Moving day went fine. So exhausted and achy though! Almost unpacked, just some clothes to still hang up and put away. Returned the Uhaul truck this morning. My family helped us move yesterday and we were able to load up the truck for one trip. And then just 2 small trips for last minute items. We are using the internet from my cell phone until we get our Comcast internet. My T-mobile Sidekick 4G can be used as a router. I have "unlimited" mobile internet, but only up to 5GB a month so we can't watch any Netflix until our regular internet service is set up. Back to work on Wednesday. I'll have to use a different train station too. :-p

Also there's some things in the apartment that maintenance has to check out. Our bathroom sink is leaking underneath when you run it. And our shower doesn't work. The knob to turn for shower just gushes tub water out whichever way the knob is turned. Anyhow if that can't be fixed the way I want it- then I ordered this as a back up. At least we don't have to pay for water.

This morning we just ran the tub & used a bucket we have with a handle & spout to "shower" with. (Philippines flash back! The water pressure can be pretty low at times in the Philippines. So everyone has a big tub of back up water with a lid & a bucket or ladle to rinse/bathe with in their shower/tub.)

Here's some pictures of our apartment. We picked up a few Christmas decorations at Dollar Tree today.

A few more things I ordered for our apartment since it was payday! :-)

Arista Arm Chair- Black and White Floral (Walmart)

Throw pillows for our black sofa:

Danica Studio Cushion- Zaza (Amazon.com)

Brentwood Channel Stitch Pillow- Turquoise (Amazon.com)

Shower Mat (to go with our rubber ducky shower curtain):

Ginsey Rubbermaid Vinyl Bath Mat- Turquoise (Amazon.com) Was: $7. Now $11.

Had to take advantage of my free 2 day shipping with my 1 month trial of Amazon Prime! ;-) I got a free trial when I ordered my Kindle Fire, (which I love!) I ordered most of my Christmas gifts on Amazon this year. We are trying to pack a few boxes every weekend. Only 2 more weeks until the big move.

(I do use Amazon Associates, but not because I've made any money- because I haven't! lol! But I like that I can show a picture/link with a product when I'm blogging. Plus I do recommend Amazon.com for their low prices. That or Ebay!)

I borrowed $3,000 from Citibank for our furniture budget for the apartment- since we only had bedroom furniture. We stayed well under that. We spent under $1,000. So I was able to return most of the money I borrowed from Citibank. :-)

We are also thankful to my Dad in law & Mom in law, for helping us with the down payment on our apartment & helping us with the furniture we needed. Thank you so much! We really appreciate it! 

My parents gave us a microwave so we are definitely thankful for that since it's one less thing to buy! And my Mom said we could have some dishes and cooking stuff too. :-) (We have a few dishes, a coffee machine, coffee press & rice cooker already.) Most of our smaller items, shower curtain rings, mop, broom, bucket, cleaning supplies, etc, etc, etc; we will get at Dollar Tree or Big Lot's.

I did free site to store shipping for most of the items we ordered. We still have to pick some of these up. Walmart rocks! Here's some of the goodies we ordered!

Living Room

Atherton Home Manhattan Convertible Futon

Parsons 3 Piece Coffee & End Tables

Better Homes and Gardens Poly Resin Birdcage Lamp (2)

Linen Hardback Table Shade (2)

Open Sided 3-Shelf Bookcase

Curtis 19" Class LCD 720p 60Hz HDTV

RCA Digital Flat Amplified Antenna

 Dining Room/ Kitchen

Mainstays 5-Piece Wood and Metal Dining Set

Rival 2-Slice Toaster ($6.00)

Black & Decker Electric Can Opener ($9.00)

Hefty Swing-Lid 13.5-Gallon Trash Can

Bedroom

Mainstays 4-Drawer Chest

Mainstays Floor Lamp

Bathroom

Rubber Ducky PEVA Shower Curtain

Misc

Dirt Devil Express Quick Vacuum with Tools

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

F.B. and I have planned to live at home with my parents for about a year once immigration is finished. Hopefully this will give F.B. time to get his drivers license and find a job. He might not have the office dream job he wants right away but as long as it's an extra income to help me out that's just fine!

