We have cable

I had to join the Peace Corps and come to the Philippines to get cable. How weird is that? Our host brothers were in here playing some online video game that every kid here loves, and I didn't see them. They just came up to me and said hi, and that they missed us. Awww!

Everything here is cool. We moved into our place two weeks ago, and it is awesome. We have it pretty well set up, painted the floor and it's become really comfortable. It's pretty nice to be able to just do our own thing without being in someone's way, or vise versa. We still have a few small things to get next month when we get paid, because the cost of moving in has left us with no more money. I'll try to put some pictures up, but that's a lot harder than it sounds when you don't have an internet connection in your house.

We have a bunch of stuff coming up soon. We're going up to White Beach in Puerto Galera at the beginning of September with some friends to celebrate our birthdays, and just to get away from site. I'm definitely getting a little stir crazy here. White Beach is one of the more popular beaches around the Philippines, lots of bars and restaurants, and of course, a big, long white beach. We've been there before during our summer (march-may), and it was packed. The tourism there is mostly Filipino though, so it totally dies off after summer and every place reduces their rates anywhere from %50-%75, so it's a great deal.

Right after that we are going to PST2, which is mistitled because it's not preservice training, it's just more training. For some reason they don't do any technical training before you come to site, they save that for three months in. Word on the street is that they're going to change that though. We just got a new country director and he's really shaking up the program, in a fairly positive way from what I've heard. My training is down in Iloilo City on the island of Panay, which is supposed to be really beautiful, and a fun town. Abby and the other education people have to go to Cavite, which I consider Manila's butthole. We were there for our first week and it's just ugly and boring. I actually have a fair amount of travel because I'll be going to Cebu City in October with work for a conference on marine sanctuaries. Abby is going to try and come too, we might turn it into a little vacation afterwards and take the chance to visit other islands in the Visayas.

That's pretty much it for now. Work is chugging along. I just got involved with a project that's part mangrove reserve, part crab farming, so I get to help raise crabs with a crazy old guy who really wants me to take a second wife. It's too bad the crabs are mudcrabs, and they harvest them too early so they're these little useless things with hardly any meat. For a country that gets most of its protein from fish, they don't seem to understand much about it. You know, I'm all like "can a get a tuna steak up in this piece?!" But no, I have to eat tiny, bone filled fish, or worse yet, dried, fried fish, for breakfast. Actually they have some pretty good seafood, we've been buying live prawns, then shelling them and fryin 'em up. Masarap!