 
Mabuhay Love

### By Jonathan Gonzalez

### Copyright © 2012 Jonathan Gonzalez

### Smashwords Edition
Dedicated to my lovely wife to be who has shown me that there are still wonderful people in this world worth the sacrifice.

I love you Melanie
_Table of Contents_

Humble Beginnings

The Scam Artist

A Simple Friendship

The Arrival

Cultural Differences

The Jeepney and Rain

Laughter is the Best Medicine

The Longest Day

Tagaytay

New Friends

Happy Monthsary

The Rings

It's All Relative

A Proposal

Mine Forever Forever Mine

Bittersweet Love

A Quiet Morning

Words of Wisdom
Preface

Thank you for purchasing this book! I initially had the idea to post this story throughout my blog, but once I realized I had written five pages with just the intro I knew I wanted to make it into a book. My blog (burningtoday.com) has a list of goals, and one was to publish a book and another was to get married. So this further fueled my pursuit of creating my first book with this story. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wrote it while I was deployed to Kuwait during my free time.

I have to admit I owe it all to Melanie. It was because of her that I finally wrote this story out. She had always pushed me to write our "love story" and I started soon after I returned from the Philippines but it stayed on my hard drive and after weeks I just got preoccupied with other things. I started my blog, then quickly realized how much I like to write and decided this would be a great way to please Melanie and show others a wonderful experience we had together and continue to do so. She and I have overcome a lot of things together and we're still in love and soon to be married in December.

I hope this story will give you hope and maybe even make you smile that there is always a way if you really want to find someone special in your life. I did what I had to do to find that special someone in my life and it paid off. Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think at my blog.

#  Humble Beginnings

In February of this year, on _Valentine's Day_ of all days, I did something that most people wouldn't risk doing. I did it because I wanted to take that leap of faith required if you really want something bad enough. That leap of faith could have literally killed me had it gone wrong, but in the end it was worth every bit and then some.

So let's go back to the beginning, and maybe even further past that. It all started after I had failed out of my Flight Engineer course flying on helicopters for the US Air Force. This was a blessing in disguise, but also a low point in my life wondering what I would do next. I was engaged to a Japanese woman that I fell in love with while stationed in Northern Japan (Misawa) and truth be told, things weren't sizzling between us. We got along great in person, but it was more of a really close friendship with benefits than anything else. I should also mention that 90% of our relationship was long distance.

When I lived in Japan we were 5 hours away, then I was sent back to the US and had to deal with the 15-hour time difference. So suffice it to say on Thanksgiving of 2010 she left me an email saying "I think we should break up, we don't have the same love anymore". I was at home on leave at the time, and this was a kick to the face, but one I saw coming. Unlike before, I wasn't sad or upset; I was actually a bit relieved to move on again. After all, she was right, the love wasn't there anymore and we had drifted apart over time. All being said she was a great woman, but definitely not for me.

I met her on Japan Cupid, which was an online dating site aimed at Japanese people. So in my quest to find someone new, I went again online to find someone I could truly fall in love with. I was never one to like home grown women from the states, as odd as that sounds, but I found it easier to talk to women overseas. I also tend to have a pretty big infatuation with Asian women so that's probably the main reason. Unfortunately in my desperation I ended up attracting the sharks ready to pounce on someone like me.

#  The Scam Artist

She was beautiful, sweet and everything I could hope for. She said all the right things and knew how to pull me in. Considering we had just met, I should have known it was a trap. After building rapport, a sob story came across on how she wanted to complete her final test but needed $150 in order to pay for it. I don't know why, but I fell for it and sent her the money.

Playing along, she said she passed her test and expressed gratitude for helping her. It felt good to help her out. She went further and decided to test the waters yet again. She asked for $100 to help her with food, as she just spent all her money and couldn't afford to eat. Once again, I opened my wallet to her to help her out.

I thought she was incredibly beautiful and knew what she was doing. She sent me new photos of a party she attended and other pictures with her family. She included a sweet one of her hugging her cute five-year-old cousin. She had me reeled in. Eventually I ended up paying her rent, which was another $300. Keeping score? That's $525 sent to her without as much as a phone call or video chat to reveal whom she really was. She said she didn't have a home computer, and the Internet café she was at didn't have cameras or microphones. I thought that was weird and just about every Filipina woman I spoke with raised the bullshit flag. I convinced myself that I wasn't getting scammed.

Eventually things "progressed" with us and she said she talked to a company that dealt with VISAs and that they had a "package deal" that if we got the VISA and the plane tickets through them it would only cost $800 total. Gee, that's awesome! Let's do it! If I could go back in time and smack myself in the face I would. I had never been fooled so easily, but love makes you do crazy things.

I even had her signed up as a guest to arrive for my Airman Leadership School of which I was the class leader. I was beaming from ear to ear knowing that my lovely woman was coming soon. It wasn't soon after I sent the money for the "plane tickets and VISA package" that she suddenly stopped showing up online. No replies to messages, nothing. At first I was worried, then angry, then sad. I cried when the realization set in that she took me for a ride, but the thing that hurt me the most was that she didn't love me.

Still to this day I have no clue if she was who she said she was, in my desperation to see her and talk to her, I sent her a netbook that I was no longer using. She then claimed that she didn't have internet access to use the computer. This should have chimed me in that she was using me. To throw salt on the wounds, she came back accusing me of not sticking around. The nerve of some people, I kindly told her to screw off and never to talk to me again. She came back in a different form later on.