I'm not really into the apartment idea so much. Mainly because my pets are so much a part of my life. I think I would have difficulty warming up most land lord's to pet rats! So many apartments are not pet friendly in this area.

Buying a house is not something I see ourselves doing for a long long time. Houses cost around $175,000-300,000+ around here. I'm seasonal in my government job and am guaranteed to only work about 9 months out of the year. My yearly income is only around $24,000. (If I worked year round, $33,000.) We need two incomes to have our own place. And renting a home is almost like having an apartment. It's not really yours.

One of my co-workers lives in a mobile home and back when she got it it was only around $30,000. One of my aunts in California used to have a huge mobile home with several bedrooms, two bathrooms. It was so nice. It looked just like a ranch home.

I've been looking at mobile homes online and they range from $40,000 up to $100,000 in this area. The ones within $50,000-80,000 have 2 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms. Some of them even have porches. They are in all age communities, some on private property. Have central air and heating. They are SO NICE! They look like ranch homes. I think this would be ideal for us. A mortgage or loan on a mobile home would be within our budget range. And it would also be our own home. It's definitely something I am serious about doing.

This is the website I've been checking out mobile homes on.

Example of some of the mobile homes I've looked at online:

I have a little bedroom....and A LOT of clutter. Stuff, Books, Clothing. I can't fit everything into my room. My bookshelf is overflowing. When I open my closet things fall out at me. I'm just tired of the clutter. Even more so because if our immigration goes faster F.B. might be here by the holidays and I need to start getting my room in order so my husband has some space too! We want to get an apartment at least a year after F.B. moves here if not sooner- but for the meantime we'll be staying with my parents. I still need to get us a new bed and a TV and DVD player later this year. (I don't own a TV). But for now I wanted to clear up my clutter and organize. And especially make room for my book collection. I have a very large library.

I struck gold on Walmart.com tonight! (Gold, lol! It's St. Patrick's Day!) Here is what I got:

Wildon Home Sherwood Five Tier Bookcase in Black $75.00

More than enough space for all my books!

Mainstays 3-Shelf Bookcase, Black $15.00

I'm going to put my boys cage on top of this and then books & odds and ends on the shelves.

Sterilite 35-Gallon Latch Tote, Set of 4 $12.74 for 4 containers.

I ordered 8 of these! Enough to organize my closet with.

Including taxes and shipping my total was $126.29. Wow! Walmart Rocks! When my items arrive and I finally get my room organized I'll have to take some pictures!

EDIT: Just a note- Those 35 gallon plastic storage containers I got on Walmart.com yesterday jumped to $50.00 for FOUR! I paid $12 something for FOUR yesterday and bought 8 of them! Which means I saved $76!!! Wonder if it was a misprint and they had to sell them to me at the $12 price! :-o

I'm finally home after the longest trip home, I've ever experienced! Saturday morning F.B. drove me to the airport around 8:30am. We arrived a little after 9am so he parked the car and we wheeled my luggage to an outdoor seating area where we could spend some more time together before I went into the airport.

Philippines Flag at the airport:

Our last pictures together:

I went into the airport around 10am. My flight to Shanghai China was around 12:20 in the afternoon. Everything went pretty smoothly. I arrived in Shanghai around 3pm. Then I had to go through immigration in China just to reclaim my luggage and go through customs. So odd. I really don't understand why they make you do that if you're just transferring to another airline- it's not like I was staying in Shanghai.

When I finally got my luggage and checked in with American Airlines that's when things started to get a little crazy... first my 6:00pm flight to Chicago had been delayed until 10pm. But even worse the flight to Philadelphia had been canceled for some reason and the only other flight going out was at 6:20am on Sunday morning- when I was supposed to arrive around 12am Sunday. Ugh.

