Living it up in Brentville
Monday, January 1st, 2007It was so good to see Jess and Andy again after almost 2 years of them living in the Philippines teaching at an international school just outside Manila. Seeing the school they teach at and staying at their house, which is all included, has made me seriously becoming a teacher. Its such a sweet deal! The school and where they live is in the area called Brentville that is like this cheesy American style gated community. Normally not what I’d go for but its pretty nice, 2 mins walk from an amazing school, lovely house with a ‘helper’, who is lovely and cooks and cleans for them a couple of days a week. Everyone is friends with the neighbors there’s 2 pools to choose from and pretty much everything is included in their job and they get paid more than at home and work less. I don’t understand why teachers would even stay in NZ. Plus they have weekends and holidays to travel around the Philippines, which is an amazing country with practically no tourists. So we spent out week living it up in luxury which was well needed after India. Spent quite a bit of time just chilling out, swimming in the pool and visiting people for mega settlers of Catan games.
The Philippines is really cool, very westernized, heaps of malls around, billboards for Gap and massive highways where people are actually driving in lanes and there’s not cows wandering around everywhere. Lots of imported stuff means Starbucks are everywhere, as well as French restaurants and Jess and Andy’s cupboards are filled with Balsamic vinegar, pita breads, pesto and topped off with fresh mangos and pineapples, so pretty much perfect place to live.
What was really cool when we arrived was that a group of the teachers were organizing a whole lot of Christmas presents for the little village that lived literally on the other side of the fence that surrounded Brentville. Lots of the guards and workers live there so it was like a thank you present. So first day Tash and me were bagging up presents that had all been donated by teachers. Everyone family got a food bucket and every person got a massive bag filled with gender and age appropriate presents. We just came in at the end to help for a few hours but would have been a massive job.
Our second day we went out with a bunch of Canadians, first to Starbucks then up to the ridge of a big volcano that has a lake in the middle with another volcano in the middle of that with a lake in the middle of that one as well. We headed to the edge of the water and hired a couple of boats and speed out for about 30 mins to the second volcano where we hiked up the top. The Canadians, like Andy, were P.E teachers so they all charged up while me and Tash slowly followed sweating in the humidity we were not yet used to. Every so often there was holes in the ground with hot steam coming out because as we realized it was still an active volcano, and all the rocks up the top were too hot to sit on, a bit freaky! Amazing views from the top across the water and down in to the lake in the middle. Had a few team photos and a fresh coconut, which I was hanging out for. Back down the dusty track and into the boat that got to about half way in the middle of the lake and…stopped. For a few long minutes we were bobbing about with land looking very far away and the already dodgy sounding wooden boat struggling to get the motor going again. Luckily, it spluttered back into life and we were off again, with the wind picking up by the time we got back we were all pretty much soaked.
Day 3 was off into Manila to do some Christmas shopping. One thing the Philippines do well is Christmas, being a catholic country it is huge and everywhere is decked out with lights, nativity scenes. We went to a few massive malls that are super flash, far nicer than anything at home and because of the heat (we were there in winter and it was hard to handle) air con malls are they way to go. The afternoon we headed into Intramuras the old Spanish area of the town for a walking tour to get a bit of Pinoy history. The guy who takes the tour is a fast talking, hilariously funny and very knowledgeable Pilipino, with a bag full of props this tour was for those ‘with short attention spans’, good for us as the afternoon sun and a morning of shopping were taking its toll. The 3 hours went surprisingly fast and we learnt heaps mostly about how the country had been screwed over by the Spanish, the Japanese and the Americans. And particularly how Manila had been destroyed in WW2 and never really recovered. We learnt about local food (pig stomachs in bile), interesting house designs, dodgy Spanish friars and how Pinoy culture is a sort of mix between so many different things. It was really really good and really interesting. The area we walked around was what was left of the Manila before it was bombed, beautiful Spanish architecture and cathedrals. Really worthwhile tour and increased my knowledge from about zero to at least a little. Very interesting history with colonialization and the war etc.
After that we were pretty tired but still more shopping to do! And know we had a little secret santa going on. We headed to this mall that had been attached to a covered market. I would have brought a lot but know I can get all rip off labels in Thailand so had to wait. After fighting our way around and dinner at a yummy Chinese restaurant (so nice and reasonably cheap) we went to stay at one of Jess and Andy’s friends who live in an apartment in central Manila. He’s away for the holiday and just gave us they keys to stay there as much as we liked. This definitely set my mind on being an international school teacher, the apartment was amazing! Like a big house inside a building, beautiful views, 2 floors with swimming pools and one more outside, a masseuse came at 10.30pm to give Andy an hour massage for $10, cable TV, huge rooms with massive on suits and walk in wardrobes. Great place to just hang out after a pretty busy day!
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