
The very first thing that was glaringly obvious in our arrival was the poverty. The people there, and in many of the places we visited in the Philippines, live lives I’m not sure I was able to really accurately picture prior to my trip there. Both homes and shops were mostly shanties. Many streets had open sewers (a concrete trench dug next to the road), but I didn’t get close enough to them to get a good look at what was in them. I suspect just runoff from the streets, since the town didn’t reak of sewage at all. It did smell pretty bad, but that was a combination of exhaust and animals, not rivers of …… stuff that should be in rivers.
The exhaust was horrible. Tricycles (mostly), donkey-drawn carriages (okay, so the smell wasn’t *only* the mechanized exhaust – there was other exhaust as well) and a few jeepneys and motorcycles crowded the streets. BTW, just in case you’re wondering, horses are only for the rich in the Philippines. Donkeys are the beast-of-burden-of-choice.
I was pretty amazed at how many people there were in such a small area. The town was probably the size of Collinsville, but I bet there were as many people there as in St. Louis. Those are wild guesses, but you get the idea. Geography (land area) = large for the Philippines but not the US. Population = large for the Philippines but not the US. Density of people = typical for a city in the Philippines, but INSANE for the US. Even with Chicago’s massive skyscraper apartments, I would be shocked to discover that the number of people per acre or square mile was much different. And these people weren’t living in high rises, I can tell you that.
The bus dropped us off at the bus station in Laoag, which was just like the one in Manila, only much smaller. A car from the hotel was waiting for us, and took us on the 15 minute ride to get there (weaving dangerously in and out of traffic, which we were pretty much used to at this point).
The hotel was obviously very nice for the area, but foreign enough and in-the-center-of-radical-poverty enough to shock me when I opened the door to our room. It looked a little questionable on the outside (of our room), but I was actually taken aback when I entered it. It’s clear I’m very spoiled (yeah, like we needed this trip to tell us that).
The room was the “Family Suite”. It had two beds, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The shower head was European in design, and had a wall-heater for the water. The first shower I took was scalding, and the second ice cold. There were two nobs on the shower head. I’m fairly bright, but in two shower’s worth of time, I couldn’t figure the thing out. Neither could Faith. So, we just rolled with it. Also, you can’t put anything that doesn’t come out of your body into toilets in a world like this one, so that was interesting too. Naturally, I waited until I got to Laoag to need to … well … drop the kids off at the pool, so to speak, so I don’t know what kind of certifiable genius that makes me!
Anyway, I really don’t want to be down on the hotel. It was as clean as a room could be expected to be in that environment (where it was obvious that nobody had anything). Plus, the courtyard and pool and restaurant were very nice – both well kept and pretty. We did spend time in the pool, which was quite nice, and we ate almost every meal for the day we were there in the hotel restaurant. Also, the hotel staff was very friendly, and all about customer service – as was pretty much everyone in the Philippines. That was one of the things that impressed me most about the country in general … but I digress.
Oh, I guess I should have mentioned that up front… We only stayed at this hotel for 1 night and 2 days, just long enough to recoup from our overnight hypothermia-inducing bus ride, before meeting John. So, we checked in on Thuesday, 9/30 at like 7AM, and checked out on Wednesday, 10/1 at about 10AM when the van from Shekinah Home (John’s orphanage) retrieved us. In that time, we ate two breakfasts and one dinner at the hotel. We ate lunch the day we were there in the city. Let me get into a little more detail on our meals there.
We pretty much ate breakfast immediately on arrival. It was very good, and I tried not to imagine the cleanliness factor of the kitchen in which it was prepared. It consisted of eggs, a Philippine favorite sausage called Longganisa (there has to be pork), rice (there has to be rice), scrambled eggs, fruit, and fruit juice. The rice came in two varieties: white steamed rice and garlic fried rice. Now, the Longganisa is one of these foods that stays with you all day and revisits the back of your mouth every couple hours (everyone knows what I mean), so there was no way in Sunny Ilocos that I was getting garlic rice on top of it. That’s the kinda flavor toothpaste can’t cut through. (Trust me!) But other than the fact I was beginning to feel my blood turn chunky with pork, it was a really nice breakfast.
