mabuhay!

well, after a very tiresome 20+ hours of travelling, stopovers and plane rides, we all finally arrived in iloilo, philippines on monday afternoon. since then it's been extremely busy, and the attempt to balance over a gazillion things under the influence of jetlag has become quite the surreal experience.

i love being back here, though. there's definitely more of a modern influence to the already-urban parts of the area, but still not much has changed around my mom's neighborhood, at least from what i remember from 9 years ago. we arrived in the middle of rainy season, so the climates have been pleasantly nice during our day excursions. the streams of jeepnies and surrounding tropical goodness has really put me at ease, and fortunately my ability to speak ilongo has surprisingly gone into full throttle since we got here - i haven't offended anyone just yet :o) we haven't done too much sightseeing since we arrived, mainly because we've gone straight into prep mode for my cousin's wedding, and will be doing so till the big day this saturday. but so far, the excitement has been keeping us on our toes with dress fittings, decoration-making, and figuring out creative ways to accomodate a guest list of 500 people without getting washed out by the floods... oh yeah, and we've been walking around in ankle-high water since yesterday night - it's around 2pm right now, and the rain has been non-stop since 6pm yesterday. good times! :o) the basement of my mom's house has been temporarily turned into a swimming pool by the kids, and the street outside has been transformed into a canal overnight. the fun never stops though, and it's been one interesting adventure after the other.

haven't really got much else to write at the moment, and my time is running out at this internet cafe my brother and i stumbled upon while waiting for the family to finish up planning the menu for the wedding... but once things really start picking up, hopefully i'll be able to write something more interesting!

oh, and just a side note to my girls back home: i also couldn't help but notice the number of quite attractive young men in the vacinity ;o)

miss y'all back home!