Market

We took a little trip to the Market this morning. I expected the markets to look like this, but so far all I had seen were the malls. Almost like American malls. It was a very interesting experience.
Each stand either has lot and lots of fish, or lots and lots of chicken, whole chicken or pieces. It's just like a pile 2x2 of chicken legs or thighs. then you go 2 tables down and it's the same thing. All sorts of fish. then they have the vegetable section, or fruit. Piles of all sorts of weird fruits. they did have pineapple, watermelon, mango's (I love mango's)
Fish heads
These are chicken heads and chicken feet. Don't you just wish you could buy these in the states!

Monica's letter of her day

Today i got go to the movies with three of the students here and my friend Josie. So first the lady who owns the clinic Kris Josie's mom picked me up and then picked Josie up and we went to the orphanage were there were about ten to twelve baby boy's around ages one and two and only one baby girl. One of the little boys there his mom dropped him off there at the orphanage on his birthday, not a very good birthday present.The only girl there her mom brought her there because she had found really good job it was full time and so she couldn't take care of her.
After i visited the orphanage with Josie her parents and her sister came and picked us up and then we went to an open house at Josie's school. Then we went to Josie's house and she took a quick shower because we both smelled like baby's. Then Kris took us back to the orange house and then i got to take a quick shower. Then Josie, Lois, jenny, Joana and me all walked down the street and got a taxi to one of the big malls here. then we went inside and jenny went to the seconded level looking for the movie theater and Lois went to get pizza and Josie Joana and me went get fruit smoothies and popcorn and cotton candy. then we went upstairs to the theater and watched surfs up! and we ate pizza popcorn fruit smoothies and cotton candy.
then we went outside and got on a jeepney [its a big jeep with big long seats in it. and rode back to the orange house

Lots of pictures

This is Monica and Josse. Monica was visiting her school for the day She had to wear a uniform. It is common to have to wear uniforms here. It looks like almost every job has a uniform.
This is another basket house. Notice the electric meter!
Then on the same street they are building this huge beautiful building.
This house is made out of bamboo.
Just sites along the road
This is the " front yard" They have porches, not really yards. The clothes on the line is in almost every yard.
This is a peddle cabs. They are very common form of transportation. It cost about 6 pesos or 12 cents and they have to work pretty hard to peddle a couple people.
this is a house made like a basket. There are no windows. But the whole house is a big basket. The roof is tin. the basket house is pretty common. sometimes they have stores made out of the basket weave and they varnish it. I wonder how long it holds up.
just some sites on the way to the store.
This is placenta soap. I couldn't believe it. I was looking at papaya soap and the lady picked this up and said here is placenta soap, it's good for you. How gross!

the picture below I took for you Rick, It's a fender amp I think.
didn't you work for Fender company? The price is on the picture below. the price for the Fender is 58950 pesos. Each 1000 pesos is about $20 American dollars. About $1200 I think.




this one is a pillow fight the interns were having with Monica. The top picture is the prenatal room. We do approximately 50-60 prenatal 5 days a week. Monday is intakes and include pap smears and taking history's. Of course we don't take history because although we were told most people speak English it is not true. Most people speak a little English, but the communication is defiantly a problem.

the next picture is there neat dish drainers. I thought they were more practical then ours.

monica's orphanage visit

Monica spent an afternoon at the orphanage. Here are some pictures of her holding the baby's. so many sad situations here. Unfaithful mates, husbands leaving wives with no support. Two of the children Monica saw that day, the moms just dropped them off there and never returned.

