Philippine Travel Log: Mother Maximus vs. the Jetlag

Posted on September 28, 2008 by Jeff Block

We designed Sunday, 9/28 in our schedule to be a day of rest. Ambitious as we are, we figured we’d need a whole day to get over the jetlag. As it turned out, I slept a grand total of 24.5 hours between leaving the house on Friday and 10PM the following Wednesday (10/1 – 5 days – average: 4.9 hrs a night). And in fact, a full 25% of that was thanks to this Sunday, but I’ll get to that. BTW, Faith’s stats: 31.5 hrs, 5 days, 6.3 hrs a night average. I know I sound cooler, more pitiable, whatever, but she’s used to getting way more sleep than me, so….

Anyway, Sunday was to be a day of rest, with big adventures beginning Monday, and meeting John-John on Wednesday. We got up, found out the full extent of the laptop detestation, and headed to breakfast. The room reserved for us by the adoption agency at the hotel (the InterContinental Manila) includes the buffet breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel, called the Jeepney Deli. Sounds like a pretty simple place, but we walked in there and were absolutely amazed at the HUGE beautiful buffet. You knew the kind … way more food than would even allow you to try everything, let alone eat a reasonably-sized portion of anything. We immediately bonded with one of the chefs, and started trying various Philippino foods. Thus began Jeff’s descent into pork hell this week. Clearly, pork and rice are the staples of the Philippine diet. I’m all over the rice (which we’ll likely now be serving with almost every meal), but if I never see another pig again it’ll be too soon.

So, we thoroughly enjoyed the buffet, and walked out fat and happy. Next, we decided to visit a bazaar that takes place at the hotel every Sunday. It was described as a must-see, but we totally underestimated it. The longer we walked around, the huger we realized it was. We bought Faith a shirt, and a couple little things for John, as well as some treats to take to the orphanage for the kids. We also met a nun named (I kid you not) Mother Maximus. She cornered us in one room, and described in detail the schools her convent ran and what they did for children all over the island. It was really cool, and we were eager to help them. So, we asked them to set aside a little statue which we thought would be a good souvenier / gift, and agreed amongst ourselves (Faith and I) to buy some food they had there. But we wanted to come back later, after having checked out the rest of the bazaar, so that we wouldn’t have to lug around what we bought.

After another solid hour of wandering, we decided we were hungry. So, we left the bazaar for lunch with the intention of grabbing some lunch, checking out the mall, then returning to the bazaar to buy the stuff we’d agreed we liked. We left the hotel and crossed the street to the huge mall there (called Glorietta). Actually, there are three malls – SM, Glorietta, and another I can’t remember at the moment. We went only to Glorietta at first.

The mall was huge, with four massive sections. Many of the shops were the same as ones you’d find in America. What was different is that we walked into the end of a pretty huge Catholic church service happening in one of the big corridors in the mall. That was pretty cool. Also found a place called BreadTalk, which is a small local chain of bakeries. Very tasty stuff there. Faith particularly liked (and we’ve gotten several of these) a jelly donut like thing with strawberry and creme fillings. YUM! Cursed lack of metabolism!

We also found a store called “LandMark”, which had a shoe section bigger than most entire stores. And the handbags! Don’t get me started! I mean, how can a woman need so many shoes and purses!? Becca would have drooled herself into a coma. Later we found massively inexpensive shoes for John-John there too. But I priced some electronics while at the mall, and they were as expensive if not more than in the US. Most everything else is much cheaper here, but not the tech. Just FYI.

We ate lunch at McDonald’s of all places (typically called “McDo” in the Philippines). Faith had fried chicken, which is served with rice and some sort of fat sauce … er … I mean gravy. I had their spaghetti, because I’m told it’s a favorite of Philippine children (and that John specifically really likes it). Plus, if you can’t get it in the States, then I have to try it, right?! Both were good, but the spaghetti was totally different than in the US. The sauce is very sweet and is clearly BBQ sauce-based, not marinara as we know it. Plus, it had chunks of hot dog in it. No wonder the kids love it!

By the time we’d McDo’d and BreadTalk’d, we were stuffed, and the heat, humidity and jet lag got the best of us. We got back to the hotel, and decided to lay down for a few minutes, then go back to the bazaar. Six hours later, we woke up. It was about 7PM, and the bazaar was long closed. We’d totally ditched Mother Maximus! NO!!! We felt SO bad, not to mention that (even for a non-superstitious person like myself) there’s something even more uncool about ditching a nun than anyone else. I had bad dreams about the Blues Brothers that night. Ugh.

