Ming Ming Dahhh derrr sooo cuuuute!!!! Haha I’m smiling like a fool right now! I just want to say that I have been following your blog for quite some time now, and I love it! You are such a generous soul and your recipes, pictures, and stories always brighten my day 🙂
The sound of our toilet flushing is sweet music to my ears! There are few occasions in a person’s life that warrant a photo of a toilet for a post image, and this is one of them. Next up, the fridge. Then, washing machine. And after that, internet. Unfortunately, the 3-5 day timeline for getting WiFi has morphed into something like a 3-5 week timeline. Alrighty then. Needless to say, we’re finding new ways to have fun in our refrigeraterless, internetless, and washingmachineless life. I guess the washing machine wasn’t that fun to begin with, so that helps. As Bjork noted last night, “If nothing else, we’re going to get really good at talking to each other.” I mean, we …
All In a Day’s Work 5:30 am – Go running. And by running, I mean dodging stray dogs, motorcycles, roosters, trash, and suspicious puddles on the main street through town for about 3 minutes before calling it quits. 6:00 am – Eat breakfast (today I had cold brown rice + cold oatmeal + milk and honey and it was delicious), shower, get ready, and above all else, avoid blowdrying hair. 6:55 am – Commute via Jeepney. It’s about a 30 second commute. 8:30 am – Start school. 11:30 am – Lunch time. And thank goodness Jollibee delivers. 4:15 pm – Walk home. On the way home, make a pit stop for rice, produce, Oreos, and other essentials. 4:30 pm – …
When we first came to the Philippines to work at this orphanage one year ago, I was totally enthralled with the babies. And some things do not change, in a year, orrr in a hundred years. I am still totally enthralled with the babies. The other day I was standing in the yard and I saw one of my most adored babies – one of the ones that actually liked me back right from the beginning – walking around holding an auntie’s hand. Wait, WALKING? When did that happen? I immediately flashed back to the first week that we were here, when I would lift her high in the air to see her smile, and hold her, and roll the …
So this is the point in my life where I share my crazy new habits on the internet. Again. Routine #5: This cereal. All the time, every day. Period. It has real (like, REAL) chocolate inside each little piece and a funny dog on the box. So basically it’s a dream come true. PS. Yes, it’s French. (Le is French, right?) I have no idea why this is in Cebu. Routine #6: Snacks for the guards. And judging by the size difference that I’m just now noticing in the picture, I’m sure they think we are giving them snacks to try to make them ginormous like us. Our apartment building has armed guards on duty 24/7. There are two guards: Ryan and …
This week I’ve been neglecting my hot little kitchen because… she came! My mom came! To the Philippines! To spend time with me and Bjork at the school, the shelter, and the beach. It was amazing. Go ahead now. Grab one of Monday’s leftover muffins to snack on because I’m gonna introduce you to my mom. My mom loves ice cream. Or Mochi, in this case. It’s a scoop of mango ice cream with an edible…dough… casing? I don’t know. It’s really good. If you’ve tried this you just earned one thousand cool points because it’s a super hip way to eat ice cream. That’s another thing. She’s super hip. She watches me fry myself in the hot tropical sun …
Hi there! How was your weekend? Mine was good, as you might have noticed by the jumbo cheeseburger and malt pictured above. The main event of the weekend was Bjork and my – mine’s? I’s? – first ever outing with kids from the orphanage. We decided that in honor of my students filling up their sticker charts (oh, stickers, you powerful little things), we would hit up the big mall in Cebu for some games and food. Might I add that my students are six preteen girls. Mall. Preteen. Girls. Our first stop was the arcade. I’ll just put it out there. I hate arcades. As if a regular arcade wouldn’t have been bad enough to begin with, Filipino arcades …
I just ate one of my sister’s citrus scones with butter and honey that was in the welcome home basket from my family and I’m wearing a grey hoodie because our house is just a little bit cold. Did you hear that? COLD. Some things about being home are really, really nice. We arrived yesterday, and besides seeing family and friends and eating the world’s most incredible scones, I enjoyed a very large BBQ Chopped Chicken Salad, a hot, high-pressure shower, and 12 hours of sleep in the world’s most comfortable bed (that would be OUR bed) last night. Those crisp white sheets and white fluffy comforter and thick, feathery pillows? It was 100x sweeter than I had remembered, especially …
That right there? That was supposed to be a cake. I ate the hot gooey batter out of the pan with a spoon and really truly loved every bite, but come on. Cake? Not even close. Then there’s our frying pan. Buying the one that was less than one dollar was not our brightest idea. Correction: my brightest idea. Every single thing I put in there sticks to the bottom and immediately gets burned, even with excessive amounts of oil and butter. Tonight we panicked because the burnt remnants of a pancake started smoking enough to set off the fire alarm. But then we realized that we don’t even HAVE a fire alarm. Double fail. Cooking is a major frustration. Of …
This is the view that I’m looking at right now. I have a fan two inches from my face. I just ate a mango and leftover airplane snacks for breakfast. I woke up to at least 100 roosters crowing. My hair is triple the size of my head. I flushed a bug down the toilet and it broke. So I guess we’re here! {the road leading up to our apartment} Cebu is a big city with a breathtaking mountainous, tropical landscape and several modern establishments like the lovely Ayala Mall. That’s where I spent my ATM maximum yesterday to buy some essentials, like a classy white plastic table, a large fan (the one that’s two inches from my face), and …