Day two: Manila, the city.
Two churches, three malls, new fruits, panda bread and pancit made up the whole of our Sunday. In fact, we were gone so long yesterday that I had to wait until Monday to blog (aka: I feel asleep early). Another note: the time difference here is +15 hours, so all the time stamps on my blogs are incorrect. I never bothered to change the time on my computer, partially so that I can see what time Ellensburg is sitting at.
Church #1: GCF East. This is Charis' home church, where she attended when she lived here. Ironically enough, they moved church buildings the week we came, so it was only sort of like coming back to the same church. The church did have the same pastor and the Jones' were able to see some old friends of theirs, and we were warmly greeted guests. In fact, we were probably the first to use their new visitor center, which did not yet have a door or windows yet.
Following GCF East we dashed up the street for some Panda bread. I think it's real name is Pan de Sol (or that's what it sounds like) but it basically delicious rolls, baked in a special oven and really inexpensive, for our wallets anyway. We got 15 rolls that were a good 3+ inches in diameter for 85 pesos, which is like $1.75. It was a great snack, and a good new food experiance #1. The nickname 'Panda bread' comes from some boys our team met at the Faith Academy pool who, after much coaxing, finally said that panda bread was one of their favorite Filipino foods.
All this dashing around town reminds me to mention our mode of transportaion. While we have not yet braved a Jeepney, pedicab, or strange looking boat, we do travel around in the Revo. This car is like a SUV, but in the truck reside two jumpseat benches. Apparently, the reason is that Filipinos like to squish as many people in a car as possible, and these help. Also, no seatbelts are worn besides the driver and shotgun seat, as again, they try to fit as many people as possible. The van that picked us up from the airport did not have any at all for the back three rows of seating. Granted, while this may sound harrowing, the driving around here is not very fast because of the huge quantities of traffic. I must admit that here the traffic/crazy drivers are in much greater supply than in Cali. The only rule of the road is this: if you get your nose in there first, the right-of-way is yours. yep.
This trusty Revo took us from the panda bread across town to the second church of the day: CCF, which is a megachurch. Really, it's huge, with 3000 people per service at this one campus, 5 services, and there are about 15 satellites churches. And, to top it all off, the church occupies the top couple of floors of St. Francis Square in Manila, which is like a mall. Apparently this is purposeful, because many Filipinos come to shop at malls on Sundays, so churches try to be either in or near a mall, to draw people in. The pastor spoke a great sermon, about abiding in the word and then being set free, all to the end of becoming a true disciple of Christ. I think they podcast the sermons, if anyone is interested.
One thing that I noticed about all the malls and areas that we were in today was the prevalence of English. While I knew that most people spoke English coming in, the fact that I was in the mall and did not feel totally out of place was disconcerting. In my head, I knew I was in Asia, but I didn't really feel to much like a fish out of water and sometimes even felt like I was in a US mall, just one where there was a high population of Asians. The one main difference between malls in the US and those here is the amount of workers in each store. I learned that the wage scale is so low, it is cheaper to higher lots of people to watch virtually every isle in the store than it is to deal with a little shoplifting. Also, the turnover rate is high, because if someone is employed with a company for more than 6 months, they have to be given benefits and become near impossible to fire down the line. To get around this, employers hire for periods of one day less than six months, and then the worker is out on their ear looking for other places to work. It is kind of creepy when you are browsing merchandise, minding your own business, and then, when you're not looking, a uniformed girl comes and just stands their staring at you, or decides that she absolutely must straighten the books your are currently looking at.
After CCF we did hit up Megamall, which is used to be the largest mall, until Mall of Asia was built. We fueled up on some great home-style chinese and filipino food at a noodle place, where we watched a chef pull noodles by hand. This is where I tried pancit, which is basically like chow mein, only different in a few flavors. But it had meat, noodles, cabbage, and a few other veggies, and it was quite good. I did try some new kinds of green vegetables, but I did not get their names (though I think one was kay-kay or something similar). One looked like celery. I enjoyed both, because they were not overcooked nor mushy, and they were all cooked with garlic cloves. I think I would eat most any vegetable if it tasted like garlic, but don't me to that! :) We also had shakes after lunch, and I was the odd guy out at the table with my apple shake, but I just can't seem to like mango fruit.
Mango fruit and rambutan were the two other new fruits I've tried so far. I waited to call final judgement of mangos until I tried real Filipino mangos (I did not like the states' version) but alas, they still did not taste great to me. So, I guess that means more for the rest of my team, as they seem to inhale the fruit. Rambutan, on the other hand, was quite enjoyable, though not very filling. It is a red skinned, white fleshed fruit that is hard to descibe, in regards to taste. It is kind of citrus-y, but not like any typical fruit. You have to eat around a large seed, which you try not to swallow (most of our team did swallow one...) and the flesh is sometimes hard to get off. Oh well, I guess ya'll have to try one someday to really understand the fruit. They come really cheap here, about 40 pesos for a kilo, which is quite a few.
And that concludes much of what our team did on Sunday, I'll write about the orphanage and school tomorrow, as well as our trip to the 'ruins' that I forgot to mention on yesterday's post!
No comments:
Post a Comment