Making Friends 101

Not that Lindsay and I don't have loads to talk about but at times we want to make some friends! We decided that while at Club Serena we were going to make some friends even if it killed us. We brought Yahtzee, scrabble, cards and our game faces. We were happy to meet the Jesuits but bummed to find out they were leaving the next day. We saw a French family but they were very busy with golfing, diving and being French. We decided to start sitting up at the bar in the evenings and get to know the wait staff. This proved to be a huge success. We met two of the waiters who were our age (Jofel and John Ray) and of course were married with kids. Being that we were two young, white women (and the priests told the whole wait staff to take good care of us), they were at our beckon call.

Not only did we make friends with Jofel and John Ray, we also beat them shamelessly in hearts. Every night at the end of their shift we played cards for an hour. The first night they were terrible and we gave them mercy, the second night they improved and we still showed a little mercy and the third night they finally got the hang of it and there was no holding back. All three nights we still whooped them.

We also got a chance to make friends with the rest of the staff and make sure that our pancakes were always made to our liking (with whipped cream and bananas), and when we wanted a chocolate milkshake we instructed Jofel on how to make it and he did. It was incredible. We had dessert about 5 times a day. Sometimes it was fried bananas, other times chocolate cake, mango shakes, bubble gum ice cream, native hot chocolate and fresh fruit. It was amazing.

One afternoon we coerced John Ray to take us into town on his motorbike to go get hot cheesy rolls from our favorite bakery. During our 20 minute moto ride, John Ray knew and waved/honked at nearly every passerby. He said most of the people were curious as to who his American friends were and he was an immediate superstar. He showed us the local "dating" spot aka the pier and tried to get us to come to the disco with him. We politely declined.

The next local we met was Rick, a tattoo and henna artist. Rick came to the Club Serena on Friday night and did amazing (henna) tattoos for us. Pics of this on the blog soon! Our last local friend was a nine year old girl- Cherry. Her mom was the hotel manager and she pretty much lived the life of a resort bum. She played scrabble with us, ate ice cream, and even had sleep over with some hotel guests who had kids around her age. She said she would cry when we left but somehow I think she will be infatuated with another guest soon enough.

The resort was an incredible experience minus one aspect: the money. We have been back for over 24 hours and still haven't paid. The visa machine at the resort didn't work (no surprise there) and the one in the city office also didn't work due to a brown out (power outage) throughout the city. We are now waiting for the resort to pick us up so we can finally pay for our stay!

We head to Thailand tomorrow and will be cruising through the country for two weeks. This will be a whole different type of Asia with plenty of new experiences! I will definitely do a few more entries summing up my experiences here in Philippines and at Glory Reborn.

Look at all the new pics!