Born in the USA, but now living in a "Barangay."

An excerpt from Dale's journal from this week:

We got up and went running this morning. It was only about 73 degrees. It is pretty nice although the humidity is still high. The Filipinos are freezing and complaining about it being extra cold this winter. It is dry, almost no rain in two months. It seems hard to believe that just a few months ago it was raining all of the time and flooding every other day. We now understand what they mean by "wet" season and "dry" season. We had thought that it was more relative like rainy and less rainy but it really is more like flood vs drought. My i-pod was working again this morning and I listened to the "B" songs. I had a good run through "Born in the U.S.A.", "Born to be Wild", finishing with, "Born to Run". As I sang along I thought I saw some of the Filipinos looking at me but they do anyway. It is probably pretty unusual to see a 60 year old white man running down the sidewalk singing, "Born in the U.S.A.". I do appreciate being born in the U.S.A. more than ever now. We have so many advantages compared with the people here. Poverty takes on a whole new meaning when you see how these people live and how little their government does for them.

 

We run along Manila Bay (view from our condo) all the way to the...

Yacht Club and beyond.

In the Philippines each city is divided up into smaller residential areas that are called "barangays."  Each barangay has their own elected officials and a barangay hall.  We live in Barangay 669.  When we went to Stake Conference last week, a sister gave a talk about doing missionary work and said she would like to see an LDS church in every barangay in the Philippines.  All of the audience laughed at that because it is a pretty ambitious desire.  She was speaking in Tagalog, so Dale and I didn't understand why everyone was laughing.  I had to ask our district leader what she said.  Below is a picture of our barangay hall and the barangay fire truck.  It is on the same street as our condo.

 

Barangay 669

 







Dale has his hands full every time he gets in the car to drive somewhere.  I also am pretty busy making sure we turn on the right streets and don't get lost.  We were driving down south of Manila and came to a large intersection and there was not a traffic light.  Instead there was someone from the local barangay directing traffic.  It was a Sunday and we waited a long time to get through the intersection.  We figured out that the person directing traffic was letting people in his barangay have special treatment while keeping the traffic on the major road stopped.  Here's a picture we took at the intersection showing what normally happens.  You get lots of motorcycles weaving through the traffic and going to the front of the line and staying in your lane is only optional here.  Also, notice all of the electrical wiring spanning the road.  It is challenge to be out on the roads here.

 

 

 

It's more fun in the Philippines!