Restaurant Hopping & the Buglasan Festival

Yesterday was a fun day. Well, it started off pretty uneventful, as the days usually do, but in the afternoon, it picked up. Around 2 pm, I went with my mom to Sans Rival to meet an old high school friend of hers. My uncle had to go into work, so he wasn't able to drive us like he usually does when we have to go somewhere. That didn't bother us, though, as we had both been wanting to ride the pedicabs. We left the house and walked down the road a little ways before we were finally able to flag down a pedicab (or rather, he flagged down us, oddly enough). We made it into town with plenty of time to spare, so we had him drop us off in front of the old historic Catholic church instead. We stopped by there, then walked to Sans Rival. Even after stopping at the church and walking the rest of the way, we were still early, so we went into a nearby boutique to look around and waste time before meeting her friend. They visited for a while and we had pastries. I had their Black Forest cake this time, which was okay. Afterward, the three of us went walking around town, shopping. We bought a few things here and there, but nothing worthy of mention. A couple of hours later, we had lunch at Bethel Guest House, where I had my debut last time I was in the Philippines. I had mashed potatoes (they weren't so great, but I'd been missing them since leaving the US) and shrimp tempura. My mom also shared some of her pancit (noodles with pork) and halo-halo (ube and mango ice cream with fresh fruits, gelatin, corn, corn flakes, and leche flan - theirs is my favorite) with me. We were there for hours as they talked. Eventually, around 7 pm or so, my aunt and uncle came to pick us up. My aunt visited with my mom and the friend for a while before the four of us parted ways with her. Afterward, we went to Why Not, a building on the boulevard owned by a Swiss guy. The building has a bakery/Swiss grocery store, a Swiss restaurant (also serving native Filipino food, pizzas, burgers, steaks, etc.), an internet cafe, a karaoke bar, and a disco (or what we would refer to as a club - no Saturday Night Fever in there, I'm sure). Anyway, we went to the Why Not restaurant (it actually had a name, but I can't remember it). We didn't order much, as my mom and I had already eaten. I was still full from our last restaurant, but I had been craving German food since arriving in Dumaguete and finding out that Swiss, German, and Austrian restaurants did in fact exist here. I had to eat something! It made me wish I hadn't even ordered anything at Bethel. My aunt ordered "Michelle's Soup of the Day," solely for the fact that it shared the same name as me:

Turns out, the soup was a broccoli soup with Parmesan cheese, which is really funny considering broccoli and cheese is my favorite kind of soup. This soup, this soup carrying my name, was made for me! We ordered bread to go with it, and it was absolutely delicious.

Since I'd already eaten, as I said, I ordered small:

Roesti, extra crispy. Bruno would have been proud. :) Okay, maybe not with the crispy part, but I'm sorry - I'm a shameless coon-ass and I like all my food burnt and extra crisp. It was delicious. I shared it with everyone else, who like it as well, and my uncle shared his plate with all of us:

He ordered the Swiss Schnitzel (with Japanese rice on the side, teehee). It was amazing.

Check out the Geschnetzeltes Zurich...try saying that one ten times fast. The tiny little Filipina waitress dressed in a Heidi outfit pronounced it for us, but had already forgotten what she's said half a second after she'd said it. Not only that, but my mom didn't trust that the waitress even knew how to say it right herself considering she's Filipino and not Swiss. I assured her that I'm sure the owner trains them how to at least pronounce the items that are on the menu.

Anyway, it was all delicious, and, as you can tell, the portions were pretty big. I mean, there was enough for all four of us to eat. Plus, there was a carrot flower with a cucumber leaf. How awesome is that? Kawaii desu. Soooo cuteeee!


Today was a bit interesting. We sat around until around 3 pm, when my aunt took my mom and I to Silliman University to have my transcripts evaluated. We were able to speak directly to the Head Registrar, an old friend of theirs, and basically what she told me is this: 1) pretty much almost none of my acquired credit hours will transfer over to Silliman, 2) it will take me about four years to get my degree there (basically, I'd be starting from scratch), and, worst of all, 3) apparently I was supposed to have gotten my transcripts evaluated at the Philippines Embassy in Washington and gotten a police clearance before I ever even left the US and came here. AWESOME. PLUS, I have to take all sorts of medical examinations and crap. It's ridiculous. My mom and I discussed it and came to the conclusion that it is way too much work and effort just to have to start all over again with my coursework. So I guess no studying abroad for me. I'm a bit disappointed because I was really hoping to take some Tagalog or Cebuano classes, but at the same time this saves me from having to make any difficult decisions. I was already having doubts about staying until March considering I'm newly engaged, my Grandma is ill in the US, I miss my family, and I feel ridiculously lonely here. Now, because of this, I'll be leaving at the end of December (what my plane ticket says; my mom was going to pay to extend it if I had to stay longer for school), without having any regrets. I don't really know what I'm going to do now, though. Part of me thinks I should go to school in Texas in the spring since I'll be back in time, but I can't really afford it. Plus, I think I'd rather be working full-time in order to save money for the wedding. I need to get my life figured out now. I know what I really want to do. I really want to go back to TCU and finish my Writing degree...without doing ROTC. The only catch is that without an ROTC scholarship, I can't afford it. I really want to wait until I can actually afford to pay for school, then go back. I told my mom that, and she thinks I should just take out a huge loan and finish school now because she thinks it will be harder for me to go back the longer I wait. I know she's right, but I'm already in way too much debt. I don't think it's a good idea to put myself into more. But enough about that. That's my personal life, and not fun and exciting Philippines trip stuff.

Anyway, later in the evening, we all (including my other aunt and her family) went to the Buglasan Festival. Tonight is the opening night, and it was very crowded. We didn't even stay very long because everyone was crammed together like sardines trying to move through the areas. It was at the same place we went before that has the huts set up for each area of the island of Negros, and there were so many people that you couldn't even hardly shop the booths in the huts! You'd wait so long to finally inch your way inside the booth, but as soon you get in you're already pushed back out the other door! It was crazy! We finally just left, but I think we'll be going back tomorrow when the crowd won't be as bad. The parade is also tomorrow, too, I think. After we left the festival, we sat in traffic for what felt like forever, then grabbed drinks at McDonald's for an hour or so, then finally made it home.