Life Adventures

So, I spent a few days in Singapore washing clothes, and then it was off to the Philippines.
Quite the tour’d been planned for us once we got there. I have several friends living there, so once again, we were royally welcomed upon arriving at the airport.
Next morning, we headed from the island Iloilo to Boracay–by bus. The place is absolutely gorgeous. We were staying right on the beach and just loved it! We spent the second day there tooling around the island. I got to go snorkeling along the reef, and it was absolutely gorgeous. In fact, they told us it was the first good day for snorkeling they’d had in about 2 weeks! We then did some spelunking towards some ocean caves, and then proceeded to make begin making ourselves black (some other more red) by laying out on the beach.
Took our bus back to Iloilo and next day headed to Mambucal on Negros Occidental. This is a awesome resort too. It has some natural hot springs and waterfalls and “healthy” mud. So we chilled in our little bungalow, soaked in the dipper pool (a very hot spring), covered ourselves in mud, hiked to waterfalls, marvelled over fruit bats, and ate lots of good food.
Then it was back to Iloilo, where day fourteen’s flight adventure happened–stay posted–this was definitely the adventure of a lifetime . . .
Enjoy the pics!

A lot happened in these two days, but I want to focus on three things:
1. My cousin
2. the dogs
3. Cliff, the talkative Australian

Day 5 began with me getting to my cousin Ash that I haven’t seen in FOREVER! Literally. All thanks to the power of facebook, we were able to find eachother after about 8 or so years of not seeing each other. In the mean time, he’d gotten married and moved to Japan and his in-laws are living in Malaysia for business right now. We met for lunch, and it seemed a bit awkward at first, but I guess blood is thicker than water, because soon we fell into step with each other and began talking away in English at paces suprising to his wife and mother-in-law. His in-laws were extremely gracious and hospitable to me and really treated me well considering they didn’t know me from Adam. Really had a great time reconnecting with Ash–unfortunately, though he’s a photographer, and I always had my camera, we never took a picture of us! Duh! I’m not really bright sometimes.

That night I headed to bed for a nice sleep . . . at least I thought it would be . . . when I was awakened sometime around 2 a.m. with a barking outside my hotel. Now, I have a dog–a beautiful dog that I love and miss–so I am definitely not anti-dog, but this dog had an agenda, and that agenda was to keep me awake. So he (yes, I’m sure it must’ve been a he) barked the entire rest of the evening without stopping to take even one breath, no, not one. The next night, hoping the dog would be too weary for a repeat performance, I headed to bed again. Alas, Malaysia produces a special night-barking breed of dog that never tires of keeping hotel guests awake at all hours. Yeah! Another night of tossing and turning in an attempt to somehow drown out the noise.

Lastly, the talkative Australian, Cliff. I signed up for a tour through my hotel and in the morning proceeded to the lobby where I met Cliff, a sixty-year-old Australian. He was extremely eager to begin the questioning process and proceeded to question me the ENTIRE tour (8 a.m.-4 p.m.) on everything China. Imagine this in an Australian accent: “So, Marianne, do they have temples like this in China? Do you know what these characters mean? How do the girls dress in China? Do you like the food there? I don’t suppose your mum and dad are happy about you being in China? Do they have vans like this is China, Marianne?” INCESSANTLY, for the entire tour. The good part about Cliff is that he was also eager to help me take a picture wherever and whenever: “Marianne, would you like a picture over here? What about over here, Marianne, that’d make a nice picture. My wife says if I don’t come back with pictures of me, she’ll kill me.” Cliff, oh, the memories.

And thus, I headed back to Singapore–another adventure chronicled.

So, Day 3 was in Singapore! Very fun–mostly shopping! We went to an extremely large bookstore that’s in a mall. I could’ve stayed there for hours and spent my entire budget, but, alas, I began to get hungry. We found a cool place that serves meals on a sizzling hot plate, and ate that. Then decided more shopping was necessary. We lost Josie who claimed she had laundry to do, but May and I continued forward. One of my missions is to try cheesecake in an effort to determine which is best. Cheesecake number 2 was a brownie cheesecake–extremely rich, but not too cheesy–we’ll see how it rates with others. I found some Teva’s–my favorite flip flop–on sale and bought some for others too. Then in the basement we were bombarded by sales. Got some super comfortable slip-ons. After continually being tempted by the mall, we decided we should go where our dollar could go farther–Chinatown.

Having already been there once, I was now prepared to shop. I got ALLLLL the presents for my family! Yeah!! Now, I just have to get them to America. I also pick up some more cute flip flops for 3 Singporean dollars and 2 watches for 2.90! We tried some other local cuisine and ended up eating dinner around 8:30 p.m. at a Thai restaurant. Wandered home and started packing for Penang.

Went on a bus/MRT adventure in trying to get to the airport. My hosts had carefully explained to me several times how to get there, making sure I understood all the connections and loop holes. I was a little nervous, but confident I could manage. I arrived at the airport safe and sound. Apparently, Wednesday was airport survey day–I had 2 different ladies give me a survey about the airport and Singapore and such. The second lady gave me a free luggage tag, so that was cool.

I arrived in Penang around noon, checked-in to my hotel, napped, and then set out on a walking adventure. I’m pretty sure I walked all around Georgetown–the city I’m staying in. My feet at the end of the day were filthy. Georgetown and Penang used to be a British colony, so there’s lots of history here and a real mixture of cultures, religions, and such. It’s been fun to see all the different people–Westerners, Indians, Chinese, Muslim . . .

