It is dark when we finally arrived. The sun sets here at 6:30pm but basically everyone wakes up again then. At the gate, Jhoy's cousin's little 'Chanti' daughter is waiting. She's 3 years old and doesn't understand how someone can come from another country or speak another language.
We enter the house, and Debbie sees her grandma 'Lola Sol' first.
LOLA = GRANDMA
her uncle, aunt, and cousins. We greet everyone and they show us where we sleep. It still smells exactly the same everywhere as it did 20 years ago, it's crazy.
We enter the room and there is Debbie's mom!!! Okay, Debbie is initially overwhelmed with the situation. After everyone calms down again, we have some food.
Cake made specifically for us
Debbie loves Filipino food, and Marc seems to enjoy it too. Fried rice, also known as garlic rice with a few peas, is served here almost any time of the day, along with grilled fish. The sauce is a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, onions, garlic, chilli, and the secret ingredient from Debbie's uncle 'Allan' is a bit of ketchup.
The family
We are full and happy and actually really tired. 'Cedee' asks if we want to drink beer, what kind of question is that, of course we do. So the four of us go to get some, as is usual here, with a 'Tricycle'. Unfortunately, it was too dark to take a picture, but we will definitely have the chance to do so later. A tricycle is a motorcycle with a sidecar, which can theoretically and here practically transport anything.
As a German, you have to get used to the driving style of the locals and trust that you won't die.
Luckily, we arrive at the small store in one piece and buy some beer and snacks.
1 liter of beer here costs about 1.85€
OK. So 1 liter of Red Horse and 1 liter of San Miguel in bottles, 2 half-liter bottles of Red Horse, 2 flavored San Miguel, a few snacks, and some crushed ice cost us a total of about 600 PHP, which is about 10€.
Beer and snacks
Back at the house and a few beers later, we try to teach Debbie's cousins a bit of German and vice versa, they teach us a bit of Tagalog.
We mostly speak English and at some point, Cedee says his head hurts from thinking too much about what things are called in English. We feel the same way, or is it the beer?
01:00 after nearly 30 hours on our feet, it's time to go to sleep.