Even after being burned pretty bad I continued, I didn't think I would find someone again online like I did my first fiancée but that didn't keep me from trying. The second woman I met was a lovely woman that was right in all the ways except that she had a kid. Not only that but she was a stay at home mom, could she have been great? Sure, but I knew I wouldn't love that kid the same way she did and I couldn't betray her so I didn't pursue it. I tried to picture myself with her, and tried to pursue something but eventually realized it wouldn't work out. We drifted apart over the months, talking here and there but nothing serious after that.

Then third woman I met is a woman I despise in every way. We were "together" for a month and she is the reason I now own a passport. She lived in Davao and I thought she was amazing. I was blinded yet again by my infatuation and didn't realize how conceited she was. We spoke often, and I would do cute things to win her approval. It was through her that I met another group of women that became distant friends till this day. Things went South quick though, as I soon found out her true nature.

Apparently she had been planning to meet someone behind my back all along and I suppose through some twisted version of the "bro code" he (the guy who was going to meet her) was going to find out who I was and let me know of these shenanigans. I won't go into more details, but needless to say she got her just rewards. I still hear of her and how she's "changed her ways". I suppose having a kid does that to you.

I decided to take some time off to stop looking for anyone but the lure of these websites had their grasp on me. There was something so addicting about logging on and instantly getting messages from other women. Some were just looking to talk, others a desperate attempt to clamp on to you. I started to attract a lot of younger women in their late teens, which really turned me off. Some thought I would be their true love even after speaking with them for just a few minutes. I was starting to think that my online dating luck had been used up in Japan.

Sometime around my birthday I met a woman online in her late twenties. Initially I was a bit harsh towards her thinking that she wanted me support family. Turns out she was a respectable nurse in the oncology department. She had a bad experience in Saudi Arabia and fled the country to go back home to the Philippines. I gave her plenty of support and a shoulder to cry on while she told me her story. I'm a chivalrous guy, and I like to rescue the "damsel in distress", so I was pulled into her life. We got close and although we were off and on a lot we decided to pursue a relationship.

Yet again I got my hopes up and yet again I was let down. She didn't speak to me again until a month later and after realizing she really didn't want a relationship with me I gave up on her. I gave up looking for anyone else and decided I was just going to focus on myself; then just like that, she slipped in before the door closed for good.

#  A Simple Friendship

I was getting ready to shut down my Asian Dating profile along with the other six or so accounts I had with the sister sites. I had a "fire sale" and just went through one last time to see if anyone was worth talking to and firing off messages. I didn't even care to find someone deep and meaningful anymore, I just wanted to find a unique woman that was easy to talk to and not eight years younger than me.

There were a few, but only one responded back and I'm glad she did. Her name was Melanie and I thought she looked beautiful and seemed sincere. Much to her surprise I wrote her back with a novel of a message, as you can see that's pretty much my specialty. We talked a bit, but I still closed my account and she ended up finding me on Facebook. I didn't think much of it, but she seemed nice and thought she was quite cute so I added her. It was the start of a wonderful friendship. I knew she probably liked me but I wanted to keep my distance.

I wasn't interested initially, but she was nice to talk to and after all the women issues I had it was nice to talk to someone who seemed genuinely interested. I was still in love with the woman that I was just "with", and she knew it.

Needless to say, she still held on, and we talked daily. Eventually she and I talked more and more. We seemed to balance each other out, although I was a much different type of guy. I tend to have a pretty strong personality and it took her some time to get used to it. I started to get a crush on her, and would send her kisses in messages and flirted with her often. It was nice, taboo even, but that didn't stop us from doing it. Still, I had said no more relationships for a while and I wanted to take a break. She knew about my past issues, and agreed that I needed to collect myself.

December rolls through and I'm home once again for Christmas break. Melanie and I were still talking daily. I was getting more and more interested, especially after seeing a video of her with her friends during a wedding. I couldn't stop watching that video; I thought she was so gorgeous. Up until then I didn't think much of her, I always had to point out why I didn't want to be with her, as if I was rejecting my own self of what I truly wanted.

The video just pushed through like a semi hitting a brick wall and I was infatuated. I don't think she realized the effect that video had on me. I started to have a huge crush on her and started thinking she was the one that I needed to pursue. She only made it easier to accept this fate when she posted pictures of her Christmas party at work. Wow, I thought, she looks amazing!

She was wearing a plaid button up dress with cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Her long black hair and soft white skin just looked even more tantalizing than before. I instantly fell in love, and I couldn't control my feelings. Right after I saw those pictures, I wanted to be with her, call it lust but I was crazy about wanting to be with her now. We had been talking for nearly 6 months by then, so it's not like I didn't know who she was, but like a flood it all came through overpowering my doubt.

I told her I really wanted to be with her and she said she would really like that. Soon enough, doubt set in and resistance was winning. That night I slept and woke up to tell her that I couldn't do it. I think she was a bit sad by this but she took it well. My mind was playing games on me deep down I knew she was the one I had been looking for. I was thinking how great she was but how much it sucked that she was so far away. This wasn't a quick road trip to California; _this was an 18-hour journey halfway across the world_.

That day I couldn't stop thinking about her, I wanted to be with her but resistance was there, perched on my shoulder whispering in my ear all the fears I had about such a daunting relationship. I kept thinking, then eventually said _you know what, screw it I'm doing this_. I told her that night that I wanted to be with her, and that I wanted to visit her before I deployed. I was heavily in debt, but knew this was the right thing to do. I had never been happier and more excited about such a decision. When I returned back to Las Vegas (where I lived) I charged nearly $1000 for a round trip ticket to the Philippines to my credit card.

We were both excited, but deep down I was terrified. What if she's just using me? What if I get there and she abandons me? What if I'm harvested for my organs? _Ok so that last one is a bit far-fetched, but not out of the realm of possibility_.