I was stuck in Shanghai China for about 5-6 hours considering I checked in around 4:30-5pm. I exchanged some money so I could buy something to drink. I ended up getting two Gatorade's... not that I could read that they were Gatorade, LOL! But I recognized the logo!

My Shanghai China, Gatorade!

I also got a pretty glass bangle bracelet for 30RMB, which when I converted online it was around $4-5 dollars.

Finally boarded my flight to Chicago around 10pm in Shanghai. It was a 14 hour flight because we had some delays getting off the ground and when landing. We arrived in Chicago around 8:30pm on Saturday. Going through customs was actually a breeze this time for me, no issues at all. I claimed my luggage and then I had to RECHECK IN AGAIN with American Airlines because of the canceled flight. They re booked me for the 6:20am Sunday flight to Philadelphia.

Then because so many people had missed their connecting flights and because it was the weekend and not many flights were going out until Sunday morning American Airlines had to put about half the people on the flight in hotels for the night. They also gave us meal coupons. I had to get some clothes out of my suitcase, but I just re-checked both my bags so in the morning all I would have to do was go to my gate since I already had my boarding pass.

Well, then I had to go outside in the freezing rain in Chicago to wait for a shuttle bus. Since it was late there wasn't many running and you had to look for the shuttle with your hotels name on it, there were so many people waiting for shuttles. It was around 9:30pm by then. There was a man from Shanghai and another girl that were also going to the same hotel I was. The man finally snagged a cab instead and insisted we both come along because it made more sense to share a cab since we were all going to the same hotel. The girl and I were going to split the cost with him, but he paid for the whole cab ride which wasn't too expensive. That was really nice of him!

Finally checked into the Holiday Inn in Chicago around 10pm. I was EXHAUSTED! I only slept maybe 5-6 hours on my 14 hour flight, but I had pretty much already been up for 30+ hours by then! I was kinda freaked out to be staying in a hotel by myself in a city I don't know. I had all the lights on, the TV on. I locked the door and put the luggage rack in front of it, lol! I didn't really sleep at all, because I was checking out at 4:45am. I think I must have had 5 cups of coffee, while I watched CNN, Dirty Jobs & Nancy Grace on TV, lol! And of course had a shower! They had Bath & Body Works products there, how neat is that?! hehe! Coconut & Lime is my Mom's favorite scent, so I took her home the little lotion.

My hotel room in Chicago:

Sunday morning I checked out around 4:45am. I had called down to the front desk at 4am to ask them to call a cab to pick me up at 5am. They did have free shuttle but since the night before hadn't been a great experience of waiting I wanted to take cab. Well... the cab was late and the free shuttle was there and everyone boarding so I just decided to take that to the airport because it was past 5am already and my flight was boarding at 5:50am. As soon as the shuttle was pulling out- the cab shows up... oh well... too late, I was already on the FREE shuttle, lol.

Airport security wasn't too bad that early in the morning on a Sunday. I got through pretty quickly and even got some Starbucks white chocolate mocha coffee (My fav!) and a blueberry muffin. Though after sipping my coffee my hands were shaking from all the coffee I had at the hotel, so I tossed out the rest of my Starbucks (ACK)! When they announced to board the plane, the lady gave a laugh and says, "All 7 passengers can now board the plane!" I've never been on such an empty flight! It was so quiet on the plane ride home.

We arrived early in Philadelphia around 9am instead of 9:20am. My luggage was already waiting by the time I got to baggage claim, since there were only 7 of us on the flight! My parents picked me up around 9:45am and I was finally home after 30+ hours of traveling, I lost track of how many hours everything took considering I went through January 23 TWICE. Once in the Philippines/China and then again in Chicago!

