What’s next

As the year radidly draws to a close, I’m sure some of you are wondering what I’ll be doing next.  Me too!  :)  The original plan was to spend 3 months in four different countries, volunteering in each place.  Since I left the US in early January, that would put my return a few months away.  Of course, I’ve also maintained that if I found a place that I fell in love with while traveling, I’d be open to staying longer.  That definitely hasn’t happened.  And part of me is really ready to return to the US.  But returning isn’t all that straightforward for several reasons:

1) Where to live:  I definitely don’t want to return to DC.  And I also want to avoid my San Francisco experience where I moved somewhere where I didn’t know anyone.  At the same time, I’m also tired of big cities, I’d like to be near water (ocean, river, lake, something), I want a place with relatively low-cost of living, and I want a place where it doesn’t get too cold.  Unfortunately, I don’t know of anyplace that fits all those criteria.

2) Work: I had hoped my time away and my volunteering would help clarify what I want to do for a living.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t.  I still have no idea.  I’m tired of spending 40 hours a week at jobs that don’t inspire me, that leave me wondering what else there is.  

3) Money:  Before I left, I made the mistake of bragging that I could travel for about 7 years without working.  Me and my big mouth!  Unfortunately, about 25% of my savings were in a regular savings account and the rest were in mutual funds.  Which if you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that the stock market (and hence my mutual funds), have been going down, down, down.  I definitely didn’t expect this.  Who did?  I still have plenty of money left.  Just a lot less than I expected at this point in my travels.  And since I have no idea where I’m going to live, what sort of work I’m going to get, how much I’ll earn, how long it will take for me to find a job, etc,  I’m a bit leery of returning.  I could go about 4-6 months without work before my regular savings would be gone and I’d need to start selling my mutual funds at a loss.  Which I definitely don’t want to do.

4) Health Insurance: Right now, I have travel insurance which costs about $40 a month.  It covers me for theft as well as any sort of health emergency.  Unfortunately, the second I return to the US, my travel insurance is no longer valid.  And with my history of cancer, there’s no way I can purchase my own.  So until I get a job, I’ll have no insurance.  

Honestly, as much as part of me wants to return to the US, this just seems like a bad time to return given what’s happening with the economy.  For now, I plan on being in the Philippines till mid-November.  After that it’s possible I’ll return to the US.  But I’ll have to give it considerable thought.  The other option I’m considering is going somewhere to teach English for a while and rebuild my savings.  Unfortunately, the places where the money is the best aren’t places that appeal to me.  The Middle East, Korea, Taiwan, or Japan.

May be time to flip a coin….

More photos

Time for some more photos.  Three albums:

Cebu:  Finally getting around to posting my Cebu photos.  First up are photos from an old fort.  Second are photos from the Catholic cathedral.  Next are a couple photos of a cross that contains splinters from a cross that Magellan planted on the shores of Cebu (he was killed on an island across from Cebu).  Finally, one “funny” photo.

http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/465653.bb2b11c6d96/editor

Davao:  

First photos are of a buddhist temple.  I assume this is a Chinese buddhist temple because there’s a sizeable Chinese population here.  Next are photos of a Taoist temple.  After that, are some photos of the Davao shoreline.  Finally, there are three photos of Davao taken from Samal Island (about a 5 minute boat trip from Davao) with Mt. Apo in the background.

http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/465655.5de47d7bef3/editor

More DMC Kids:

Basically the same kids as before.  There’s a boy in some of the pictures…I have no idea who he is.  And there’s an 8 year old girl (Jo-Em) in the last two pictures.  And while I’m at it, I’ll give you a quick update on a couple of the kids.  Ton-Ton is apparantly not doing well.  He wants to come back to the hospital but his parents don’t have the money to bring him back (they live about 8 hours away).  I also saw Marilyn the other day.  She had a blood transfusion.  She looked worse then I’ve seen her before but better than I expected. And she was her normal, smiling, laughing self.

http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/465658.76404b813f3/editor

shopping for underwear

Now there’s a title that you probably didn’t expect!  Most veteran travelers recommend that you take 2-4 pair of underwear for an extended trip like mine.  And then wear each pair multiple times before you wash.  Sorry, but I find that gross…I like putting on clean underwear in the morning so I brought way more than 2-4 pairs.  But I’ve found that traveling and living in other countries is hard on my clothes.  Particularly since I often have to wash my clothes by hand and I really don’t know how to do that properly.

Anyway, the other day I decided it was time for new underwear.  So I headed to the mall to go to the department store.  I assumed this would be fairly easy.  Boy was a wrong!  Remember what I said in a prior post about overly helpful clerks in the deparment stores?  Well…..I head over to the undergarment deparment and there are no fewer than 10 clerks in the department.  I kid you not.  Why oh why would any store need 10 clerks in their undergarment department?  Oh, and this is just the men’s department.  

On top of that, every one of the clerks was female.  Now.  I’m not sure how I would feel about having a male clerk help me shop for underwear.  But I’m pretty certain that I don’t want a woman helping me!  And yet no matter how many times I told them I was “just looking” they wouldn’t leave me alone.  ”Briefs, sir?”  

I left emptyhanded.  I went to another mall.  Same thing.  This one woman would not give up no matter how many times I told her I was just looking.  Eventually I went back to the first mall and just grabbed 3 pair of the cheapest underwear I could find.

Here’s the thing.  I actually know how to buy underwear. Believe it or not, I’ve done this before.  There are lots of things I need help with.  This isn’t one of them.  In fact, of all the things I’m qualified to do, buying underwear for myself is near the top of the list.  

(by the way, this was intended to be a funny post, but I’m not sure it came out that way).

sad news

Last week, I mentioned that Marilyn was in the Intensive Care.  She’s still there and is in critical condition.  I just found this out today so I haven’t seen her yet.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to see her on Monday.  I was told that things don’t look good.  I’m definitely feeling sad right now.

The Hardest Things…

Hard Things: There are two or three things that I find hard about living in foreign countries.  One is not having a car.  Of course not having a car is good for the environment.  But it makes it difficult to get to places I might want to go to.  And it also makes it hard to string errands together.  I find myself running home to drop something off and then going back out again.

Another difficult thing is that the entertainment options are so much more limited than in the US.  Granted there were times when I got bored in the US, but it’s much more frequent since I’ve been traveling.  Besides dinner, coffee, and movies, there aren’t a lot of options.  

Then there’s the heat, particualrly in Thailand and the Philippines.  I walk out the door and I start sweating right away.  Not sure how people live in this kind of weather all the time.  I suppose if you grow up here, you’re just used to it.

Movies: A while back I said that Hollywood blockbusters get released here the same day they do in the US.  That turns out not to be true.  In fact, the movie selection for the past 3 weeks has been dreadful.  Generally two filipino movies (I was told that even filipinos don’t like filipino movies), two slasher/horror movies, and a couple of US low-budget, straight to DVD movies.

Food:  As I’ve mentioned before, filipino cuisine isn’t very vegetarian friendly.  Even if you order something innocuous sounding like vegetables and rice, they often throw a little meat in with the vegetables.  Fortunatley, there are a few ethnic restaurants here.  So far I’ve found one Thai restaurant, 2 Indian, and 3 Vietnamese.  Plus there are pizza places where you can get a veggie pizza.  And since I have a kitchen I also do some cooking myself.