I decided it was either going to work out great, or it was going to end up as an experience I'd chalk up to "lessons learned". I flew to Tokyo before taking another 3 hour trip down to Manila. On the way over there I remember peering out into the distant lights of the island below. I was freaking out hoping that everything would turn out fine. No one really knew the pretext of how Melanie and I met online, or that I was going alone and basically winging it.

No one knew how we met, other than a few Filipina women I had befriended a few months prior. It's hard to explain to people about online dating and meeting people that way so I didn't bother. People either have a stigma associated with online dating, or think it's too "out there". Personally I've met and continue to meet some of the most amazing people through online sites. I'd say 90% of people that are close to me I've met online

My mom knew about Melanie, although she didn't believe me when I first brought up the idea of flying down there to essentially meet a stranger. She was quite worried, and she just wanted me to get it over with. My mom knew I was serious and that when I put my mind to something no one would change it. She's my mom though, and she will always have that motherly instinct no matter what I do in life. I try my best to keep her calm, _even when I'm scared myself_.

#  The Arrival

I arrived in the Philippines late into the night, at 10pm to be exact, and I was already feeling terrible. I quickly ran to the bathroom to "relieve" myself from the crap they served on the plane. The funny thing is _I didn't eat anything on the plane._ The mixture of moist hot air and my jet lag meant I was a bit queasy.

Last thing I wanted was to have case of bubble guts when I was going to meet a lovely woman, not to mention in a foreign country. I'm carrying a black gym bag, packed to the brim and quite heavy, _why didn't I get a bag with wheels?_ I thought to myself. I made it to customs, and if you've never been to the Airport in Manila it can seem a bit weird. I stood in one of many large lines leading up to the customs counter; I just wanted to get through and out into the actual country to see Melanie.

It becomes apparent that I'm in a third world country the moment I step out of the airport. I stop at an ATM and pull out enough pesos for a taxi and possibly any other expenses I may incur on my way to the hotel. I head out, and instantly I feel the intense humidity, and this is at 10pm. I'm wearing an undershirt, a short sleeve polo shirt, jeans, calf high leather boots and knee high wool socks. I was sweating like a whore in church; _I hate humidity_.

I make my way to the ramps leading down to the passenger pickup areas and I see huge signs that have letters designating where to be picked up. Down the left they have A-K and on the right they have L-Z. Figuring that Melanie followed these directions I went down the left ramp. I swear there must have been a parade down there, because lining the streets were hundreds of people. It was ridiculous, and I definitely stood out. I feel as though everyone is looking at me knowing I have no clue where I'm going. I'm looking around and panic starts to set in when I cannot find Melanie. I look around and wonder if I passed her, I see a lot of faces that could possibly resemble her but none stand out.

The shaky voice in my head says _"you idiot, you were duped!"_ but soon this fear is replaced with a sense of relief. I continue looking, and I see a head poke out right at the moment I'm looking at a currency exchange counter. There she is, and my god she's beautiful.

I walk up to Melanie and give her a hug. she looks absolutely amazing. She looks so petite in person, which I really loved. I wanted to kiss her so badly. she just looks so adorable. She's very shy and constantly hides behind me like a kid. She has a habit of pulling my shirt up, which bothers me but I let it slide. I whisper in her ear "I love you" and she quietly says it back while blushing.

We're walking around looking for her friend "JB". We went around back and it feels like we're at a carnival with all the special little booths dedicated to some specialty. She needs minutes for her phone, and I tell her I'll buy the phone card. She tries calling her friend but can't reach him so we decide to move to the bus stop.

A bus pulls up to the curb while a "conductor" is leaning out of the entry way yelling and enticing people to get in. They try to get us to ride the bus, but we tell them we're waiting for someone. A taxi driver walks up to Melanie and starts talking to her, asking her if we need a ride somewhere. I have no idea what they're talking about but she seems annoyed by him and tells him to leave her alone. She apologizes for having to wait for her friend and I smile and just say it's ok.

We didn't know if her friend was going to show up and it was starting to get pretty late. Melanie told me that it would be best if we just took a bus. I was hesitant to ride a bus, but I knew I would be in good hands with Melanie. Just as soon as a bus comes by we see her friend walking up us.

We all meet and decide to jump into the first taxi we see. The moment we start driving JB and Melanie are talking with the driver, they seem to be arguing over something. I quickly sit back and hope that this isn't some elaborate plan to rob me and leave me in the middle of the city. The dark lit city and poor conditions make me worried, but I have no choice so I just sit back and hope for the best. My mood instantly cheers up when Melanie holds my hand and smiles at me. That moment I knew I was in good company.

We pull off to the curb and Melanie tells me we're getting out. I'm worried because this looks like a pretty bad part of town to be stranded at. The taxi drives off, and I later find out the driver was trying to rip me off. See, taxi drivers try to rip off foreigners by charging in US dollars as opposed to Philippine pesos. Luckily I was in good hands and we found another taxi. As were driving to the hotel I'm wondering when the city will magically turn into modern buildings, but I'm let down. I see buses charging by, cutting people off and coming within inches of other vehicles.

Traffic here makes any place in the US seem sane in comparison. After about 30 minutes or so we arrive at our hotel, which is remarkably modern and well lit. We all get out and I thank JB for helping us. I check into the hotel and we bid farewell to JB.

Melanie and I ride the elevator to the third floor, and I was holding her hand as we walked to the room. It was right around the corner and I had a huge smile on my face as we walked in. We walked in, put my bag on the ground and grabbed Melanie and gave her a kiss and hugged her. I knew she was expecting it because when we walked in she stood there looking at me. I was a bit shy, but I was so happy to finally be alone with her. She was smiling too, and that night we just stayed in bed staring at each other with intermittent kisses here and there.

