Hello everyone.
I know I’ve been a little missing lately… But don’t worry, everything has an explanation.
On the one hand I moved from a beach where I was kiting to a cable (place to practice wake). The first day I arrived here I found some discomfort in my back and, well, I decided to give my body a break, it is wise, if it gives you signs listen to it.
On the other hand, I don’t have any camera that I can put in the water, so I haven’t been able to “produce” material to show you and, well, at the moment I prefer not to have to ask people to get out of the water to record me or take pictures of me…
I’ve been in the Philippines for 1 month !!!
The truth is that it has flown by me. I’m going to tell you briefly some of the things that surprised me the most about here.
- How slow it is to travel. To go from one place to another takes a long, long time and a lot. Wow, if you come in a hurry you take it clear.
- How clean everything is. Being such an economically poor place I expected that people would not care about everything and that everything was dirty… But, nothing could be further from the truth! Everything is super clean. People are super collaborative and all together keep their towns and cities clean.
- How nice people are. Seriously, I was never anywhere where I received so many quality smiles throughout the day. Everyone greets you, says hello, good morning, everyone is interested in what your name is… Just amazing and thankful.
- Which surprises them to see people with European features. Filpinas seems to me a touristy enough place (despite not having seen many tourists) to be surprised. Still it seems as if the people here have never seen people “different from them.” They want to take pictures with us all the time and, especially women, try to be as un-Asian as cosmetic products allow them.
- Honesty. Everywhere you can read the sign that says: “Be honest even if others are not, even if others will not, even if others cannot” which translates as “Be honest even if others are not, even if they do not want to, even if they cannot”. I guess it will have to do with how religious they are around here.
- Spain. The Philippines was a Spanish colony for 200-300 years another 200 years ago, but I had no idea that even so long later the Spanish influence was so noticeable. In the Filipino vocabulary they have a lot of Spanish words and the surnames of most people are typical Spanish.
In the next post:“Do you study or work?- The opportunity to do 2 things at once”