Home for the Holidays (Post #1)

We were lucky enough to be able to come "home" from the Philippines for the holidays.  As I am sure you have gathered from some of my posts our first few months here in Cebu were hard.  I have never really experienced culture shock like that and although we had started to really feel settled and more at home, one of the things that got me through was the fact that I knew we would be in the USA for Christmas.  As the days got closer I actually started to worry that I had been so excited about this trip that maybe there was no way it could be as great as I was hoping.  Well, lucky for me, it lived up to and exceeded every expectation I had.  We were home for two weeks and had tonz of fun so I am sure this will be the first of a few posts to share the experience.

We flew out of Cebu on Monday, December 20th at about 7:00 PM and arrived in Los Angeles on Monday, December 20th at about 8 PM. It's such an odd feeling to live the same day twice. We had a very brief layover in Hong Kong, just long enough to walk through the airport and remind me how much I LOVE everything Chinese.  I told Ben...."remind me again why we live in the Philippines and not China".   Obviously, there is a reason, we just haven't figured out exactly what that is yet:).  Even in the HK airport we noticed tiny things that we had kind of forgotten, drinking fountains, clean bathrooms, toilet paper provided in the bathrooms, and so on and so forth.  It made us just that much more excited to be on our way to the US of A.

My first  Hong Kong Christmas experience (hopefully not my last)

Arriving in Los Angeles

We arrived in LA late enough that we just went straight to our hotel.  When we stepped outside into the rainy Los Angeles weather we realized we were in for a "treat".  We were FREEZING!  We had left 90 degree weather.  When we realized we were cold in LA we knew we were in trouble.  What were we going to do in Utah?   We got to our hotel and the first thing I did was draw myself a hot bath.   Bathtubs are pretty rare in Cebu.  The beach house actually did have one, but when you run the water and it comes out rust colored and smelling of sulphur you kind of lose the desire to sit in it.  While I took a bath Ben ordered Papa Johns pizza along with a 2 liter diet coke.  Uh.....YUMM!  We have Pizza Hut and some other pizza places here but nothing that even comes close to Papa Johns.  Also, the soda in Cebu tastes different.  Some people like it more, but I like it a lot less.  One sip of that diet coke and I realized why I was addicted to the stuff for so long.  It was a great welcome back.