So, after realizing that we were horrible people, we decided to wander around the pool and get to know the place a bit. We met a really nice guy named Ryan who works at the pool-side bar and restaurant. Great guy. We’ve gotten to know him pretty well while we’ve been here.

Ate a light dinner at the Jeepney. Had fresh lumpia, which was awesome. Had a peanut sauce on it, and wasn’t fried (which was a big deal to me). Also split a tofu-veggie-yellow-curry dish of some kind. Not like the Thai I know and love, but still good. I thought of Chris Miller with every bite of delicious tofu. lol

After that, it was late night packing and such, as we prepared to check out early the next day to visit Chosen Children (more on them later). It was going to be a pretty hectic Monday to follow our relaxing day of rest (I should say so – we were unconscious for most of it). But as it turned out, plans changed. But that’s the next entry.

Posted in Adoption, Family and Friends, Travel | Tagged , | 3 Comments

How God provided for our travel to the Philippines

Posted on September 28, 2008 by Jeff Block

It has been almost 48 hours since we left our home to head to Manila. Tomorrow, we visit Chosen Children (a ministry to children in Manila who will likely never be adopted), and then take an overnight bus to Ilocos Norte, the province in which our son currently lives. We will meet him for the first time on Wednesday.

I wanted to write to share about God’s amazing faithfulness on our journey to the Philippines. There are a lot of focuses I suppose I could choose, but this seems the most appropriate. I feel compelled to testify to what God has done, and to share about our journey a bit in the process.

I’ll start early, back when we booked tickets…

Faith and I found out the specific date we’d travel to the Philippines on Wednesday, 9/17. I immediately made the call to United to order plane tickets. I had always assumed that getting tickets to fly here and back would be one of the easy variables, but not so much. I needed tickets for me and Faith, round trip to Manila, then to add Johnny as a one-way from Manila back to Chicago. I also (desperately) wanted seats with more leg room, because I’m not exactly lawn-gnome-small.

Ultimately I would talk to 5 United agents by phone, 2 United agents at the counter, and 3 agents for Philippine air before everything was done, and there is still a couple variables yet unresolved for which I need to call United. So keep praying.

Anyway, it’d take forever for me to relay every detail, but by the time God was done, he had made several crazy pieces of this process possible when they started out impossible. I’ll relay only the most recent one as an example.

We found out early that we could not add John to our itinerary until we actually got to Manila, for reasons no one has ever been able to really explain to me to my satisfaction. So we had to reserve a seat for him on Thursday, fly to Manila on Friday, then confirm and ticket his reservation here when we arrived on Saturday. I waited in line for > 30 minutes to see the Philippine airline agent when we got here (which was after more than a half dozen interactions with all manner of people in the US prior to our travel). Keep in mind I’d been on an airplane or in airports for like 23 hours at that point.

Pretty much her first words were, “We can’t do this”. I remember just praying and telling myself over and over that I would give my fear and frustration to God. So I just kept saying “It has to be possible, what can we do?”, praying that God would work it out, and essentially not leaving until I got what we needed.

After about 20 minutes, we’d moved from “impossible” to “possible for an additional $3500”. That wasn’t going to work. Kept praying. Kept forcing myself not to worry. It was even after closing, and they were turning off lights around us, etc.

After another 20 minutes and a supervisor’s help, we were done. I had the reservation and seat assignments and all for > $100 less than I was told by United it was going to be.

I walked out of there just amazed that God had provided for us in such a way. And He kept us safe, He got all our bags to us right away, all our stuff was in our bags when they got there, we made our connection (which was pretty tight) even after our plane left O’Hare > 1 hour late. Even the laptop going down hasn’t been a total disaster, because there’s a business center at the hotel we can use, and God provided access to contact information and other data we needed for our trip in awesome ways that would take too long to explain.

I guess we have just been learning that God is good.

There are a thousand other things I could talk about, but I’m running out of time. I’ll try to get back on soon.

