August 15, 2010
I’m feeling sad this evening… we only have one more weekend in Cabanatuan. At times it seems like we’ve been here for a really long time, other times it feels like we just got here. I’m not ready to leave… even though I miss several parts of home, I’d like to stay and see this project through. I’m still waiting for an answer…
I’ll miss this place… the people have been so kind. One thing about Filipinos is that they pay attention to the little things… the little things that I think Americans totally miss. They always make sure we have snacks and water. We are always greeted when we come home, our room keys out for us. Or when it is raining, umbrellas just appear over our heads. If I’m standing in the sun like a silly American, I’m ushered into a shady area. Lauren found her clothes flipped over while drying in the sun today… one of the staff just noticed they were dry on one side, so flipped them for her. So these are just little things, but they are nice. Maybe we are treated this way because we are Americans, but I’d like to think this isn’t the reason. But it might be.
Now one thing I didn’t like was yesterday we found a large man sitting with a gun near an open window in the café. We asked Loy what he was doing. Loy explained he was hunting for cats to shoot. Loy hates the cats because they “urinate and leave manure” everywhere. We asked what kind of gun it was, Loy answered, “Just a 22… just very small bullets.” What?!?! We threw a fit. I was saying, “Loy! No, don’t shoot the cats!” Then Norman ran out laughing waving his hands in the air, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” And all the staff laughed. I’m so telling Winnie when she gets back… Winnie likes the cats and I don’t think she would approve of this behavior. Loy pointed out one of the cats hiding in the fountain foliage and exclaimed, “There’s one! There’s one!” I then told Loy, “If another cat is shot, we are going to Microtel!” This seemed to get a response. I swear, we just never know what to expect. I think we got Loy to agree to not shoot anymore cats at least until we leave, which he told us we would be missed very much. Awww…
Now on Friday night, Lauren and I went out to a bar. Not just the neighborhood joint that everyone laughs at for eating there. We thought it was a restaurant, but it seems it is the place folks go to drink and sing karaoke. But we like the food, so we go there… well Friday night we went to a place where there is live music. A few locals told us about it and the military boys would go there, so we figured, “Why not?” We ordered mixed drinks… I think we got Tang mixed with liquor and red food coloring. Nice. We switched back to San Migs. The first band pointed us out… great, like we don’t stick out enough already. The bands played everything from Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel” to Usher’s “OMG”. Interesting. And the kids looked so young… babies with beers. No, we aren’t that old… they were really that young. And I taught one of our servers how to pour a beer… yeah, I did. He laughed, so I think it was okay.
And then I took notice of the cute guitar player in the second band. You know this gets bad… not too bad though. When the band took a break and was sitting on their reserved couch, I decided that I needed to walk by and “do something”. Lauren wanted to know what I was going to do… I didn’t know. So I walked by on the way to the bathroom, but he was gone. Dang it. But he was back when I returned… he looked at me, smiled and I… I have no idea what I did. I probably smiled and raised my eyebrows. Okay, side note – eyebrow raising is common here as a way to say “yes”. Both Lauren and I have picked up on it without realizing we had… I tend to add a slight head nod, which I’m not sure where that came from. So, yeah… that’s probably what I did. And it worked. I looked back once I returned to my seat and he was looking over and smiling. We played this game for a bit… look, smile, look away… Lauren is laughing and asking, “Now what are you going to do?” She had taken to writing notes on napkins to pass to me as I sat right next to her (now how high school do we sound?) and wrote on one, “Buy cute boy a drink, po.” So I did. I asked one of the servers to take him a drink and add it to my tab… wow. That worked well! He came right over and thanked me for it and invited us to join them. So we did…
We met his friends… he took my number and sent the following immediately, “nice meeting you my dear”. That’s cute. He told me I was beautiful… yeah, yeah, yeah… that whole light skin thing. I told him he was really cute, which he taught me to stay in Tagalog, but I can’t remember it now. Then we danced… Lauren said it looked like a high school dance. Heehee. I’m sure it did since he was holding my hands. But there was something really sweet about it… no groping or grinding… just a nice (and did I mention cute?) guy. We returned to the couch and it was time for the next set. He said he was going to dedicate a song to us… but I think we left before that happened. See, once they went back to play, these really annoying guys came over and wouldn’t leave us alone. Lauren kept pushing one away. We tried to go dance, but the guys followed… we went over to the cute guitar player and said bye. We then went home… with the annoying guys following us to a tricycle, I pushed them away this time. That was our big night out… tang drinks and a cute guitar player. I was invited to the next night’s gig via text from the guitar player, but we were too tired to go out a second night. Maybe next weekend… oh, 27. That’s his age, still respectable… I should have lied and said “yes” when he said he thought I was 25. But that would have made it too wrong. Oh, cute, young Filipino guitar player…
