one year celebration

Today it is exactly one year that we arrived in the Philippines to live here.
When we decided to move to the Philippines we have made a lot of plans what to do once we were there.
We decided to travel a lot and to see the whole country and to find a definite place to build our own house.
Looking back at this year I have to admit that from all the plans, we didn’t complete much. There are several reasons for it.
The most important reason was my wife’s sister, suffering from cancer in the 4th stage. She was staying in our house the last months before she passed away a month ago. Because of her staying in our place, we were not going out much to look for places. We also didn’t like to travel anywhere because we didn’t like to leave the house as long she was staying in our place.
An other reason is that we didn’t have someone to take care for our house all the time. We don’t like to leave the house alone overnight because it might be spread around that the house is empty and burglars might get everything in it.
In January we went to Bicol, the home province of my wife’s family. We stayed there about ten days and visited a lot of family and friends.
In March we went to Tagaytay for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I wrote two posts about that.
Right after that my wife’s siter become sicker and sicker, so we travelled nowhere anymore other than going into Manila and looking around the region. Also this time it was decided that the patient was going to stay in our place to be taken care for, because our house has more space, is more airy, more quiet and there’s family around her continuesly. During these months we have had visitors almost every day. Yet an other reason for not going anywhere or leaving the house other than going to the market and the supermarket.
Now she has passed away, also our help decided to leave us. It’s just the two of us now. My wife is doing the laundry by herself, and on the classic Filipino way: by hand.
We do the cooking ourselves. Even me, I’m cooking a few times a week. We clean the house and take care for Emily (our pet cat brought one year ago from Holland).

We have all the time to our selves now. We can go out, but not overnight. We can leave in the morning and be home early evening. This gives us a little time to search for a place to live and to build our own house. That’s what we have been doing already a little.
Last week we were forced by typhoon Onday to stay at home. It’s only in the neighborhood where we could go. Too many places are still flooded or the streets are filled with garbage and debris. On the other hand this is a perfect time to look around for -non flooded- areas where we can buy a lot eventually.

Tags: - manila, - Philippines, celebration