It was a surreal experience. I was in a completely new country far from anyone I knew, sharing a bed with someone I just met, and I couldn't be happier. I didn't sleep at all that night, I was just so happy to finally be with her after so long. It was the most memorable Valentine's Day I've ever had. I just flew half way across the world to spend Valentine's Day with someone I never met and best part about is, it actually worked!

There was a certain calmness we both had around each other. She was safe with me, and I could tell she felt comfortable sleeping in the same bed as me, even though we had just met. I too felt the same way, for all we know we both could have been sadistic killers, but we were quite calm and in fact quite happy being together sharing a bed. She knew I would respect her and wouldn't try to anything she didn't feel comfortable with. I was there to meet someone amazing; the physical aspects would come when we were both comfortable with each other. A great deal of trust was built that night, as the bridge would be strengthened over the coming days.

#  Cultural Differences

We awoke the next day and decided to get breakfast at the nearby McDonalds. It was already getting hot early in the morning and I was sweating like crazy before we even sat down. The McDonalds in the Philippines is definitely unique and includes rice with just about all the meals. I decided to go with the classic sausage McMuffin and some orange juice. She decided to get something that looked like two flat pieces of sausage links with rice and egg. Besides the heat and the sweat dripping down it was nice to sit outside and experience the daily hustle and bustle of local Manila residents.

I sat and watched as Jeepneys and buses roared by the main street while young Filipinos walked to work at a call center located nearby. I received plenty of stares from people, and it was funny to watch. Usually women would look at me for a brief moment before looking at Melanie as if they were sizing her up. It was a funny quirk that I found no matter what part of the Philippines we were in.

We went back to our room to cool off for a bit, the malls didn't open till 10am. Around 1030 we walked to the bus stop across the street I was wearing my usual attire and I was soaked before we even got on the bus. My head is pouring sweat and Melanie just looks at me with concern, and her big sister instincts take over and she starts wiping me off.

One thing I really love about her is that she has a very caring mentality. We're both very alike in that we are the oldest sibling in our families and like to take care of those we love. Finally our bus arrives and we hop on and I notice Melanie quickly sits down into her seat before the driver punches it and I stumble to my seat. Melanie laughs and I wonder where my dignity fell to.

Buses in the Philippines are much different from what you'd find in the US. First off there are two kinds of buses: Air Conditioned and Non-Air Conditioned. If you're lucky you can get a nice comfy AC bus, which often tends to have a movie playing and curtains. The non-AC buses usually have wooden seats and all the windows are open. They tend to be a little rough riding, as if the drivers had an obligation to punish you for picking their subpar bus.

When you get on the bus you don't pay up front before you sit down. You get in, find a seat and hold on as the driver drives like a bat out of hell. It's fun, yet scary at the same time. The conductor is a man walking around collecting the fare for the bus. He has a bundle of tickets designating how much you paid. We pay for our first trip to the Mall of Asia which is roughly a 15-20 min trip on a good day.

The Mall of Asia is the third biggest mall in all of Asia, and fourth biggest Mall worldwide. We come into a roundabout type of entrance that circles a massive rotating steel globe in the center. The mall is bustling with people and it's definitely deserving of its titles.

We make our way through the outside of the mall, passing all sorts of food stands and restaurants. It's crowded and hot so we quickly make our way inside. This is my first experience entering a mall here and I'm greeted by two security guards who pat you down and search your bags for weapons. I'm a bit shocked, considering its not common practice in the US. Melanie tells me of a time that the guards found severed heads inside the trash can outside an entrance, so having guards pat you down is probably a _very good thing_.

We walk inside and are cooled off by the AC and start walking around. This is definitely a nice mall, on par with what I would find in the US and even better than that. Lots of famous name brand stores about, a spacious eating area and plenty of niche shops.

We walk down to the movie theater and decide to watch "The Woman in Black". I should say _she decided_ we would watch that movie. I'm not a fan of horror movies, but she wanted to see it so I gave in. We had a few hours to kill before the movie so Melanie took me to a department store to buy a handkerchief.

The handkerchief is infamous in the Philippines due to the strong humidity. Just about everyone has one, some people even have _small_ _towels_ with them. I found a nice black striped one and we went back to the movie theater. I think I spent 90% of the movie closing my eyes not wanting my heart to jump out of my chest from cheap scares the movie was so fond of. After the movie we walked around the mall some more and decided to retreat home since we were so tired.

When we got to our hotel I changed into some gym shorts and a t-shirt then went to the Robinson mall across the street while Melanie went to sleep. I ordered some KFC for the both of us and headed back to the room. As you walk into the room you notice a sign that says they'll charge you 1000 pesos if you eat in there, but that's a ridiculous rule and I decided to eat in the room regardless. Melanie was sleeping, so I didn't bother waking her up. I kissed her on the cheek when I came in but she didn't flinch. I ate my chicken then went out in the lounge area and surfed the internet a bit. I came back to the room and finally slept after a long day.

You'd be surprised how tiring it can be to walk around the Philippines, in the heat, when you're so used to driving everywhere. After a few hours of sleep we woke up and started kissing, we were two crazy kids in love. No matter how tired we were, this same scenario played out just about every night.

#  The Jeepney and Rain

Today was the day we would meet up with a few of Melanie's cousins and actually go out and see something interesting. I was excited because this would be the first time I would be riding along in a Jeepney. For those who don't know, a Jeepney is basically a heavily modified vehicle that originated from WWII military Jeeps.

