A "better" place

I will describe my lunch yesterday as best I can so you can picture what it is like for me here, and the difference between the kind of life YOU live and the kind I live here...maybe it'll even give you a new-found appreciation for the small things we often take for granted.

So Alan and Toefilo wanted to take me somewhere "different" or "better," so we went around on the bikes looking for a place. Toefilo suggested Jollibees (the Filipino McDonalds-like fast food chain), but I had to put my foot down, cuz I know they don't really have anything vegetarian and I am opposed to eating fast food. But, I should have chosen Jollibees cuz the place we ended up at was probably the worst carinderia I have ever been in. There were ratty stray cats up on the kitchen counter eating from a bowl, right next to where the food was cooking...and half the food was sitting out in open dishes with literally 50 billion flies landing and swarming on the pieces of meat on sticks, and cooked vegetables that looked like they had been sitting there for days so that the gravy had practically hardened. Toefilo joked with me and said, "Oh this place is worse! Have you lost your appetite?" But, I am always playing a game with him cuz I want him to think I'm tough (which I AM!), so I have learned to answer rather automatically with a smile and "No, I am fine." If he asks if I am tired, or sleepy, or hungry, or bored, or bothered by the flies when we eat, I never give in!

So we ate there...but honestly, I HAD lost my appetite and could feel my stomach already turning. We all got huge plates of rice and I just decided to have the same thing as Toefilo, knowing it at least came from one of the covered cooking pots sitting out. I had one tiny piece of extra salty tuna that I picked at and managed to eat most of it, and 1/3 of the rice and then a banana that was either too ripe or just plain wrong, cuz it tasted like powder and nothing like the usually sweet and delicious bananas they have here. Now I know why filipinos eat so much rice, cuz their food is ridiculously salty! And then they proceed to douse it with vinegar! Meanwhile, while eating, the flies were swarming in my face, in my hair, in my food...but I fought them off diligently with my fork and spoon.

Surprisingly, I did not get deathly ill from THIS meal, which still seems ironic given my bout in Boracay. It was definitely a "moment" in my book and a difficult-to-swallow experience, and I hope I never have to eat a meal like that in my life. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do.