Life in Davao

Well, first of all, our internet connection seems to be rather unreliable at present. We've come to the conclusion that it works for about an hour a day. I just now got connected, so I want to type this quickly.

We've been kind of busy the last three weeks. That's right. Three weeks ago today we left Oregon. This Wednesday it will be three full weeks that we've been here in Davao. It actually feels like it's been longer. Christina has been busy with orientation and meetings. She is also spending lots of time in her books. I have been going shopping quite a bit, picking up all the little things we need around here. I've also been doing most of the cooking. I actually enjoy it. We bought a rice cooker, so cooking rice is such a breeze!

So what kinds of things have we experienced in our first three weeks? We've been to Paradise (it's a beach resort the staff took us to for some orientation sessions). We were warned that when it rains taxis become the premier mode of transportation, and that very night we were stranded at the mall for two hours. We had several bags of groceries (grocery stores are in malls here) just before the mall closed, but it had rained really hard, so there was about 8 inches of water running through the parking lot and neighboring streets. Since everyone was taking a taxi, we could not find one. The few I did find would not take us, I assume because of the flooding. After wandering around the outside of the mall for two hours, a friend here "bailed" us out. I asked how often it floods like that and was told about once a year. So we got it out of the way in our first week! I also took my first taxi ride. To the wrong place. An hour later, I got another taxi and got to the right place. Only to find out they were closed for a holiday. I got bailed out again. That was a very frustrating week for me. But since then I've successfully gotten paperwork completed for getting our visas and taken public transportation. So things are definitely improving.

The other night, we had an interesting lightning storm. There was no rain for a while, so I got out my camera and had some fun. I'd never taken pictures of lightning before, and I was limited as I do not have a tripod, but I learned a lot. I'll post a my favorites below. You can click on any photo to see a larger copy of it. I've also included a watermark on my photos, as I've been hearing stories of photos being “stolen” off blogs.

I think I'll wrap this one up for now. I'd like to get it posted before my connection disappears. I'll try to post again later this week. Thank you for checking this out and for your interest. We truly appreciate your prayers. Things have been going pretty smoothly here, and I'm sure most of it is due to prayers. So thank you all!