My Last Full Week

It has been nearly three months since I arrived in the Philippines!  Of course the time seems both long and short.  You know the deal: time flies when you're having fun, but looking back the beginning seems like such a long time ago because of all of the experiences have managed to fit into such a short period of time.

As per what I actually DID this week, not all that much.  Last Saturday evening the family went to a dinner in support of Carl's football club.  It was a sit-down fixed menu sort of deal, and it was quite good.

 



All of them were quite good.  Missing are the first two courses: a salmon bruschetta and then an artichoke-goat cheese appetizer.  Both were quite delicious.  The dinner was not only delicious, but also fairly amusing for several reasons.  First we were waited on by members of the team, not Carl as he preferred to consume the dinner instead, but by other twenty something young men.  It was fairly clear none of them had any waiting experience, nor very much experience with food in general.  When asked what they were delivering to the table they generally didn't know.  Second Jan-Vit has an aversion to fish (which boggles my mind given that he lives on an ISLAND) and many of the flavors presented were new to all of my cousins.  It was fun to see their reaction to artichokes.  It was perhaps the first and only time in my life I will be the person most knowledgeable about wine at the table.  As a side note the dinner did hint at the increasing homogeneity of culture.  None of the food could be identified as belonging to a certain ethnic group or region.  Perhaps the only way to classify it was as "fancy".


Anyway, enough about food- or at least that food.  Other things I did this week include trying an "ice cream sandwich" from a street vendor.  This is literally ice cream in a roll.  It was an interesting idea, and not completely repulsive, but the cheese flavored ice cream overpowered the slightly morew delicious use flavored icecream, so I have mixed feelings about it.

I also took my finals this week, and went to the last of two of my classes.  Nothing too exciting, but it means that I have a few days before I get down to the real grind of studying, which I am looking forward too, but could wish for a few more days.

Lastly I attended the METRESE conference of my classmates.  This is the preliminary presentation of the work which will make up their senior theses.  Most of the research looks like it will be interesting, and I must say I was generally impressed with the quality of PowerPoint slides.
Things I have left to do include purchasing a few more presents, making the last visit or two, going scuba diving, and packing!

*also I apologize for the weird format here, blogger and I are not getting along*