long day

Well my day started with the suturing at 5:30. Well getting up at 5:30 has become pretty normal so after I was done suturing I didn't go back to sleep, I made some breakfast and checked e mail. I brought some of my homemade pancake mix from home. I'm glad I did, because it's pretty slim pickings otherwise. There are plenty of eggs, the yolks break apart as soon as you crack them. The poor chickens here probably don't get any greens. This is true city. Houses are right up against each other, and there are cement porches, but really no yards. So you see these little skinny chickens running around and I'm not sure what they eat.
So back to my day.......
The director of the school wanted to take Monica and I to a certain mall. they have a lot of malls here. So we were ready by 9 am. I actually saw 3 stop lights. Kris explained that everyone knows which ones you need to obey. She said they put a few lights in last yr but found it made traffic worse, so now they blink and no one paid any attention to it.
Probably half the mall is a food booths. there are so many people in every shop to help you. Monica wanted to look for a pair of carpi's. So we asked the 1st person we saw. Within a few minutes we had 6 people trying to find what she wanted and more. Then they come to the changing room with us, and look at everything she trys on, and says "that's pretty, or you need a larger size" and one of them runs off to grab it. Then they were repeating her name "mon-i -c a" over and over. They found it an interesting name. Amazing service! I'm afraid it's a little overwhelming.
Melamine plates are a big thing over here. They have lots of designs and variety. I bought a whole stack of small bowls for about 16 cents each.
Well we had a little miracle that I praise God for. Monica accidentally left her purse in a chair. It had the camera and some money in it. We had gone upstairs and came down 10 min. later without noticing yet it was missing. When this young lady runs up "mam" and brings the purse to us. Nothing missing! People are so sweet here. They call you mam or mum a lot. It's an equivalent to yes mam in the south, but it's done in this certain same tone, and when you go to the stores you hear it about 100 times. They answer everything with a yes mum, or no mum or thank you mum. It's really sweet.
I had to be on my shift at 2 and we rushed back, I had barely enough time to get some scrubs on and run over only to sit and do nothing as there were no lady's in labor again. For the interns that need numbers it's so frustrating when it's slow.
Well eventually someone came in a 1st time mom, Christians and a sweet couple whose husband was so attentive to her. She gave birth around 10 pm, and she tore really bad. Well I hate to see people tear, but it is so good to get some practice with these wonderful midwives working with me. It was 2nd degree, but pretty close to 3rd. Defiantly a the worst tear for me to have to suture. It took me an 1.5 hours, the poor mom. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to practice this skill. It makes me feel so good that I am actually learning and getting confident in it.
Now it's 2:30 am and suturing must have given me an adrenalin rush, because I'm not so tired. We have another mom in labor now. Hopefully she will birth before my shift is over at 6,
One of the interns has a little baby they are taking care of. He weighs only 7 lbs but he's 9 months old. I guess his mom was sick, so the missionary offered to care for the baby till she is better. They have had him for a month and they are trying to get enough nutrition in the little guy. He has the eyes of a 9 mo old, but a body like a 2 mo. when they first brought him home, he couldn't even hold up his head!
My shift ends at 6 am and I'm sure I'll sleep deep as I have had too many short nights lately.

suture

I worked from 8 am to 10 pm yesterday, with only one birth. It was slow again. My sunburn hurt so bad i had to take IB profen to sleep. The sun didn't seem that hot at the beach, but it must have been! So I did sleep well until I got a text message at 5:30, "do you want to come suture?" This is the 1st tear the whole time I've been here.
She was a girl 21 yrs old, but the smaller then Monica. In fact 2 of the midwives here are shorter then Monica even. They think that's so funny. I took a picture of them because she was so amazed how tall Monica is. Monica is getting tall, but she is still only about 5 feet.
It was still only a little tear. so it was perfect to practice on. I didn't even shake this time. I just don't do it enough to feel confident. The midwife, that I literally had to look down at (shorter then you Martha) was very patient with teaching me. So opposite from Casa. When I was going to suture there they got frustrated first thing.
The midwives we work with are happy and sweet and love the Lord. We had a bible study last night, boy then can sing. It was a good study too. One of the students husbands taught.

pictures of paridise island

They have ships going by on the gulf
these men would walk around singing. It was funny the american songs, some of the oldies they were singing.
Monica snorkeling
Snorkel monster
Well the picture order got messed up, so you get to see them out of order. This is me with the snorkel outfit. I sure didn't realize how aggressive the sun was. I'm hurting with sunburn now.

Monica with our pineapple feast, notice the drink in the pinnapple.
The sand was so soft and fine, it would feel really nice to pile it on our feet.
Here is Monica's pineapple glass again
This was walking to the boat. Notice no guard rail. I like guard rails!
This is on the boat. People are very friendly and the guy in front of us asked if we would like him to snap our picture for us.

The water is so clear you could see the fish even in the picture.