Afterword we cleaned up a bit, and then headed into the city to explore. We wandered the market mostly, which was a fascinating place – if you mentally picture hundreds of very poor people in a very enclosed dirt-floor warehouse selling trinkets and food, you’ll get the idea pretty fast. I took a couple pictures (all of which will eventually be on Facebook), but they don’t really do it justice. We bought a few souveniers, and were very aware that haggling was expected, but I just couldn’t bring myself to argue over pennies with people that obviously didn’t make in a year what most Americans make in a week or two – which is no exaggeration; I learned while there that minimum wage in the Philippines is about $7.50 a DAY, making a $100 bill about 2 weeks wages for someone at that salary, which is very common.
We learned from our guide Jackie (who accompanied us everywhere while we were outside Manila; praise the Lord!) that there were plans to go visit a well-known beach resort with John that week. This sounded awesome, but we didn’t discover it until after we were in Laoag. We had consolidated luggage and left two bags at the hotel in Manila. This of course would have been no problem and would have nothing to do with this story if we were morons and hadn’t left our sun block in one of the bags there rather than bringing it with us to the north. So, we also looked for it while shopping in town. Sounds trivial except when you think about the fact that we were standing in a town of Philippinos who had probably never had to wear sunblock one day in their life. We eventually found it, but paid a good 4x what it would have cost us in the States. Oh well, better than frying ourselves on the beach just a couple hours north of the equator.
Lunch was at McDonalds. I picked that out of the (correct) assumption that there’d be air conditioning there. Score! Faith got the fried chicken, and I ordered spaghetti … because I was told that John-John really like’s McDo’s spaghetti, so daddy had to test it out. The sauce was really sweet, had a hint of BBQ flavor, and had chopped up pieces of hot dog in it. The noodles were the same as what we have here. Guess pasta is the universal constant. Just not sauce.
Faith loved the artwork in the main building of the hotel, and I loved the radio station that was playing there. We spent a couple hours there after pool time in the afternoon to journal and have some quiet time. Faith took a bunch of pictures of the artwork, including the signature on the painting, but even with a 6+ megapixel camera at close range, I can’t make it out. Maybe you can help… Any ideas?
We also learned, while talking to Jackie (this was our first interaction with her not over email), that John had been very excited about our arrival. Evidently, he had worn out the picture album we sent looking through it, and had gotten up early that morning telling everyone “My mommy and daddy are coming tomorrow!” Just melted our hearts. My expectations of his reaction to us had been pretty low, but that definitely started them climbing. We were pretty excited too. In fact, neither of us slept much that night, knowing that we would be meeting John in the morning. We journaled, watched TV (on the 12″ CRT in our room), and studied Ilocano. Was pretty intense.
The last aspect of the day I want to talk about was dinner. We ordered way too much food, thinking we would try new local things. And they were definitely local. I ordered this blackened catfish dish, mentally picturing this seafood linguini I’d eaten at a restaurant near our house in Chicago. When it arrived at the table, it was a large bowl with a whole very-black catfish floating in the top. It looked like someone had lit a catfish on fire, watched it die, and then thrown it into my soup. And I kid you not, the first thing Jackie said was, “Can I have the head?” I said, “Why yes. Feel free.” Actually all the dishes were interesting. Faith’s fish had so many bones in it that it made my catfish feel like a boneless fillet. I couldn’t eat it without imagining my intestines being perpherated. Jackie ordered chop suey, which we loved, until she told us that the secret to the flavor was diced pig liver. O.O The meal TMI just went from bad to worse the longer we sat there.
Okay, I think that’s enough of Laoag. It was great to see, and I’m sure we’ll visit again someday when John is older, but I definitely don’t see me ordering the catfish.