In the meantime, from Manila…

-Me

Posted in Adoption, Family and Friends, Travel | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Philippine Travel Log: Safely Arrived in Manila

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Jeff Block

Our flight from Hong Kong to Manila touched down about 9PM. We were praying that we would actually get our luggage and that everything we packed would still be there. We found the baggage claim easily, and our bags were some of the first to be spit out of the dark mysterious monster that is the baggage claim machine. We were overjoyed, and even more happy when we got back to the hotel and found out they had not been tampered with.

Once we had our bags, we went through customs. The adoption agency had prepped us for how to deal with customs. We had a script of answers memorized, which we’d been going over in our heads for a long time. If they say this, you should say this. If they want this, tell them that. I was actually pretty nervous as we walked up to the counter with all our bags. I was fully expecting to hear them start snapping on rubber gloves. Prayed some more.

The lady called us forward to the counter, glanced at my papers, didn’t even look at me or my bags, and waved us through. I’d say we spent a grand total of 8 seconds going through customs. Praise God!

We walked out the door, and realized we were actually outside. The blast of hot humid air was the giveaway, not so much the surroundings, because it was just like Hawaii … the buildings aren’t really actually enclosed. No doors. Windows only in some places. Etc. Welcome to Manila!

A car from our hotel – the InterContinental Manila – was to pick us up at the airport. The driver of that car was there waiting for us right there at the door. I had to visit the Philippine Airlines desk to purchase John’s return ticket to America (which I describe in more detail in my other God Provided post), so I left Faith with the luggage and our driver and the myriad security guards patrolling the area, and went to take care of it.

After over an hour at the PAL desk, a bit of anxiety, and lots of prayer, I returned to Faith. I had had no way to communicate to her that it would take so long (nor did I expect it to when I left her), so she was understandably worried. She was very relieved to see me, and even moreso to learn that John’s ticket was purchased and that all issues had been resolved, thanks be to God. Which leads me to travel tip #5…

If you’re traveling internationally, make sure that all the airlines you’re using in the process are partners. The fact that Philippine Airlines is not a partner with United (not part of the Star Alliance) caused me endless grief, mostly centered around the fact that their computer systems don’t like each other. Always check to make sure that the airlines you’re using are partners. Or, even better, book flights that have all legs with the same carrier when possible.

Everything at the airport taken care of, we climbed into the car to head to the InterCon (short name for the hotel). It was a short ride – about 25 minutes – even with lots of traffic. Our first impression of Manila was that it wasn’t too awfully different from any other big city. Lots of Jeepneys and tricycles, which seem to be the primary transportation in the Philippines in general, not just in the big city. Also noticed, of course, that there is a lot of poverty and that people were stacked on top of each other. It seemed like every ounce of space was filled with something utilitary, and that people lived VERY close together. Lastly, we both were struck by how many people were out doing things like selling things on the street, hanging out on corners, walking somewhere, working on something, etc. It seemed like people weren’t even considering the idea of sleep, and it was nearly 11PM. Granted, it was Saturday night, but we’ve had that impression the entire time we’ve been here, and again not just in Manila. It’s like the country never sleeps.

The hotel is POSH. It’s like any Marriott I’ve stayed at in the States. The A/C was welcome, the restaurant is awesome (breakfast buffet is included with our room), there’s a really nice outdoor pool, the staff is super friendly and helpful, and best of all (since our laptop is defunct), there’s a business center where we can check Facebook and write blog entries. 🙂

Oh, one more thing I thought I’d mention before calling it a night. Both the television and radio switched between English and Tagalog at will. Not one commercial or show or song to the next, but within each. So, a 30 second commercial would feature some guy talking about some product. He’d use 10 sentences in the spot, and 3 of them would be English, 4 would be Tagalog, and the last 3 would be half-and-half. It puts Spanglish to shame around here, I’m telling you.

Well, that’s about it for first impressions of Manila and the hotel. We and our luggage (thanks to trusty bll hops) got to our room and plopped down on the bed at almost exactly 11PM – 26 hrs and 20 minutes after having pulled out of our driveway in Chicago. Sigh. What a trip. But we were brimming with anticipation, and quite happy to be here safely and with so few trouble spots. God’s provision was so obvious.

We went to sleep ready to tackle 12 days in the Philippines.

