Fruits of the Philippines... and Southeast Asia

I’m looking out of my apartment window at giant thunderheads. They are beautiful and it is perpetual summer here. I still don’t get tired of the rain, and I don’t think I could ever get tired of the beauty of those thunderhead clouds we get to see so often here. I hope I can figure out a way to paint some pretty ones someday. We do get tired of the heat occasionally but are getting more accustomed to it. We had a couple of very blue-sky, sunny days this week that were WELL into the 90’s. I am also listening to my third marching band of the evening going by our hotel-apartment. I’ve mentioned this before, but Filipinos celebrate everything with parades and music. They are holding a big election a week from now and it seems like every politician has hired their own band and parade so everyone will get stirred up to vote.

We have officially lost our ability to drive in the Philippines. The rule is that you can use your US driver's license for 90 days and then you must have a VISA to get a Filipino driver's license. Our VISA is still not approved, and it is common for them to take 5-6 months to come through. It has seriously hampered our ability to do our current assignment. There are almost 70 apartments now in our mission area and in the first 90 days we were able to “inspect” about 50% of them and of those, we were able to bring 30-40% up to standard. We are just frustrated because the VISA process is slow and we NEEEEED to drive to do our job well & that includes activities to close apartments, open new ones, inspect for cleanliness & repair. We Other Senior missionaries, and the few young missionaries that drive here have rallied to our aid and are Chauffeuring us around to help us do our work. We are praying hard for the VISAS to come through soon so we can more effectively do our work.

OK… enough complaining. We had some amazing training last week to help us do our assignment better AND had a giant conference of all the church members in and around Cebu City. The buildings were full, and we got to share several hours of good meetings and talks with other Saints and it was all very inspiring.

OK… quick note of fruits of the Philippines. I’ve talked about bananas previously but will never be satisfied with bananas back in the States again. This is basically the banana capital of the world and we have become very spoiled AND picky about our bananas. As I said, I realize that I don’t have good pictures of the varieties, so I’ll take a few more pictures for next week. My favorite so far are red ones! They are fresh, eating bananas and are very fragrant, creamy, the best bananas I’ve ever eaten. The next are” green” bananas that look like normal, unripe bananas but have a very citrus-y taste and are ripe when they are green. VERY, very yummy or “Lami” as they say here. The next ones are the little, tiny, short ones like the ones in HI and they have an apple-taste to them. The others are all close varieties except the Saba bananas that they both eat and cook like potatoes.

The other most fruits are Mangosteen, Lychee, mangos, papaya, Longan, and Rambutan. I keep forgetting to try guava although I LOVE anything guava flavored. Dragon fruit is very common here and I love the look of it, but it’s actually kind of boring to eat which really surprised me. There are also Jack fruit and a fruit like a jack fruit (durian) that is so stinky you can’t have it open in most public places! I LOVE southeast Asian fruits!!They seem to require a lot of work to open and eat… but when you finally get TO the fruit = wow! They also eat “green” mango, which is exactly what it sounds like, unripe mango and use it in a savory way often eating it with something they call “shrimp paste” that is like a cross between anchovies and vegemite from Australia! It was very stinky but when I finally tasted it devoured an entire green mango dipped in that stinky stuff. VERY salty but very delish! Roy wouldn’t even try it but I thought it was fun. OK… shutting up now… my blogs posts are too long! Love to all. We are healthy and well and really enjoy our work. We feel close to the Lord and appreciate all the wonderful people that we get to interact with.

This is how Longan are sold... in fact I have bought bags of these several times from this fruit person.

These may be my favorites! The below picture is of mangosteen.

OK... final picture. The first time I saw the below sign in the window of a car, I thought some husband/boyfriend was being funny.... now I realize this is NOT a joke and is a very common sign in the back window or on the back of a car. Not sure why they call out women more than men ... but I've seen 3-4 of these just this week! We've had a good laugh over what would happen if they did this in the US!