There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor. We were shocked to see this.

Beautiful it is not! Fabulous it is! We hope it's not on it's last leg. Aircon in the bedroom.

Our front door

We live in a fortress.

We have about twenty keys to everything in the house and outside. It is very frustrating to Elder Ganir. Every gate has a padlock. Every cabinet has a key. Every cupboard has a key. Every room door has a key and sometimes two or three for one door. We don't use them all, but we have to use a lot for safety.

We have this cute little nipa hut outside our front door to use.

It is usually too hot or too many mosquitoes to be out here. But we do use it sometimes.

Okay, this is for the Ganir family.

We only eat this peppered spam with our vegetables. It is sooooooooo good. We really hope we can find it when we get home. Please look for us so that we know it can be found. We don't want to have to bring a suitcase full of it home with us. Let us know if it can be found.

This is all we store in our back kitchen.

It is so too bad we can not use the sink, the counter and the cupboards by the refridgerator. But they are daily filled with all kinds of droppings and insects from the ceiling that is not enclosed.

Here is our little refridgerator.

Here is our little stove.

This is the best part of our back kitchen ceiling.

Elder at the computer

We use this room to dry our clothes.

We seldom can hang our clothes outside because of the stinky smoke from the burning of trash just outside the window on the right. In fact, I only hang our sheets outside for about an hour or less on a sunny day when no one is burning.

This is our infamous washer and dryer.

The little one is a spinner. We have them in our second bathroom shower. They are little but, they work really well. It sure beats scrubbing our clothes by hand and rinsing and wringing by hand. When the missionaries were required to start doing that, a lot of them had blisters on their knuckles from scrubbing. The detergents are pretty harsh here. I guess they have to be because most everyone washes their clothes by hand not machine.

This is our lovely bed. Three matteress high.

I have to climb the wall to get into bed. We sleep just fine though. Only one lamp works.

This is the dining area across from the living room kitchen.

This is our living room kitchen.

The three sectioned water filter is on the left of the sink with the hose connecting to the faucet.

Our front door and the owner's curio

We do not have cable TV. We can only use DVD's. We don't get any TV reception.

Okay, this is our living room.

I will follow with other pictures of our house. The couch and chairs are not very comfy, but we are happy to have them.

This is the changing room for trying on clothes in a major mall.

Just a side view of the bicycle trike.

Any vehicle can go on any highway.

In Cabuyao (the dirty city, as the missionaries call it) we see a lot of these kind of trikes. They are bicycles with a two seater attached and an umbrella. Of course the buses rule, so watch out.

This is what happens in our mission when the missionaries go home.

The mission president's wife cuts off their ties. She is going to make a quilt with them all. The sisters get a small snip of hair cut. I have know idea what she is going to do with the hair. They also each sign a large table cloth at their last meal in the mission.

This house is in our neighborhood.

I actually love the color. It is a ton better than the ugly dirty grey cement color it was. We took the picture because we liked the bamboo scaffolding they used to get to great heights.

A regular street in our city of Lipa.

Notice the water meters on the left by the wall. We don't know how they keep it straight. I think people here pay for other peoples water useage and know one knows it.

This is for Marc. We found your car here in a different color.