Shopping was similar to in Korea, just that the prices were much lower and the clothes actually fit! Koreans are small overall, but Filippinos are more normal sized. That was a great change! Joe bought a pair of shoes, I bought a dress and a few presents for family and Em and Alli. Something I became aware of quickly was that the store owners were not calling out "Hey ma'am," but "Hey mom!" Joe explained to me that once you look like child bearing age, people call you "mom." That was somethin I was not prepared for! I still wasn't used to it at the end of the trip!
For lunch, we ate at Shakey's. It's an American chain, and everywhere I looked there seemed to be American restaurants. Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Dukin Doughnuts, etc. It was even worse than Korea. Tita Oma explained that after the WWII, things became heavily Americanized and they have great respect for our country. It was nice eating some American food I'd bee missing, but I also hoped that it wouldn't be all we ate!
We also talked about English education over lunch. In the Philippines, kids start learning when they enter elementary school, compared to in grade 3 in Korea. The school that Edmark and Raymund (Tita Oma and Uncle Eddie's kids and Joe's cousins) go to is taught entirely in English, and they also have 1 and a half hours everyday of regualr English classes. We had no problem with talking with Edmark (13) and Raymund (16) and Edmark was significantly better than the 13 year olds I teach.
After lunch, we got a bit lost on the way to the Manila American War Memorial and Cemetary but after asking for directions, we made it. It was nice and the weather was nice. You could see the clear blue sky over the water, but also see the not-so-blue air over the city. We relaxed there for a while in the afternoon, then went to Market, Market!, a 6 floor shopping center closeby. There we did some more shopping, they boys played in Time Zone, a large arcade, and had fun shopping in the outdoor food market. The colors of the fruit stands were so bright, it made me want to try it all! I did have a coconut to myself, and tried bits of other fruits, like jackfruit, melon, and mango.
Here we are at the memorial:
Fruit stand at Market, Market!
After we ate our fill of fresh fruit, we dragged our tired selves over to Bonifiaco High Street. Tita Oma described it as the Paris of Manila, but as nice as it was, it didn't compare to Paris! I could tell it was a brand new area of town, and it would be easy to spend lots of money there. The landscaping and architecture and general layout of the area was very nice. The christmas lights on the trees made it picture perfect. This was also good area for Manilians to walk their dogs, there were lots of cute ones!
Again, we were all tired by the time we came home to the laundrymat around 12 so falling asleep among the still-drying wash wasn't a problem!
Link to my facebook album of day two:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230452815059#/album.php?aid=2219208&id=59501140&ref=mf
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