I was feeling pretty disoriented once I was home. It's pretty weird to come home after being away 2 months, living in another country where you develop new habits and a new way of living, etc. Pretty weird to see my room. And my girls! Ack! So weird to see my ratties after being away for 2 months! Saffy & Nutmeg were a little scared of me at first, but Cinnamon looked like she couldn't believe her eyes and Ginger kept sniffing me. Sad though... my Ginger has started getting a small tumor under her left arm. I'm going to have to get it removed probably in February once I get my first paycheck.

I'm due back at work Wednesday at 7am. So just Monday & Tuesday to recover from traveling. My shoulders, back, etc ache sooo bad from traveling! I didn't go to bed around 3pm and I woke up around 12am and did a little unpacking. Now it's almost 2:30 in the morning so I am going back to bed to get some more sleep! I'm supposed to meet F.B. online around 12pm... I miss him so much...

I’ve been in the Philippines 7 weeks now. Saturday starts my last week here. Last Sunday F.B. & I stayed 5 days 4 nights at the Best Western Astor Hotel in Makati City. We’ve stayed there every year I’ve visited. We didn’t really take too many pictures during our stay. I was recovering from a cold and so was F.B. so the first 2 days we just stayed in at the hotel and rested and relaxed. There was a 24 hour Wendy’s across the street from the hotel so F.B. went out and got take out one night for our dinner. We did get to check out Glorietta Mall and Greenbelt. We got to explore Greenbelt 5, which is a new addition. And we finally had dinner at Chili’s, which was superb! Also Robinson’s Manila which is one of my other new favorite malls now, besides Robinson’s Galleria!

While out driving the one day we saw the neatest coincidence. There was a car and a bus in traffic ahead of us. The beginning of the car’s license plate was: NEO. The bus company was called: Genesis. For those of you not familiar with the beginning history of our relationship, F.B.’s user name on the forum we met on was “Neo-Genesis”. We thought it was really neat the car and bus were aligned in that way!

To check out our last 3 stays in Makati City click the links below:

Makati City December 2006
Makati City January 2008
Makati City October 2008

While at Robinson’s Galleria one day we finally got to try the Pizza in a Cone stand! It’s a neat snack type food. It reminded me a little of a ‘Hot Pocket’, but way better because the cone was actual pizza crust and inside was cheese and meat. I had a pepperoni pizza cone and F.B. had one with sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms. Definitely recommend ‘Pizza in a Cone’ if you’re looking for a yummy snack!

When we got back from our Makati City stay, we found F.B.’s door to his room had been vandalized, lol! My name is permanently on his bedroom door now, bwahahaha!

F’s aunt also got me this cute mouse/rat tote purse. I’m getting quite a collection of mouse/rat collectibles here in the Philippines!

This past Sunday we went to Mall of Asia and had dinner at ‘Burgoo’. It was something new to try. It’s sort of like a Friday’s or a Chili’s. And around the same price too. Though definitely not as good as Chili’s! I had blackened salmon & a pina colada; and F.B. had country style pork chops. The tablecloths there are paper and they give you crayon’s to draw with while you wait for your food. You can see our lovely artwork below, lol!

Of course Tuesday we picked up our marriage certificate and you can read about that debacle here!

I found these neat toothbrushes at Robinson’s Galleria in the supermarket. I guess they are like “best friend” toothbrushes. There’s a heart and it separates so each toothbrush has a half. Anyway it was an impulse buy because I thought they were cute. F.B. and I are going to take them when we stay at Manila Hotel for our 1st month of being married and use them, lol! We’re so corny!

I also found this bag of limited edition orange flavored M&M’s! I think they were made in Hong Kong. But it also lists Malaysia, Singapore and Australia on the back of the package. They were pretty good. Orange flavored chocolate. It reminded me of the Chocolate Orange my family used to get at Christmastime.

F.B. got me a “Louis Vuitton” wallet to match the purse he got me last month. Love it!

Thursday we headed off to Enchanted Kingdom Amusement Park. We went last year, but we got lost on the way and it started raining so we didn’t get to ride many rides. This year we left the house around 10am and arrived up in Tagaytay around 12pm. We stopped to check out Taal Volcano for a little while. The weather was really windy and very cool (cold) for the Philippines!

