Riverbend Journal

  Home away from home I struggle at times to describe our home in the Philippines because it is unlike anything I have ever seen in the States. Baguio is built in extremely steep and rugged mountain terrain and all the houses cling to the side of the mountains themselves. Above is our house which looks ordinary enough but in reality, you are just seeing the top two floors of a five story structure. This house, along with those around it actually start 30 feet below the surface of the street out in front of it. In the case of this house, it starts on the valley floor with some substructure to support it and then maybe ten feet up in the air, the "first" floor begins. It is essentially just a narrow room that is rented out mostly students who attend the local university. The second floor, built on top of that is a bit bigger since the mountain side is sloping away a bit and is rented to a family who haven't yet saved up enough money to buy their own house. The third floor, ...

  I would go to the Philippines way more often if it weren't for the travel. To be frank, the traveling part sucks. It starts with our location in the rural Midwest where there are no direct flights to anywhere but a few major airport hubs. If one considers the time spent driving to the "local" airport ninety minutes away and getting there a couple hours ahead of time to get checked in and through security followed by a layover of anywhere from one to several hours at the nearest major hub, it becomes quicker to just drive to the major hub. So we started our trip by driving 5 hours to Chicago Midway where we caught a flight to Los Angeles and from there, another directly to Manila. Having flown on a dozen different airlines, I am a big proponent of flying on any airline carrier that isn't based in America. U.S. airlines are just terrible compared to just about any international airline company I have ever flown. The seats are crammed tighter together and the service i...

Thanks for everyone who was concerned about my safety while I was away in the Philippines. Evidently there was an big earthquake while I was there though I knew nothing about it until I started receiving text and emails from concerned friends. It happened the day I was leaving the mountains of northern Philippines and heading to the nearest airport for a flight to islands off the west coast of the central Philippines. The earthquake in question was in the very southern part of the Philippines and thus far from me feeling it. The entire archipelago of islands however is on the Ring of Fire so earthquakes can happen anywhere in the chain and indeed a really large one occurred in the area I spent most of my time back in 1990 so not ancient history. I was just fortunate to be in a different part of the country when the earthquake struck. I had a great time in the Philippines. I visited some new territories to me as well as visited some that I visited back 23 years ago and even reposted som...

While I am likely still sleeping, jetlagged from my return yesterday from the Philippines, I will post one more old blog post from a prior trip. Here is one from from a trip back in 2003.   Going Back Home Typhoon Harurot was the worst typhoon to hit the Philippines in the last five years and the outer bands of it as it departed for Hong Kong were still lashing out at us as I made my way to the airport. Huge rollers coming in from the South China Sea would hit the barrier wall separating the ocean from the van I was riding in not twenty feet away. The resulting twenty-foot wave carried on heavy winds would engulf the road, our van and all other traffic even just a few feet away, giving the illusion that we were just a bubble in a washing machine. Though we were underwater about once every ten seconds, are driver kept going and only turned the windshield wipers up to medium speed as if it were all a mere annoyance. Such is life on a typhoon prone island.   I felt lucky to even ...

While I am away in the Philippines for the month, I will continue to have my blog publish some old posts from previous trips. Here is one from from a trip back in 2018.   One of the reasons we went back home was for the wedding of my brother-in-law. I was named as a Godfather by the couple, one of many so honored. In the Philippines, it is tradition not only to have godparents of children but of married couples too. It was held in a very old church in the old part of Manila and apparently has quite the revolving door for the marriage industry. Just as we were arriving at the church, another bride ahead of us was just entering the doors and getting walked down the aisle. Less than five minutes after she walked out of the church, my brother-in-law's bride was walking down the aisle. Five minutes after they exited the church as husband and wife, another bride was lined up to walk down the aisle. My brother-in-law looks to be 16 years old but is 30 and is a very successful CPA in Manil...