Paradise island

I had a full day off today, so I decided this would be the day I would bring Monica to Paradise island. If you look at a map of the Philippines, Davao is way down at the bottom. there is ocean on one side, gulf on the other side. Paradise island is in this gulf.
I worked all night, but the shift was almost dead. We had one lady with blood pressure of 180/120 (if I remember right) We transported her. So we (Monica was over at the clinic with me, all dressed in her scrubs) pretty much slept though the night. So we got home at 6 am, ate a healthy breakfast and got ready to go. We got a taxi to get there, it only cost 54 pesos or about $1 to get there, but taxi's are the most expensive way to travel around here. But we wanted to make sure we didn't end up lost trying to save money. Monica wanted to go on motorcycles. As that is one form of transportation. I just wasn't up to that. The taxi driver actually used his blinker a few times. He seemed like one of the safer drivers. Every time I go anywhere I am amazed, shocked, scared, etc of how the traffic flows, how no one gets hit, at least what I have seen. The children hanging close to cars is the scariest thing for me. 18 mo old 1 foot from the car, the taxi driver just honks and drives on with little children all over. I know I've said this before, but I'm still amazed that a big city like this can go with out stop signs or lights. I've never seen one in a city of a million people.
So we got to the dock and paid 7 pesos each (14 cents) to get across this gulf. It was beautiful. After the awful smog of the city to be out on the ocean was very refreshing. It was only a 6minute ride. So this is a resort area. A restaurant on a beach with tables and people serving you. The water was beautiful, clear and warm. The sand was fine and they have people cleaning constantly. We even saw someone sifting sand.
So we swam and snorkeled. It was so fun,. I had never snorkeled before. It was great, you could see fish swimming by our feet, I even saw a crab once walking in it's shell. Amazing. Then I sat on the beach and read a book, slept a little and we ate. We ordered pineapple and they gave us each a whole pineapple cut up. then we ordered BBQ chicken, it was really good. they couldn't believe we were not going to order rice with it. Monica got a fruit shake and it was served in a hollowed out pineapple.
So we finally were ready to leave about 4 and we realized that both our towels were very sandy and wet. So when we went to shower and dress we had a little problem. We also didn't realize that we were sun burnt. People had told us being close to the equator that the sun could be aggressive. Well I used a little sun screen, but I don't think that stuff is healthy so I didn't use lots. Well I can't even tell I used it. We are both burnt. It's sort of nice for the white Montanian to get some sun.
So on the way home we decided to try a Jeepny. They are only 9 pesos each to one spot and then I would take a tracy cab from there for 6 pesos. So for 24 pesos or about 50 cents we would get home. Well that was an exciting trip. I suppose I needed to experience it once, but next time I think it would be worth the extra 50 cents. The Jeepney fits in as many as they can squeeze in. They constantly stop and try to talk people in to getting on their jeepney. Even if it's the middle of the road they just stop and stop traffic. No one honks or gets mad. The only time they honk is when they need to tell people they are there. Which is often, but it's not the same kind of honking like in Chicago or NY. During this whole ride the exhaust is so bad in the city, that many people have a hanky they carry around to cover their mouth and nose. So by the time I got to Victoria plaza I was nauseated and didn't feel good at all. So we stopped in the mall to get a few grocery's and a pair of flip flops. We sat down and drank another one of those wonderful fruit drinks. this time I got mango and melon. I like the pineapple in it though. A whole fresh pineapple only cost 40 cents American. So we can eat as much as we can, but carrying them home can be a challenge.
So it was a wonderful restful day. I work 2 shifts tomorrow, and Monica is going to school with Josse. She goes to a Christian school that is mostly missionary children.
So I'll post a bunch of pictures of our day on the next post, because I'm having issues with the computer and Internet here.

pictures from our shopping trip

this is me on bed with a huge towel on it for the blanket.
leg was really hurting so I took a little rest.
they always have lots of people around to help you and ck out. they seal each bag, tape the receipt to the bag and check it when you leave the store.

Lots of fabric at this store, most was 67-98 pesos a meter so you about double it to get American cost.
Julia was in her glory with wonderful fabric for great prices
the Filipino people love their picture taken

pictures

these are a few more pictures from Jack's ridge.




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