Happy 2008, the sequel

Abby's out of the hospital now, no more dengue. She's still pretty weak and gets tired really easily, but most of the symptoms are gone, which is a good thing because dengue, apparently, is not fun to have. Go figure. So now we're just stuck in Manila for a week while they monitor her. We have PC Washington to thank for that. It's not that I hate Manila, I just don't really like it that much. It's fun when there are people in town, you're healthy, and you're here for short periods of time. I just hate getting stuck here when Abby's sick, there's nothing to do and there's no where to go. I guess any city would suck if that were the case though. On top of it all, they are only playing pinoy movies in all the theaters for some reason, so we can't even go see a movie!

Abby's parents came for a visit, as I mentioned, which was a lot of fun. Last Christmas was just me (sick), Abby and our friend Carrie, so it wasn't really much of an event. Plus it was our first Christmas here in the Philippines so we were still being thrown off by the lack of Christmas hoo-ha, the annoying Christmas music (luckily, this year, no Boom-Tarat-Tarat!) and the fact that it was 85 degrees outside. So this year we were used to the whole scene, plus we had family in town, and a lot of friends came over for Christmas day feasting, so the whole day had the air of something other than just another day. I could really care less now about the gift-giving aspect of Christmas, but I'm a sucker for a big celebration, so it was nice that we could have that this year.

The first two day they were here we took them around Manila a little bit, went to everyone's favorite stinky shopping area, Quiapo, went on a walking tour of part of Manila that included a lot of Imelda Marcos info, and enjoyed being ensconced in the Pan Pacific. After that we all bundled on the death rocket that passes for a bus here and hurtled off to Puerto Galera for a night, in order to show them around our favorite little spots and break up the trip a little bit. Then we went to site for 3 days, as I mentioned, which was really cool because they got to see our town, our market, and how we live our lives here. After that is was back to unreality as we travelled down to Boracay and stayed in a nice resort, ate pretty good food and lounged on the beach. I have to say, it's amazing what a difference a year makes. It's not that Boracay wasn't really nice, but I was much less blown away this year. I think a lot of that had to do with being wowed by the selection of western food last year, and this year it was a lot less impressive. Anyway, Abby got the deng, we came back to Manila, the end.

2008

Happy New Years everyone, Abby's parents came for a visit, it was a lot of fun. Now she's in the hospital with dengue. But she's ok! I'm out of time at the internet cafe, more later!