Long Absence

After almost one month of absence, I am back blogging! After over two years of talking about being in Cebu, we are here!

The long travel from Illinois to Michigan, then from Michigan to Vancouver, then to Hong Kong, and finally to Cebu was not an easy one. Though we are used to moving with the Air Force, we have never landed in so many places in so short of a period of time. I am glad to report that we made it to Cebu!

First thing that struck me at the airport was the heat. Though we arrive at night, the heat was still suffocating. That did not surprise me, but it still got to me quite a bit. For someone like me who found it hard to live without air-conditioning, I immediately asked myself, “What am I doing here?” While I know full well the answer, I just couldn’t help but to reassure myself of the reason why we were in this kind of heat and humidity.

Cebu is not exactly the kind of vacationing place that everybody talks about. Though the part of city we are in is already an upscale part of town, we still have lots of things to adjust to. The poverty, the crowd and the dirt are more than we anticipated. To the left is a photo of a snapshot of a road that we would drive to and from the mall. It is not uncommon to see this squatter huts alongside with modern looking buildings.

We are trying our best to have humor over things that we don't understand, while accepting them as what they are.

We knew the house that we are renting has no air-conditioning on the ground floor; we were told that you could get by with 5 or 6 fans blowing during the day. It was still hot at night, I wonder what it will be like in the morning.

Fellow missionaries Roger and Lan came to pick us up, the rental van took a while to come, after we were in the air-conditioned van, I was much better, so was Kioni. Her little head of hair was quite wet after waiting for 15 minutes in the heat for the van to come.

At our rental home, Mariss, our helper was there to greet us. We walked into a clean house with all of the basics in it. We were thankful that we made it the first night without much to report. Only a few little lizard like animals crawling on the walls, no major companies.

Kioni took a shower and promptly went to bed. She slept for 9 hours, did not wake up once. She is adjusting quite well to sleeping in new beds now.