I Got A Blog!!!

Okay- First off let me tell you who I am.
I am an itinerant ESL teacher, who is currently teaching at a government residential school in Taiping, Malaysia.

Let me tell you where in the world I am.

Right now I am in the Philippines:

In the Province of Cebu, on Mactan Island, in Lapu-Lapu City, in Bario Buaya.


(Ignore the bright pink arrow, as it points to a resort which is much too fancy for us to afford. We are located where the red line with the black circle is, a much lower rent district.)

Why?
Because it is vacation time. I am married to a Filipina I met while I was teaching here.


(This is my favorite picture of my wife, Trien, on the beach in Phuket, Thailand during a vacation).

Her family lives in Buaya, and she hasn't seen them for almost two years. Filipinos families are very close, unlike American families. It's not easy for her to be separated from her family and friends, especially since she had lived in the same house for almost her whole life. So we are spending our six week vacation here.

Why am I writing this Blog?

Because today, Pearl Harbor Day, my wife and I went walking along the "beach", which is actually a mangrove swamp that has been cleared near the Cebu International Airport. Buaya basically sits just right of the end of the runway. So while the planes were taking off, we went looking for "shells", meaning shellfish to eat. She knew what to look for, and where to look for it. You are supposed to look for two holes close together, then reach into the mud and pull out a tiny clam. Everytime I tried to get a clam, I came up with a handful of muck, and either something singularly unappetizing or really scary looking. Meanwhile, my wife was having a good time, reliving her childhood. There was no way she was going to leave there without a bag full of tiny clams for supper. It was obvious I wasn't going to be much help, so there was nothing else for me to do but relax, slog through the mud, and think deep thoughts. That's what I did- walked along through the muck, trying to avoid getting sucked under, and thought deep thoughts. I thought many deep thoughts. I wished there was a taperecorder inside my brain so I could record all my deep thoughts.

The one deep thought I could still remember afterwards was- why don't I write a Blog? Then I can share all my deep thoughts.

Even better- I won't ever have to e-mail anybody again. My friends and family can just drop by, and see what I am up to. Or more than likely not drop by, then e-mail me asking if everything is Ok, and ask me what I have been up to.

So it was off to the internet cafe by multicab:

before I forgot that deep thought.

So here I am, making my first try at Blogging, and sharing all my rants, interests, deep thoughts, etc. with all of you, the unknown internet proletariat.

I just hope I won't be the only one reading my Blog. So tell your friends, tell the neighbors-

"John's got a Blog!!!"