After the war ended, it was cheaper to leave the Jeeps in the Philippines rather than shipping them back home to the US. This turned out to be a useful "commodity" for the Philippines which was experiencing a travel crisis at the time. They had no way of transporting large groups of people, so they improvised. They transformed the jeeps to include a small bus like backend while keeping the front end the same.

Its part of Philippine culture and you can often find very elaborate Jeepneys that are specific to each driver. Some have detailed paintings; others have special lighting and flashy ornaments. I even saw one to look like a Mercedes-Benz Jeepney. I was thrilled to experience this first hand and see what it was like. I still hadn't learned my lesson about the weather and not dressing up in knee high wool socks and leather boots draped over by my thick jeans. Today was the day I would finally learn that lesson.

We made our way over to Rizal Park initially by bus, then the rest of the way by Jeepney. Getting into a Jeepney can be a little difficult at first. You have to enter through the back, through a small opening then "shuffle" your way down to an empty seat on what is essentially a bench on either side.

You sit facing the other commuters with a small empty pathway down the middle. It has small openings where windows would be and a small rolled up plastic curtain to be used on rainy days. The driver asks where we're going, and without even stopping, continues driving while he collects our money. Being inside a Jeepney can make you feel claustrophobic, but then again I was a pretty big guy and these things tend to get packed for maximum profit potential. I had to hunch over since the ceiling was low and _metal._

Even though I was cramped I enjoyed it, I had a grin on my face. I didn't have much experience using public transportation back home other than the few times I rode the train while living in Japan. I missed being around other people on my way somewhere. It was fun for me, it made you become social with other people. It was fun to get out there experience typical city life, to travel like the locals do.

We arrived at our destination and shuffled our way out of the Jeepney and walked to the park. I was sweating like crazy and definitely needed to replenish my fluids. I bought a bottle of water at a small hut near the entrance to the park. It was quite nice walking down through the park. They had a long field down the middle saddled by two walk ways on either side. Massive flags lined the edges of the field, and there was a nice breeze in the air. It was enough to really enjoy it when you felt it, but not enough that you would take it for granted.

We walked for about 15 minutes then finally stopped to sit down and wait for Melanie's cousins to arrive. In the Philippines, least from what she told me, being punctual was a fairly relaxed rule. Considering most of the population doesn't have a personal vehicle, they rely on the buses, Jeepneys, trains and tricycles (more on that later) to get anywhere. The traffic in Manila can be quite horrendous, often times a trip that would take 15-20 minutes can extend into an hour or even more.

So we waited, and we took in the sights. Melanie was sitting down on a block, and she just looked adorable. We saw a few photographers walking about. One in particular seemed to be pacing back and force in front of us like a hawk waiting to swoop in. He would look at me often, knowing I was a foreigner and thinking I would just spew cash out of my wallet to take one of his pictures.

Melanie was none too pleased; she tends to be a bit more aggressive with Filipinos than me. He spoke to her, and she shooed him away and didn't make much of the conversation as if to say, "no, just leave us alone" and focused on me again. It was cute when she did that. After what seemed like 45 minutes, we finally met up with Anna and her sister. Melanie wanted me to talk to them, as they were really shy, but hell _I was shy_ as well.

Much to my American ways, I was thrown off by the names used in the Philippines. I had known of Anna before, I believe we met on Facebook although we didn't talk much if at all online. I shook her sister's hand and said hi and she said her name was Tin-Tin. Needless to say I smiled

before trying to gain my composure. I didn't mean to do it. It's just hard to not smile when I think of the name Tin-Tin. I conjured up images of the Tin man from The Wizard of Oz, and then jokingly made a joke to Melanie saying "the adventures of Tin-Tin". She didn't get it, but it still made me laugh. Tin-Tin gave me a weird look when I initially laughed wondering what was wrong.

As much as Melanie wanted all of us to talk, it was mostly a discussion between Melanie and her cousins while I quietly stood in the background smiling. We made our way to the monument, with the field and flags to our back. Apparently there was a special "tomb" or something of that sort that the Philippine military would guard. I heard there were some gold bricks (or maybe just one) inside. It reminded me of our traditions, but this one wasn't as precise or professional as I would have expected.

We took pictures together, some with her cousins and a few of Melanie and I tilted at an angle with me holding her from behind. I really love holding her from behind, especially since I'm taller than her. After that we decided to head elsewhere, to another park that was nicer, or so I thought. We walked along the sidewalk trying to find a Jeepney, or a bus to take us to where we needed to go. Watching the traffic go by I knew I didn't want to cross it.

We finally flagged down a taxi, and ever since my first day in the Philippines I always worried when I would get ripped off. We all jumped into the taxi and Melanie quickly spoke to the driver to determine what rate he was going to charge us; the foreign rate I'm sure. He charged a little higher, and I asked Melanie "so is it higher than usual" "yes, but not much more". I agreed, after all I sure as hell wasn't walking in this muggy weather wearing what I had on.

We made our way down through some small roads into what looked like an old church. We get out and we're met with a few vendors displaying hats, sunglasses and inflatable toys. One of the vendors gets close to making a sale from me, but Melanie pulls me aside. As we enter I realize we need to pay for entrance tickets. Melanie and her cousins are looking at me with a look of "do you think we can go too?" it was sweet and I knew they would all enjoy it so I paid for them all.

The area is littered with wooden cutouts of various people around. Some monks, some small children, some women, you get the idea. We take a few pictures, and I hand off the camera to Anna and Tin-Tin to take pictures at their leisure. They snap a few of us walking around holding hands. We take a few pictures of us acting goofy in cardboard cutouts and a cute picture of us peeking behind a few statues, which I don't seem to pull off quite as well as Melanie.

