Bud Brown Online

[Source: Today I Found Out]

When people ask us how long were we going to live in the Philippines we could only say, “Till we’re ready to move on down the road.” It looks like this year 2013, we will conclude the Philippines chapter of our lives. As I look back on our experiences here, I realize we have experienced many of life’s milestones. We have met many people, both locals and foreigners, many precious and stirling, a few, not so much. Some have cried on our shoulders and we on theirs. We have shared many “non-tourist” events,such as, being an official witness at a marriage, walking in a funeral procession, witnessing a baby baptism, burying a friend, toasting and celebrating a new birth, watching gekkos on the ceiling while the dentist was pulling my teeth, going to the hospital to comfort a friend who had lost a dear one, waiting in the hospital for my wife to come out of x-rays, helping the neighborhood children with their homework and comforting them when they were in pain after a religious ritual, giving and receiving food from the neighbors, letting the neighbors spend the night at our place because the wind and rain of a storm made it unbearable at their house, falling asleep nightly while the fan tried its best to circulate the warm, humid air, waking to the sound of roosters, goats, gekkos and falling coconuts, witnessing fatal and near fatal traffic accidents, comforting and being comforted by true friends.
Yes, these experiences, and many more, make up the fabric of our life here in the Philippines. And now its time to “move on down the road.”

Well, I’m glad to be back in the Philippines with my beautiful wife, wonderful neighbors, banana trees and coconut trees. The gekkos are putting me to sleep at night and the roosters are waking me up in the mornings!