After my walk I figured I’d go to this beach resort place called Batu Ferangghi–they were supposed to have some cool night shops and food. Not being exactly sure how to use the buses, I found the bus station, asked for directions, and got a bus headed to my destination–a good 50 minutes away by bus. After a few stops, a Muslim girl, her sister and mom got on the bus. The girl sat next to me. She couldn’t speak English, but she knew a few words and I played peek-a-boo with her 4-year-old sister during most of the trip. It’s funny how people on buses become friends.

Wandered around the shops, ate some food at a hawker station–good chicken masala and naan. Took a taxi back where my Chinese proved useful again since his English wasn’t so great and Chinese was his first language.

Few hours, I’ll be headed off for lunch with my cousin that I haven’t seen in FOREVER! Literally! More adventures await!

So, I left Changchun around 3 p.m. and arrived in Singapore at 5 a.m. the next day. I was just a bit tired. My friends met me at the airport, and our adventure began! I’m staying with my friend’s brother who’s been great and just bent over backwards to make sure I feel welcome. Sunday involved going to church, me taking a long nap and going out to eat for dinner at Jumbo Seafood where I had some awesome Chili Crab and Black Pepper Crab which is apparentely Singapore’s unofficial “national dish.” We then sauntered over to The Coffee Bean and drank some really great coffee and just sat back and enjoyed the beautiful weather! I got home around midnight ready to sleep.

Monday: Got up at 8 or so, piddled around and finally left the house at 10 a.m., on my own and ready to visit Little India. I was armed with my walking guide and ready for it all. Little India was great! Very much what I’d anticipated. I bought some really pretty clothes for really nice prices and just enjoyed all the culture there. I wandered up and down all of the stalls selling more bangle bracelets than I could possibly even begin to shake a stick at! I stop for about 3 minutes and got a henna tattoo on my wrist and kept wandering. I ate lunch there at a popular restaurant called Komalas–I don’t remember the name of what I ate, but it was good, and in Indian style, I ate it all with my fingers. After lunch, I wandered around a bit more and finally bought some gulam jamun–cream cheese balls in a honey syrup–YUMMMM!

Then I headed to Chinatown–it was almost like coming home. Everyone’s revving up for the New Year celebration, and I pleased several of the salespeople when I broke out my Chinese! By this time, my feet were getting a bit tired–I hadn’t worn the right shoes for walking, and I was ready to head back.

I met my friends at the MRT station–a very nice transit system–and we then went to eat. We sampled pretty much all of the hokker (street vendor-type) delicacies. I was determined that if I’m going to wear flip flops every day, I must have pretty toes, so we found a place, sat back and got our pedicures! Now I’ve uploaded my photos and am ready for bed. See ya’ll tomorrow!

So, it’s been a while since I’ve written an update, but my life’s certainly not been without adventure; it’s just been without time. In just a few days, I’ll be starting out on a real adventure. I’m planning to visit a host of countries during my Chinese New Year holiday–Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia, and the Philippines and then I’ll stop for a few days in Shanghai on my way back. It’s going to be a blast, and I’m going to do my best to chronicle the adventure through the blog. I’m sure they’ll be many stories to tell and things to see.

I’ve realized something about myself: I tell stories in my head. As I look around at everything, I often see stories unfolding and often store them away to tell later. Yesterday, a small story unfolded before me . . .
Yesterday was our first big snow. As we stood outside waiting for our school van to pick us up, we marvelled at how nice the snow makes winter look. Instead of the dull browns of the grass and trees, we had a bright white landscape. In China, snow shoveling is a community effort–or maybe I should say task. After a good snow at our college, students will be assigned to shovel the campus roads and sidewalks during their lunch break. There are no snow plows in China. I walked out of the building after teaching my oral class and saw the shoveling had begun and chuckled to myself as I noticed that most of the boys were doing the shoveling while the girls just stood idly by “participating.” I got into the van and headed home–another campus–and noticed that in front of my dorm the same community effort was transpiring. As I walked toward my dorm, I noticed that here girls were actually participating in the shoveling effort. I watched two girls scrape their snow shovels across the road and toss the accumulating snow into the grass. They both moved back to start another shovel run, and as one of the girls put her shovel to the ground to do her duty, her shovel just fell apart, broke in two, the shovel snapped from the handle. She stopped with that look of incredulity. I could see the thoughts in her head, “This did not just happen!” She turned to her friend with the defective handle raised in demonstration of its utter inadequacy for the task. Her friend laughed and then caught my eye to see that I was laughing wholeheartedly as well. I continued giggling as I went into the warmth of the dorm grateful for stories that are always unfolding around me.

In China, I’ve affectionately been given the monicre of “The Crazy One.”  Over the years, I’ve come to realize that this means different things to different people.  In China, crazy is often viewed as a negative word, so when I went up to my student, commented that I liked her earrings since they were a little crazy, she was slightly disturbed.  Having now clarified to most of my students that being crazy doesn’t mean clinically insane but, in fact, just out of the ordinary, most of them are perfectly happy to call me crazy.

Last night we had an adventure in craziness as my friend invited several of our students to join us in a night of craziness.  Here were some of the results:

So my friend Justin set me up with my very own blog . . . . I don’t know exactly everything I’m supposed to be able to do on this blog, but I do know I’ll be explaining some of life’s adventures that I’ve experienced along the way–past and present.  I’m ready for lots of great adventures, and I know the best Adventure giver is always preparing more for me.  So enjoy the ride with me!