While we're going about our business trying to make some memorable pictures, it starts to rain I mean _rain._ We quickly find cover underneath a small break area. I had grown up in various dry climates, so I had not been accustomed to such heavy rain. It was a nice view, albeit one that came at a bad time. The rain went on for quite a bit, and thunder gets introduce itself into the mix.

I start to think, "I'm on an island known for typhoons, and a region that has experienced catastrophic _Tsunamis_ " but I put those thoughts out of my head. I figure if something of that sort did happen, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyways so why bother. Some of the maintenance personnel see us trying to keep dry underneath this rather pitiful overhead and wave us in to the building area. We all make our way to the patio that provides substantially more coverage and chairs, lovely chairs. We sit and wait the rain out just like the maintenance guys behind us, along with the two foreign women sitting at a small table near the entrance to the patio.

They're talking quite fast, too fast for me to understand. I can't quite put my finger on it. I know they're speaking a language I've heard

Before, Is it Spanish? No, they throw in a few new words I haven't heard or understand. I assume they're Portuguese or maybe even Puerto Rican although I'm not quite sure.

40 minutes later the rain subsides and we make our way out. It's still sprinkling out but we need to get out of there. We were able to resume taking pictures before the rain returns for round two, as if the weather was playing a practical joke on us. We're too far from the building, so we run into an abandoned school bus, which seemed to have been used for a shuttle service of

some sort at one point. Unfortunately most of the seats were wet except for a few that Tin-Tin and Anna were able to get.

One of the foreign women walks past us and in short choppy English says

"Does this bus go to Hotel Manila?"

I wonder if she's joking with us, and then realize she's being _serious_.

"Um no, this doesn't, this bus isn't even working" I said with a puzzled look

"Oh ok" She says with a look of confusion, as if I was lying to her. I joke with Melanie saying, "I should have told her to get in, and we'll drop her off". It was pretty hilarious. I guess some people have no common sense. We waited yet again in the bus for another 20 minutes, _my feet are aching damn it,_ I thought and I was ready to leave and find a nice comfy bed to sleep in. I was exhausted. Melanie and her cousins wanted to get their money's worth, or at least what I paid for the tickets. I wanted to "cut my losses" and just go to the mall or something.

I should mention that today was the day we were going to meet up with her father and have a nice dinner together. Hoping I would meet her father, gain his good graces and just overall have an enjoyable time together. No, we were stuck in a bus in the rain wanting to sit down and relax. I hate you rain! The rain stopped once more and we made our way to the other side of

this park by crossing a stone bridge. It was covered in puddles and I relieved a childhood activity of jumping on dry spots to avoid splashing water.

As soon as we make it inside the arched entryway, our good ole friend the rain comes roaring back. I see foreigners in the distance make a run for the nearest cover. For some reason the rain seems to be concentrated on the main area of the park, but directly behind us it's a light sprinkle. We see a group of school children being led around on a school trip.

We take a few pictures in the archway with the yellow footsteps leading to the back area, then we follow them to another are surrounded by buildings. We pose next to the massive bronze statue, but by then I was just thinking "alright let's just get through this, I'm tired and I want to be in a nice air conditioned mall to eat something good".

We get to the end and there is nothing really amazing to see, although in the distance we can see the massive river that separates us from the city on the other side. It's a bit scary to see such a massive river, and I imagine being stuck in the middle of the river trying to swim across. I don't know why I always envision myself in such crazy scenarios.

We make our way back and I feel like I'm about to sweat through both my shirts. I'm sure I've already lost about a pound or two just in sweat. We need to make a stop at the restroom before we leave, and we find one off the beaten path. The walkway leading up to the bathroom is covered in some disgusting muddy water and Melanie is wearing simple slip on shoes. Being the gentleman that I am, I whisk her up and walk across with her in my arms. She giggles and says "thank you po", and I wait for them outside. I repeat the same gesture for Melanie on the way back over the water as her cousin's watch. She giggles again and gives me a peck on the cheek. I'm exhausted again, and we make our way out. Freeeedom! Is what I feel like screaming, but I keep it to myself as we try to find a taxi yet again. We find one and the cool breeze of AC hits me while a sense of relaxation comes over me.

I don't know why, but for some reason I didn't notice that Anna and Tin-Tin were coming with us to meet Melanie's dad. Then it hits me _Anna and Tin-Tin will be joining us for this dinner_. Once again my plans to have a small dinner with her father and I isn't going to happen. I suppose it's for the best though considering I don't know a lick of Tagalog and her father doesn't speak English.

We decide to meet up at a restaurant that Melanie really enjoys known as "Gerry's Grill". We four sit down, and order food. I begin to whisper into Melanie's ear about how I wish she had told me so many people were going to be eating with us. It wasn't a money issue, but because I was hoping to have a nice dinner between the three of us. She gets embarrassed about the whole situation.

I quickly feel bad about what I did, although I didn't mean to offend her in any way. She puts her head down on the table and I start to regret telling her anything right then and there. We make up, and she apologizes for not telling me ahead of time. After some time her father arrives with her brother. I shake both their hands, but quickly sit back down and not say a thing. Melanie gives me a look of "talk to him", but it seems her father and I have the same intentions of not really saying much to each other.

It was a rather quite dinner. There were three females and three males sitting at the table yet the only ones speaking where the females. I sit across from Raymund, her brother, who is content not saying anything at all throughout the meal. Reminds me of how I usually act with my family. We're eating breaded chicken wings, two kinds of fried rice and some fried fish that Melanie is fond of. I'm none too pleased with the food, but I'm hungry and decide to eat. Raymund is trying to pry apart his chicken with a fork and sends one flying to the ground. I see him smirk as he picks it up, and I smirk as well, but I wanted to laugh. We have a good meal together and decide to take pictures together. I sit next to her dad as she's behind us smiling.