Posted in Adoption, Family and Friends, Travel | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Philippine Travel Log: Our Flight to Manila

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Jeff Block

The flight from Chicago to Hong Kong was just over 15 hours. We then had an hour and 15 min to catch our connecting flight to Manila – on a different airlines in an airport we’d never visited. So, we were a bit stressed about making the connection, and the fact that our plane sat on the tarmac at O’Hare for like 45 min and therefore left over an hour late didn’t help. But we prayed, left it with God, and purposed to enjoy our flight.

We had started watching Les Miserables to unwind the night before leaving, so we pulled out the laptop fairly early in the flight to finish the movie. We only had one battery and there was no real way to charge it, so we wanted to use it sparingly. I had loaded SimCity 4 on it, and mounted the DVD to a virtual drive so no disc spinning was required (kills the battery at lightning speed) – and that’s travel tip #3, btw – and had loaded some AVI files of our favorite shows that I’d downloaded from the net. All just in case the movies stunk and I/we couldn’t sleep. BitTorrent is your friend.

Of course, Faith slept like a baby, but I don’t do the sleeping in vehicles thing. Accept the car, I guess, but even that’s rare – mostly after a big visit to a Chinese buffet. But I digress… Faith slept, excepting that she woke up for the AWESOME food they served on the flight. I was thinking it’d be okay, but it was actually really good. I always special-order the low fat stuff, and Faith of course was signed up for vegetarian. We both loved the food.

God provided my ability to be in United’s Economy Plus seating, which gives you 5 glorious essential fundamentally-necessary mandatory life-giving vital inches of legroom. Did I mention that I found this to be an important aspect of the trip? I think I feared getting Malaria less than being stuffed into the back seat middle between two guys my size on the flight overseas. Yup, pretty sure that’s true.

But God blessed us with great, spacious seats, so we had a wonderful trip over the north poll, and much of the Asian Pacific seaboard to Hong Kong. And to top it all off, although 3 of the movies weren’t great, they showed the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Awesome movie. It was just as spiritually moving for me this second time seeing it as it was the first. Maybe more. The children in the story were of course sad taht they had to leave Narnia and Aslan, and go back to England. But the story is real, and in our story, we leave England to be in Narnia with Aslan forever. Our time in England is like a mist on the fields, gone in an instant, and then Cair Paravel. And of course there’s the main theme of trusting God and looking to Aslan rather than relying on your own strength and wisdom (the message of Proverbs 3:5-6). Interestingly, that has become the theme of this trip for me, as I’ve had to pray about and leave with God countless details of this trip.

Okay, back to the flight…

I ultimately managed to sleep a little, but not much. I kept a sleep log on the trip, which I’m sure nobody but us will care about. But it was fun. I got 3.5 hours in on the plane. For Faith, it was 5.5. So, I guess I didn’t lag too far behind.

God provided for us in two distinct ways in Hong Kong. First, we picked up time in the air, and although we left over an hour late, we arrived on time in Hong Kong. Praise the Lord! Then, as we were deplaning, wondering where to go… We walked up the ramp from the plane into the terminal, and standing at the top of the ramp was a Chinese man holding a sign that said, “Philippine Airlines this way”. We told him we had a connecting flight, and he told us EXACTLY where to go. So, we got there without incident in record time. Thanks God!

We checked in, no problem. They didn’t even mention the “Jeff” vs “Jeffrey” thing (thanks God, again!). And we got to our gate with time to spare. The HK airport was smaller than we expected, and not very busy. I was expecting HUGE and teaming with people. But no. The signs were *very* confusing though, but thanks to God’s messenger who had told us exactly where to go, we were fine.

So, we boarded our two hour tiny hop from HK to Manila with no issues. Faith and I were separated by an aisle in the plane, but we each sat next to very friendly very interesting Philippino men. Mine was named Dante, who told me all about Manila and the country, and even offered to help me fill out my customs papers, and gave me his business card at the end of the trip. He was there with his large family, who was returning from Disneyland Hong Kong. Very cool.

Travel tip #4, tho: Many people from countries like the Philippines are interested in helping you because they think you’re a rich American and might give them money. Be careful from whom you accept help.

The food on the PAL flight was very interesting. Even though it was a short hop, they served dinner. It was still “low fat” for me and “vegetarian” for Faith, and still good, but very Philippine in nature. Mine was a really good fish, which Dante told me was “milk fish”. It was especially good because it was a de-boned fillet. I learned later that it typically has a billion tiny bones in it that you have to navigate, so keep *that* in mind if you decide to order the crazy new fish you had on the plane.