Pictures of Taal Volcano up in Tagaytay.

We had lunch at Chow King after checking out the volcano. We had fried rice called ‘Yang Chow’ and these neat pastry things filled with meat called: ‘Siopao’. They are about as big as a burger. The bread or pastry part is white and really soft and chewy and there was shredded pork meat inside. They are so yummy!

We got to Enchanted Kingdom around 2pm. The line outside the place was really long. A lot of kids were having class trips there. (Did anyone else’s school ever have a field trip to an amusement park?! Because I only remember museums and the zoo for my field trips and I wasn’t home schooled until 6th grade!)

The lines for the most of the rides inside the park were not that long. We stayed almost 4 hours at the park and got to go on 7 rides. We rode a small roller coaster, the swinging ship. Then I begged F.B. to let me ride the biggest roller coaster in the park. He said he had been on it before with his cousins and it always left him dizzy for the whole day, but I still begged so he agreed to accompany me on it. It was a pretty intense coaster. It starts off going the right way and goes around in loops then it takes you completely backwards on the loops. Needless to say afterwards I had a fierce headache and yes F was dizzy. We got something to drink and sat for awhile after that coaster.

The Coaster:

F.B. feeling dizzy after ‘Space Shuttle Max’.

Later we got to go on the Ferris Wheel but it was really windy up there, I had to hold onto my hat when it started going around.

Pictures from the Ferris Wheel:

We also checked out the theater. They were playing a clip of the ‘Speed Racer’ movie. The seats moved in the theater to make it feel like you were driving. It was okay. After a trip to the gift shop. (I got a bubble gun and some light up pens to take home.) We went to the 4D Theater. You had to pay P60 to enter (A little over $1). They had a short movie of ‘Journey to the center of the earth’ with Brendan Fraser. You also had to wear 3D glasses:

See how dorky we look?!

Why was it 4D? Well… the seats moved on that ride too, but also there were these things in front of all the seats- so that when there was air or water in the film- you actually got misted with water or blown with cold air. It was pretty neat, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to get wet during a movie! The last ride we went on was those old fashioned swings that spin you in the air. The park closed at 7pm and we left around 6:30pm.

On the way back home we stopped at a rest stop and had Cinnabon and Starbucks. It was around 9pm when we got back to Cainta. We had dinner at the 24 hour Burger King. Whoppers, Onion Rings & Chicken Tenders. We had a really nice day out.

To check out last years trip to Tagaytay & Enchanted Kingdom click here!

Sunday we’ll be checking into the Manila Hotel for 4 days 3 nights. We have a coupon for discounted rates so we decided to go there for our 1 month anniversary of being married on January 19th. I think we are also going to go to Saisaki Buffet on our anniversary.

Of course next Saturday I’ll be going home, I’ll be leaving the Philippines around 12:30pm. I won’t be arriving in Philadelphia though until Sunday around 12:30am. It’s going to be a long day of traveling. I’m trying not to think about it.

After I get back home, I start work on January 27th. I also have to contact our lawyer so we can begin our immigration process. I think everyone that’s been reading my blog knows, that we are taking a year off traveling in 2010, so we can save money and work on our immigration process. I also have to get a new passport and change my last name at a million places.

We are planning on F.B. visiting me in the USA around Sept-Dec 2011. I know that’s a little over a year, but since I’m seasonal at the Dept. of the Treasury, I’m not usually working around then and I would want to spend as much time with him as I could. Those are our plans for now, they may change, who knows. We’ve been doing this long distance thing for almost 6 years now and we still have at least 1-2 more years to go, while doing immigration. At least we are getting closer to the end, now that we are finally married!

Keep an eye on my blog. I will be doing a giveaway of some Philippine Souvenirs once I’m back in the USA, and I’m also planning on doing a snack blog of some of the snack foods I’ve tried while here in the Philippines!