I sometimes hope things would have been different between her dad and me during that time, even if just for Melanie but at least things didn't go badly. I pay for the meal, which ends up being quite cheap for a six person "buffet". We make our way to the bus stop, we're both tired and we've had our fun today. We walk through the plethora of shops lining the walk ways and finally reach the bus stop. We all jump on, Melanie and I are together and Anna and Tin-Tin are on another seat ahead of us. Her father and brother are behind us, and I wonder if I should pay for their trip home.

As we make our way back we end up going underneath this overpass and around a building. Unpaved roads leading through paths that seem like obscure shortcuts and somehow I feel like one of those Indian construction workers in Dubai heading to work in a bus in the middle of the night. The bus finally makes it to a paved road and at the next stop her brother and father get off. Melanie points out the general area of where she lives with her father, yet she never wants me to visit her there.

Anna and Tin-Tin also get off before we do, and we take the bus ride home. We reach the hotel and I was so happy to know that relaxation was finally coming. I pass out after an exhausting day, I tell Melanie I had a great day and I love her. I kiss her and sleep, least enough till I am woken up early in the morning again and I continue to cuddle with Melanie and show her affection.

#  Laughter is the Best Medicine

After spending many sweat-drenched days walking about Manila, I finally decided to upgrade (or downgrade) my wardrobe to include shorts and running shoes. I lose the undershirt and sport a polo shirt alone. It's not my usual attire, I feel "dirty" wearing a polo shirt alone, but feeling cool and comfortable was much more important at the time.

We walk across the street to the Robinson mall, get patted down at the entrance and make our way upstairs. We walk into the first department store we see and I decide to try on a few pairs of cargo shorts to replace the gym shorts I had on. A Filipina woman was constantly circling us, waiting for me to ask her for a size, as if I couldn't do it myself. Maybe she didn't get much exposure to foreigners and wanted to help. I picked out a few of them, and she folds them up and points us to the direction of the cash register.

I wanted to keep my head cool so I looked for a barber. I settled for a place that looked like a salon. I say that because it wasn't catered towards men or women, but seemed to be "stylish" as opposed to the manly feel of a barbershop. I want a high and tight haircut, standard military fare. I'm quite surprised how cheap it was, especially with everything included.

I'm led to the back room to have my head soaked in water and washed with invigorating shampoo to clean my hair. It's dried off and I get put into a seat to have my hair cut. A man comes out from behind and tells me what I would like and cuts my hair. A basic setup of this sort would cost me a minimum for $17 back home, not taking into account a tip. Total including tip was about $6. I was pretty thrilled to say the least.

Afterward we decide to go to the arcade room to play some basketball game. This is a common occurrence for us anytime we're in the mall. She looks like an NBA star compared to me. I was never into sports growing up and basketball was definitely not something I was ever good at. Melanie seems to know the perfect sweet spot to getting the ball into the basket every time. I'm lucky if I make one out of three shots, but eventually I get into a groove. She beats me every single time. She wins eight games in a row and I get tired of losing and say "ok let's go home". She giggles every time she wins, knowing that she's better at this game than me.

We leave the mall and head back to the room so I could get changed and feel cool for once. I'm relieved by how much better I feel walking about. I'm still hot and sweaty, but significantly less, especially with less hair to trap the heat.

We decided to visit a new mall as the Mall of Asia was getting old and the Robinson mall across the street from us didn't have much to offer. The funny thing is, no matter where you go in the Philippines you'll often find an abundance of malls, and they're often the most modern buildings in the area.

We were going to take the train to get down to this mall, since it was pretty much a straight shot to the mall from the train station. Right outside our hotel window you could see the train going back and forth and I always wanted to take a ride in it. I love to ride the train, just something about it that I really enjoy. I don't take public transportation often and it's nice to try it every now and then. It seems to bring me closer to the people, it's odd but it's something I enjoy.

We made our way across the overpass and up to the massive line to buy our tickets. Afterward we go through yet another "checkpoint" where the guards pat us down we walk past a massive poster filled with pictures of pick pocket thieves. There are probably 30-50 mug shots of thieves that were caught; amazingly enough most seem to be women. They all look like hell, as if the picture was took just a few minutes after they were caught by a police officer.

I make sure to keep my wallet deep inside one of my cargo pockets, just big enough to fit my wallet and nothing else. If someone was going to lift my wallet, they'd have to fight for it, and hopefully by then I'd know of it. The train finally arrives and we all rush in, the seats fill up quickly but Melanie is able to get a seat. I stand in the section between the train cars as I try to keep my balance.

Melanie does something that really pleases me. There was this pregnant Filipina woman who was standing in front of Melanie. Of course Melanie was sitting next to a few men, but they weren't going to give up their seat, _not even for a pregnant woman._ Melanie seeing that no one else would give up their seat for this woman decided she would do it herself. She gave up her seat and the pregnant woman said thank you and smiled as Melanie came towards me.

Now I don't remember this happening, but apparently I told Melanie "Aww" and kissed her in front of everyone. She said she loved that, even though she blushed so much when I did it. Considering how many times I've kissed her this one slipped my mind. Although I do remember feeling really proud of what she did. I remember her scoffing later that the men weren't chivalrous even when a pregnant woman was standing.

It wasn't long before we finally made our stop at Trinoma Mall, so we get off and went through some concrete maze to finally make it down the stairway to the street level. This mall was quite awesome, least as far as malls go except this one was quite packed. It was smaller than Mall of Asia yet seemed to have many more people walking around. At times Melanie and I had to stretch our arms our just to keep hold of each other as we were walking through some of the crowds.

