Our Trip to Manila

Hi Family and Friends! We have started this blog to try and document everything about our 6 months living here in the Philippines. We are newbies at this whole blogging world so be patient with us : ) We are excited to say that we nearly have two weeks under our belt of living in Southeast Asia. But the beginning wasn't so easy. We had a great time living in Houston and it was so hard to leave. The packing up of our Houston place was extremely smooth. We think that was the easiest part since we are now pros moving three times in the last 2 years. In the process of all the packing Liam taught himself to pull up onto things. And he conducted what we called our daily luggage inspections where he was pulling out, and leaving what he felt was needed in the suitcases. We then stayed in a hotel for one night in Houston while Andrew finished work, and then quite perfectly spent our last two nights at the Pfeiffer Inn. The next morning we spent packing up and spending our afternoon with the Pfeiffers until we had to leave for the airport at 1pm. We made it to the airport with two luggage carts containing 7 checked bags and 5 carry-ons! We had some good samaratins that helped us lug our carts and stroller from the rental car return to our ticketing counter. Then we began the journey....

 Liam making himself more than comfortable at the Pfeiffer Inn

 Our last day in our Houston home. Daddy feeding Liam without a highchair.

 Liam conducting one of his daily luggage inspections

After shuffling some of our things around so that none of our 7 checked bags were overweight we quickly boarded our flight to San Francisco. This flight was a piece of cake for Liam. He has now flown across the country about 4 times at 7 months old! We were even able to watch the first half of the Packers beating the Falcons on the plane. It was especially hectic when we made it to San Francisco because we had to take a long shuttle, leave the airport, and then go back through ticketing and security in the international terminal. It was about 8pm PST which for us was 10pm and we were already tired and ready for bed. By the time we made it to the ticketing counter for Philippine Airlines I about fainted when in the seemingly deserted airport all the sudden there appeared a crowd of about 500 people all waiting in line at the Philippine ticketing counter. Luckily we were able to get into a shorter line because most of the people were on standby from a previously cancelled flight. Finally, after we made it through ticketing and security for our second time that day we were able to relax, get a bite to eat, and finish watching the Packers kill the Falcons : )

It was pretty surreal boarding the plane with all of our excitement, fatigue, and worries all balled up into one. We boarded the plane at about 8:30 PST, but we did not take off until about 10pm. So we had a lot of time to walk around our double decker plane and meet some of the other passengers. Liam was the life of the party. Everyone in our section came up to see him and try and get a smile from him. All in all once we took of it was really smooth sailing. They kept the plane dark and quite for most of the flight so Liam slept most of the flight and then played on the floor for short hour periods in between his sleeps. He seemed more relaxed and slept better than Andrew and I. So, by the time we made it to Manila we were walking zombies with a very smiley and giddy baby.

 Daddy feeding baby in the airport

 Playing on the floor in the airplane

 This was the "crib" they gave us for Liam...he wasn't having that. He slept with us the whole time. 

We arrived in Manila at 6am local time. And from the moment we stepped off the plane we could feel the humidity. It was hot and sticky! When we made our way through customs we then had our first Asian culture shock and that is the crowds. The Philippines, especially Manila, is densely overpopulated and from the moment we stepped out of customs into baggage we could see it for ourselves. There were about 4-5 baggage claim carousels and each of them was swarmed with hundreds of people all equipped with a baggage cart. And no one stepped out of the way, so Andrew had to fight his way in and out of the crowd to get all 7 of our bags! Thankfully we were met by a guide right after we got our things to bring us to our car. As we stepped out of the airport, again there was a large crowd of about 150 Filipinos all waiting for people. It sure felt like everyone was looking at us and we were the only Caucasians in the area. We were promptly met by our driver, Sam, and after loading our baggage we were off to our new home Fraser place. 

I have a tough time explaining the shock of this drive. None of our pictures do justice to all that we saw. And for two very tired parents it was a lot to take in. From the barely moving traffic to the brightly colored jeepenys we were having major sensory overload. As we drove slowly through Manila to our province Makati we were weaving in and out of very prominent areas to areas of extreme poverty. I have seen small children living in shacks all my life on TV, but to see it in person was beyond difficult for me. It was confusing for us to drive through an area with stores like gucci and then two minutes later be driving by these "houses" which looked like tin shacks. The other striking thing for us was the pollution. You can see the smog most days and there is a dirty film on almost everything from the pollution. Once we made it our apartment/hotel we were so tired and overwhelmed we just holed up in our place and napped on and off for the rest of the day. This was our LONG journey to our new home. I will have to end here since this post has already become too LONG itself. I will post again soon about what we have been up to the last two weeks. Take care, Miss you all!

 This is a picture of the messy luggage pick up

 This is a jeepeny. It is a common form of public transportation here.

 Breaking in our new apartment floor : )