Last weekend I cleaned my room and I found that I had so many books!!! The books that you are seeing in these pictures are the books that I might need for study one day.

So I cleaned out my books and decided that the ones pictured below will be given to the children in Sichuan. Now I’m just looking for a chance to do something good. They are useless for me, but they must be useful for those children.

I know word presses are supposed to be more developed than a simple web journal. Yet I believe that for me what this word press account has turned into is a place where I can just dump anything I have been thinking about in.

Today it has been a debate over apartment issues. My roommate is extremely clean, I am clean-ish, yet I have a tendency t create organized piles of my stuff sporadically around the house. I leave condiments out on the counter. I sometimes leave a dirty pot to soak overnight vs. cleaning. I have been doing my best to keep my piles at bay, and leave condiments out in neat places, yet these are habits I just can’t break. She tells me about them everyday, and doesn’t notice I am trying. Oh well, i just won’t continue the lease. I need a small nicely lit and cluttered studio all to myself, i need a place where I can walk around in my underwear and leave cereal bowls around, I want to leave my markers out on a table.

basically i want a house in the country with lots of windows to let in light, and a boy that is there to cook with me and write things down.

a house like this near a field and a lake

and wear frilly dresses like this from Miu MIu

and drive my dream 1954 Jaguar

oh how fun it is to imagine.

Three days in and I have experienced 2 full days of monsoon rains. A certain smell floats around the air just before the first drop falls. Moist. Humid. Cooling. Words you don’t commonly use for a scent. With temperatures boiling the asphalt road, the rain releases the heat from the ground making it a bit more uncomfortable to stay here. Looking outside from my grandma’s old house, I then see how the rains actually encapsulate the Philippines in all its “glory”.

Monsoon rains are something indescribable, something that needs to be experienced. Raindrops create a deafening cacophony of taps on rooftops and road. West coast rains are just embryotic compared to the power of a tropical storm. Streets flood and as covered by much of popular media, houses and villages do get destroyed. Much in the same vein, the streets of Manila are the same.

Rules do not apply on the road, everybody contributing to the creation of chaos. Cars weave in and out of the littlest piece of asphalt on a two-lane street in order to get to their destinations as quickly as possible. People do much the same but are just more vulnerable than their metal counterparts. Jaywalking is illegal. Just the same though, might as well say “que?” when it is mentioned. Smog settles both on your skin and into your lungs. Escape is impossible. Breath but not too much.

On the other hand though, the rains also cleanse. The dirt and grime are washed away. The weather cools and makes living a bit more bearable. And if you think this is a little bit too dramatic, try just standing in the rain. Feel your skin cool and the water replacing the sweat on your body.

People, even the poorest of the poor, still find reason to smile. Laughter is as abundant as the heat. Compared to other countries, people live in questionable conditions. Yet these same circumstances are the same ones that will remind you, you don’t need a lot to live. What we consider necessity is actually luxury. We do not even think about our necessities. People here live with what they have, work hard to get more. Everybody complains but that’s just people trying to create a better life for themselves and their family.