Okay, that’s it for the flight. There’s a whole nother story to tell about that night, but I’m out of computer time, so it’ll have to wait. Be back soon, God willing.

Posted in Adoption, Family and Friends, Travel | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Philippine Travel Log: Departing the US

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Jeff Block

Greetings, all who might be interested in learning more about Faith’s and my experiences on our trip to the Philippines to pick up our son, John.

We’ve been journaling every day by hand (busted laptop), so this will be a time-delayed “transfer” of our daily thoughts to my blog. Hope you enjoy reading along with us, even if we’re behind schedule in communicating our adventures.

Day 1: Flying to Manila

Our neighbor Steve was kind enough to take us to the airport. Because of some complications with our flight, we wanted to leave mega early. So, he arrived at the house at 8:30AM to take us to O’Hare for a 12:20PM flight. Complications, you ask? Well, this will be my first lesson to international travelers…

I ordered my tickets on Orbitz, because they were a LOT cheaper than buying them directly from United. I always use United, because that’s where I have my membership and frequent flier miles. Also because I completely didn’t get the memo from the adoption agency that we were supposed to fly Northwest, because they fly all the way into Manila. So, instead, we had tickets from O’Hare to Hong Kong (on United), and then from Hong Kong to Manila (on Philippine Airlines).

So, what was the problem? There were several, but the reason we wanted to be at O’Hare early is because my ticket said “Jeff Block” and my passport said “Jeffrey Michael Block”, and a United agent I talked to on the phone (after booking the flight) said that they had to match. So, lesson number one… Update your travel profiles on all sites you use to be the names that match your passport.

So, we get to O’Hare without a hitch, say our good byes, and walk up to the ticket counter with a LOT of luggage (we were taking gifts for all kinds of people and a huge bag of diapers and medical supplies to the orphanage). The agent tries to get me to use the automated checking, to which I reply that I can’t because I have to get the ticket re-issued (which is what the agent on the phone told me to do).

His response, “We don’t do that”. Translation, “You’re screwed!”

I started praying … and arguing with the agent. My basic point, “You can and you will, and I’m not leaving until you do.”

Finally, he directed us to another agent who was much more helpful. She said she didn’t think that it’d be an issue anyway, but called a manager to see if she could get it done. Everyone confirmed that it was no big deal because “Jeff” is a derivation of “Jeffrey”. If it’d been “Jeff” and “Bill”, we would have had to re-ticket. Praise God!

So, we got a picture of her for the file – you know me; lol; I’ll post it later – and headed through security. That was easy. Our wait was short at the gate (thank God we left early), but long enough to handle one last issue before leaving… Protecting our cash.

We carefully planned how much cash to take, most of which we would convert to Philippine pesos at the Manila airport. We were advised not to take travelers checks, because they are no longer accepted in most truly foreign countries (too much fraud). Also, we didn’t want to take credit cards with big limits on them.

So, we chose a small card we use only for gas, and I called them from the terminal to verify our credit limit and to make sure they knew we’d be using the card out of the country. This is my second tip to Int’l travelers. You don’t want your only credit card to be locked while trying to pay your hotel bill halfway around the world where the customer service 800-number doesn’t work. So just call them and tell them where you’ll be and what will be normal and abnormal usage for the card while you’re gone. They put a note on our file, and we’ve had no problems.

I also purchased their fraud protection. It was like $8/mo with no contract (so we can just cancel it when we get back to the States), and it protects us for up to $100k on all our cards, plus gives us a person agent that will work full time on restoring our credit if something does go wrong. Pretty well-spent $8 in my world.

Once that was done and a bit of McDonald’s was consumed (have you tried their new McGrill chicken sandwich? It’s pretty tasty.), we boarded our flight for Hong Kong with great anticipation.

Posted in Adoption, Family and Friends, Travel | Tagged , | Leave a comment

For He is worthy to be praised…

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Jeff Block

This is an AMAZING video shot at my church recently.  I post very infrequently these days, but this crosses whatever bar is necessary to drag my blog-weary rump off the chair and write.

Hope you enjoy this very worshipful song / video as much as I did.  Harvest is releasing a new live worship CD.  I can’t wait.

Posted in Personal Links, Theology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment