Tuesday, January 8, 2008: The Old Apartment	Return to Journal TOC >>
After returning to Metro Manila, the last stop of the evening is to Ro’s old neighborhood. Ro’s childhood friend Peachy (matron of honor at our wedding) lives in the U.S. now, but her Tita Lyn still lives in the apartment Peachy lived, and runs the same sari-sari (means ‘variety’) store – that Ro remembers, stocked with a little bit of everything. She shoos some local kids out, gives Ro a big hug, and they chat in Tagalog for a little while. Then Ro shows me where the apartment she grew up in used to be, before we move on. We’re having dinner with another childhood friend, Sary, and her husband Peter, who still live in the same neighborhood (though not the same house). We bang on the gate for a while with no answer. There’s a bit of a crowd outside by then, since Americans are pretty atypical in this neighborhood, and openly staring isn’t rude here (or at least, openly staring at an American isn’t rude here). When the gate finally opens and a servant admits us, we get another pleasant surprise: Shelly, Sary’s sister, another old friend from the neighborhood who Ro had lost touch with, will be joining us. After conversation and admiration of Sary and Peter’s house and son Lanz, and of Peter’s international beer can collection (only cans, no bottles) the servants bring out dinner of adobo and fish, followed by Dutch ice cream. More conversation follows, and the university connection comes up again. Sary’s family owns (and Shelly also works as a financial officer at) a school in San Pablo, Laguna, south of Manila. (Many colleges in the Philippines also include high schools and sometimes grade schools as well, as the ones in Laguna and Angeles City do.) They would also love to offer online classes, and want to meet again so we can demonstrate the courses. When Ro tells them that I enjoy karaoke but have yet to do any singing in the Philippines - where karaoke is a national obsession - it’s agreed that we’ll meet later in the trip for a course demo followed by an evening of karaoke. My head’s still spinning a bit about how the pleasure trip seems to be evolving at least in part into a business trip by the time the driver drops us back at the pensionne.
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