Goodbyes

Time has slipped up on me and I just realized I haven't blogged in 2 weeks. I have been enjoying the kids being out of school and we have been working on our latest newsletter so I guess I haven't really thought about blogging. It is hard to believe that this time last year we were in the midst of saying goodbye to family friends. Unfortunately, that is a process that happens over and over again for the missionary. We have just recently had to say a short goodbye to our ministry partners. Scott and Cindy have returned to the US on furlough until at least January, maybe a year. Allan is now "in charge" at the clinic. The clinic is quieter and so is our house. The Nelsen's live about 10 feet from us so we are used to having someone always around. We really notice their absence at night when their house remains dark and no one pops by for a visit. At the end of July, we will once again have neighbors when another missionary family moves in until the Nelsen's return. The kids are looking forward to having kids their age from school to play with in the yard.

Besides saying goodbye to the Nelsen's and other families heading home for a year furlough, the kids especially have had a hard time saying goodbye to kids who are moving on--either back to their passport countries or on other fields of service. This year at Faith there seemed to be a higher proportion of kids who would not be returning than in the past. Emily and Will both made good friends this year who will not return. Emily's grade was particularly hit hard as almost a 4th left the Philippines for good. Making new friends and then having them move on was one of the things we knew was tough about missionary life.

Emily's new friend Katie who has left the Philippines for the US

Happy Anniversary!

Today Allan and I celebrated 15 years of marriage. We left the kids home and went out for a nice lunch at one of our favorite Filipino restaurants--a little place that serves American food called TGIFridays. We enjoyed one of Allan's favorite American foods- baby back ribs! This seems fitting since we spent our honeymoon in Gatlinburg, TN and ate alot of ribs that week. It was a yummy meal and we enjoyed spending time together. We have gotten to spend more time together in the last year than in any other year of our marriage.



TGIFridays at Sta. Lucia, Philippines







The restaurant we went to today is near the Marikina River. When most people who were born before 1975 think of the Philippines, they remember the tv images of the closet of Imelda Marcos and all those shoes. Marikina is the shoe making district of the Philippines and they pay tribute to Imelda with a shoe museum that contains about 250 pairs of her shoes. In the middle of the Marikina River is a barge with a large high heeled shoe.

Across the Marikina River, near the big shoe is a monument to the of history Marikina. Marikina was one of the largest private haciendas in the Philippines during the Spanish colonization. Its residents were comprised mostly of farmers. These farmers were quite productive allowing each family to own more than two carabaos. During that time, if you possessed several carabaos you would be considered really rich. This herd of 28 stone carabaos follows the old path taken by the carabaos from their owner's homes to the fields as a reminder that Marikina was once abundant farmland. I am not sure why one of them is white.

A Road Trip

There are some advantages to living in the Philippines that we didn't have in the US. One thing we rarely did when we lived in the states was go to the movies. It is just too expensive. Here we can go see a movie for under $2 a person. So it is a nice treat to see a movie. It is also one of the few places you feel cold and might need a sweater because they set the air conditioning so low.
Today after church we went to see the new Disney Pixar movie, Cars. It was like a little slice of America to fill our senses. If you haven't seen it, the movie itself is gorgeous. The animation is almost realistic. The music is fun and it is a great flick to see on the big screen. The message that others are more important than fame and money was a great one for the kids too. Will loved it too! He loved the cars and the fact that "nothing jumps out at you."
Early on in the movie the main character drives from somewhere down south to California on I-40. Allan and I both sighed and enjoyed the sight of cars moving across the American landscape at a decent pace. We just don't see much--well actually any, of the open road. Driving has definately been one of the biggest adjustments for us. For those of you who live in a big city and spend time sitting in traffic, maybe you can relate a little. In the places we have lived in recent years we had to make sure we didn't go too fast, not so here.
It was also neat to hear the Filipino family behind us explain or try to figure out some of of the American idiomatic expressions. At one point, one character states--"I having as much fun as a tornado in a trailer park." It was a comment much puzzled on by the parents behind us. I guess so since the Philippines has neither tornados or trailer parks.
So I highly recommend Cars if you are looking for a little slice of nostalgia. We enjoyed being transported back to the US via the sights along Route 66!

Do you have night sweats?

Back in September I wrote about modifying my list of standard medical questions after a patient said "the ants like my urine". Here's the link to the whole story:
http://thegilmers.blogspot.com/2005/09/self-diagnosing-diabetes-mellitus.html

Since adding this question to my standard list which doctors call the "Review of Systems", I have made a few other cultural adaptations to the question list (translating into Tagalog the most obvious adaptation). One of the questions that I have decided to drop from the regular use is: "Do you have night sweats?" The reason I decided to drop it is because most of our patients live in make-shift housing with cinder block walls and sheet metal roofs. Often they lack electrical power and thus no fan to move the air around either. Now even in our house which was designed to be cooler and has electricity for fans, it can still get pretty hot. Lately when we have been going to bed, it has been in the 87 - 90 degree (F) range. I don't know about you but that is enough to make me have night sweats whether I'm sick or not. So I have to question the usefullness of the information gained from this question...
Or maybe I'll just quit using it because I could never quite pronounce the Tagalog word for night sweats anyway.

More unexpected Visitors

The rains have come to the Philippines giving us a break from the extremely hot weather. While it hasn't cooled down completely, the evenings are once again tolerable. Unfortunately we will now have rain until September or October and things will begin to mildew and mold once more. The beginnings of rainy season brought many creatures into our house. We began to see large black centipedes crawling across the floor. WAGs wasn't even interested in messing with them after the first day so we have been constantly picking them up over the last 2 weeks. They are also not very photogenic. This was the best picture I could take.

We have had an invasion of other creatures too. One night upstairs there were small winged bugs flying everywhere. There must have been 50-100 of them. Allan brought up the bug spray and they began "dropping like flys". We were told the rains bring out the bugs and centipedes. While we have never had as many come inside as we did that night, we have had a few visit us every evening. Tonight though was a different story. A big winged bug that resembled the first ones upstairs began flying around the light. Soon it was 2, then 3, then 4, then....well you get the point. I began to kill the ones who flew down near the floor and soon there were none left. Before long, they began coming again. Allan and I discovered they were all over the screens trying to get in. Soon there were many slipping in through the screen, flying and swarming around. Allan thought they were flying termites and after a google search on the internet, I discovered he was right. We seem to have conquered them for the evening. Thanks to our handy bug killer spray. Ah the joys of learning to live in the tropics! I do hope they fly onto somewhere else tomorrow.

What a flying termite looks like