I am wondering if there is anything nice about living here? It seems so easy to negatively scan a seemingly endless series of "say no's" to life here. I found myself becoming irritated and ruminating about all the NO's. It became necessary to reverse the field and balance things out. It could be just that I landed on a lucky spot. Our new maid, a 38 year old is fantastic. She's an in-law of sorts. We advanced her 6,000 P. Not a problem. She is quiet and honest, picking up intuitively on where help is needed. Our niece has classmates over at lunch time and visits them after school without us worrying. If we need work done, we ask a neighbor with the necessary skills. There is never any pressure from kids or adults for us to hire them. We were asked for loans a couple times a few years ago and were paid back. We have a router and two other neighbors with computers chip in 500 P each. The beach is great and everyone there is quite friendly. Even met a couple living close to where we are in Canada. There are no beggars. We get caroling kids that we tell no to since its too soon for that. Their voices are quite good. We do hand out some pesos close to Christmas Eve to the church women and young people, but no repeats. They have a local fiesta day where residents hand out small boxes with a scoop of rice, a hot dog & candy. We prepare 30 boxes and they go fast to kids and very old men. We are well liked by our neighbors who are quite friendly. My wife loves the regular tongit card game. When I head to the beach. everyone has a nice smile for me and at the beach I meet a lot of Pinoy's who like to chat and hear about Canada. I love it here and plan to move permanently in a few years. For now, I only stay for 6 to 8 months a year. I over paid once on some cell phone work, but otherwise if I put out too much money on a purchase, it is immediately returned. I can't find much to complain about except for the brown outs. People are incredibly friendly is all I can say.
