I don't know about this place yet. It's mostly just been a fairly negative experience for me. My mental space (like the panic attack long-coming and suffocating last night) isn't the best, my complaint list grows.
And it really comes down to this. I just don't know this place. 40,000 people per square kilometer in this city. A shanty-town you get jumped into to live there built under the shade of my hotel with it's non-stop chorus of roosters crowing and children shrieking. The food is, well, every part of the animal I've avoided for the most part, a notable lack of vegetables, and covered in a mayo-garlic sauce. It has cockroaches like Thailand has mosquitos.
Today was the most positive of the days I've spent here so far. Sure, I couldn't be more than 3 meters from the hotel bathroom for most of the day, but the times I left the room were insightful into life here. I went with Aaron to see his new school, meet a group of ex-pats in a 99% Filipino world, and got enveloped into a community. This experience was followed hours later by an evening excursion for dinner. Aaron and I walked down the narrow street from our hotel, Dona Soledad, winding through tight-packed gated communities fringed with shanty-towns, avoiding old puddles of liquid splashed by tricycle motorbike taxis as they bounced through the pot holes, hugging tight to narrow sidewalks, past dead animals, city-grazing goats, and a stream of Filipinos enjoying a break in the heat. We ended up at a night market with narrow, simple stalls. The tables in front held fish so fresh they were still trying to escape their fate with heroic leaps. There were many local vegetables, several types of cabbages, greens to stew, carrots fat and short, lean chunks of pork cut deftly into squares, and pineapple that when tasted had vanilla and butterscotch hiding in its flesh.
escaping the heat... or noise
cityscape
electricity
For trying to plan on moving to a place, I feel like this experience has been extremely limited. More to explore later, right? At this point, the city is overwhelming, I don't know where to buy food that doesn't require a kitchen, doesn't tether me to a bathroom. I just learned how to dial the five-number-food-delivery numbers. So when the ad says to just dial 87878, they actually mean 632-87878. Sure, that makes sense??? I am reminded of my first few days in Bali, crammed into the unrelenting heat and tourist culture of Seminyak, not sure I liked anything about Indonesia and flabbergasted at all of the romanticism of that place. It's like, Have you BEEN to Bali? Eh, South Pacfic, the Musical? I'm getting a whole lot more than men washed out my hair....
But that's another place, another time.
Tomorrow is a flight to Palawan and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, some of the best diving, and a decided lack of electricity for the long Memorial Weekend. I'm rushing to do all of the work I can before we go, fighting the strong need for sleep that eludes me after my work day ends at 1am, choosing 12 hours later to strike with urgency. Aaron and I are into intense conversation. His father has been in a car accident and Aaron is on the other side of the world, helpless, ill-informed, and staring down the next two years in of his life in a country he's seen for the first time 4 days ago. Updated today that his father is no longer in ICU, but possibly headed to surgery to remove the broken rib from his lung. I'm in a panic-fueled state of looking at Manila as a place I'll be living for a while, having to head to Portland in 2 weeks, and being unable to figure out how to dial a local number.
Amazingly, it doesn't matter how many times I've done this learning-a-whole-new-place thing in the last six months, I'm still overwhelmed, overheated, tired, sick, and wanting a vacation from myself.
And it's just that quality of same-ness that gives me the hope that like everywhere else I've put in the time and gotten to know, I will come to love this place, to be adept here, to thrive here. Doesn't mean the learning curve is any less of a pain in the ass, but there's that shade in the bright spot to look forward to.