This week was great! My dnd session on Monday was a ton of fun and we’re on a total cliffhanger to the monster we’re going to fight in the caves. I took a trike this weekend and it was great! It was Fast and efficient! I also had a great burger and found out the ice tea here is great because they put pineapple and orange juice in it. There are a couple kitties that hang outside the burger place. I fed them both some burger and the one loves all the scratches I have her. Apartment is still flooding :/ . Sam, Faith and I booked tickets for Japan July 15th through 18th! I can’t wait to try the food, see the city lit up and take a bullet train down to Kyoto! I also want to see a bunch of Buddhist and Shinto temples and go to the Pokemon center. I’m sure also that Faith and Sam will have fun stuff they’ll want to do. I bought a cute pig stuffed animal who’s in a little bee hoodie!!! ahhh!! On Tuesday we took a work trip to La Union in the north. The drive was something like 5 hours but I had my book, my tunes and lunch. Kuya Reden our driver was great! He gave me snacks and we hung out at night, along with Sir Julius and Sir Joseph who worked in La Union. They were all really funny and very sarcastic. We swam in the pool and hung out on the balcony of the great place we stayed watching the beautiful sunsets. I tried Tupig which was pretty good! I also got fried shrimp at lunch and wantons which were delicious. On the side of the road I spied a statue of a Clash of Clans Valkyrie and I had to take a picture next to it! At some of their churches here they have a bunch of statues out front who I assume are some Apostles or Saints but they carry some pretty gnarling axes and flails along with swords. We went to eat breakfast and there was a hungry cat who’d jump up on you 🙂 . I fed him food. The next day was a work day and I observed a presentation Ate Josie gave about food insecurity and food preparation along with guest speakers talking about breastfeeding. During the second day I was able to play basketball 2 on 2 with some highschoolers which was really small. I was nailing some 3s all over them and going crazy so they just scored on my tiny teammate instead of having my guard them. The room the first night was really hot but the days after that they brought in air conditioners. The guys liked to take selfies with me and I got some with them too. The mountains were beautiful. When we got back to Manila I took a bus to Santo Tomas in Batangas to go see Sam and Faith. When I had already purchased a ticket for the bus, I asked a guy by me in line if I could go grab some food and he said the bus probably wouldn’t be there for a bit. When I came back not too long after though the line was way shorter so a bus left so I don’t know if that guy tricked me or the bus just came early. I just caught the next bus not too long after. My Grab was also telling me how you could bribe the cops out of a speeding ticket for only 100 pesos or 2 bucks. Sam and Faith met me at the mall and took me to a really cool bar and grill. We took a jeepney which was cool, cheap and convenient. There were two guys at the restaurant doing a drinking challenge up on the stage where they puked everywhere but we got a tshirt and a mug out of it! Saturday we slept in and got some breakfast. We have really great conversations just about everything! We then got a bus to Tagaytay where you can see an active volcano and the views are great. We road a ferris wheel and took some pictures and got a great dinner at a steakhouse! It was around 9pm after all this and we then discovered that the buses and the taxis had stopped running outside of Tagaytay :O ! So we asked a security guard to help us out and he found a trike that looked a lot like a tuk tuk to drive us back to Santo Tomas. It felt pretty scetchy at first but the drivers were chill and they got us there really fast! We gave them a big tip and they were really happy about it. Sunday we got a late breakfast and went to the mall. We got massages, looked around at stores and got Korean Barbeque. It was my first time going to Korean Barbeque and it was cool cooking the food and all the stuff you got to mix it with. We ate a lot of meat. I then got a Grab back home which was a whole lot easier than the bus. When I got home the door was locked as it often is and nobody was opening the door. I just climbed in the window as I so often have to do and didn’t think about it much. Good week.
– Hunter