We decided to see a movie again, and it must have been a terrible week for movies as yet again nothing I wanted to see was playing. Melanie wanted to see "Breaking Wind" which was a comedy based off the Twilight series of books. I never heard of it before, and it was just as bad as I expected. It was cheesy and incredibly tacky, but it was worth it to hear Melanie giggle and laugh uncontrollably. I really loved that, even if she was the only one in the theater laughing that much. Really warmed my heart to hear her laughing and smiling so much. So it turned out to be better than expected, Melanie was enjoying her movie and I was enjoying her laughter.

We decide to eat at the hotel and make our way back, taking the same train ride. We arrive at our hotel and decide to eat at the indoor restaurant attached to our hotel. Tokyo Café it's all, and it's a nice little restaurant that serves an assortment of different foods from Japanese to Italian to Filipino foods. I decide on a chicken club sandwich with fries and she gets chicken with a ton of white rice. _She loves white rice,_ me, not so much _._

Melanie calls out to the female waitress," Ate, ate!" I laugh and start calling the guy "ate" beneath my breath. Melanie laughs and says "noo, baliw". We have a fun dinner as we watch the night of another day in Manila come to an end.

#  The Longest Day

Its day five comes around and we're getting more comfortable with each other. We're getting more intimate with each other and we're doing things that we were too shy to do before. We're kissing more often and love seeing each other more than before. On this day we decide to venture out and see some of the nice things that the Philippines have to offer besides shopping.

We research a few different things to do online and decide to visit La Eco Park. We decided to go to La Mesa Eco Park during the first part of the day then later at night we'll go to Mall of Asia to see the Pyrolympics. The Pyrolympics was basically two countries going head to head to see who could display the more impressive fireworks show. We wanted to go because it was the UK vs. Spain. I'm half Spanish, so naturally we had to go.

We take the long bus ride out to La Mesa Eco Park and I record video on the bus ride over there. It was a lot of fun seeing a new part of the Philippines that wasn't congested with traffic. The bus was pretty sparse with people so Melanie and I moved up near the front of the bus. The driver was making good time as he opened it up on the highway. I got to see plenty of nice scenery all around and I had a huge smile on my face the whole time, I loved it.

We finally arrived to the area where La Mesa Eco Park was located, but we needed to take a tricycle to the actual park. I remember seeing these around the Philippines but never had the chance to ride in one yet. If you've never seen a tricycle it's basically a motorbike (usually a dirt bike) with a small two-person "carriage" welded onto the frame.It's a poor man's taxi, but one that can get into places that most taxis can't, hence the need for one now.

We get into the tricycle and wonder how the hell I'm going to get out. Melanie slips in just fine and I struggle to get in, stepping on Melanie's foot in the process. I apologize and feel bad for hurting her during my awkwardness. I'm hunched over in this steel egg trying not to hit my head as we bounce around inside. Melanie is laughing, and I take out my camera to record the experience. It's a bit rough, but awesome at the same time. We pass other oncoming traffic and tricycles, as the engine seems to be screaming from all the excess weight it has to carry.

Finally after a short ride we arrive at the entrance to the park and we pay the driver and make our way inside. We pay the dues and told that for an extra 50 pesos we can see some exotic butterflies in a secluded building near the entrance. We opt out, and went on our way.

As we receive our entrance 'stamps' I notice a security guard looking at me and asks me "you speak Tagalog?" I say no and he mentions something else that I can't understand. I smile and nod and make my way with Melanie down the path.

This place is incredible, so much foliage everywhere and it just feels awesome to be in a place that is so rich with plant life. Coming from Las Vegas, which consists of sand, rocks and crime, this was a breath of fresh air _literally_. Amazingly enough I'm not sweating as much as usual and I realize that Manila tends to be hotter than other places, mostly due to the pollution from all

the vehicles there. I try to take pictures of some of the intricacies of the plant life, but my simple point and shoot camera doesn't quite capture the beauty of it all.

We walk around La Mesa Eco Park and I'm dying of thirst so we stop by a small hut to get some water, while Melanie gets some iced tea. As I seem to sweat out the bottle of water I just drank, I wonder how Melanie manages to stay dry. I'm struggling just to keep dry, let alone cool down. As we're walking around we hear music playing and we noticed one of the bigger areas includes a stage and a seating area for about 50 people or so. At first we thought it was a wedding, but soon found out it was for a birthday party. It was a nice day; lots of people were out and about enjoying the weather.

We come across many beautiful areas of the park, including this beautiful small field of flowers that just lights up this incredibly green area with a touch of blue. We walk up this steep set of stairs to get a better overview of the park and to take some more pictures up on the hill. Melanie wants to take a "jump shot", but unfortunately I have a basic point and shoot camera which results in 5 blurred pictures of Melanie in various states of motion.

I laugh because we tried this like five times till we found one we settled with. Down below the hill we see a small pond area, so we make our way down there. This is starting to feel like a workout, but I guess that's a good thing. We get to the point and see some massive fish swimming about in the water. It's pretty nice, reminds me of a similar pond when I some of the famous historical sites in Japan.

The place has many huts around, and we follow a path leading up to another part of the park that contains a lot of unique plants and wooden sculptures. This place seems to be filled with a bunch of Chinese school children. As we make our way up the stairs we catch a Chinese kid and ask him if he could take our picture. He doesn't seem to speak any English so we just motion with the camera and he gets it.

He takes the picture, then hands the camera back to us and runs off to his other schoolmates. I look at the picture and say "oh come on!" and notice my eyes where completely shut while he took the picture. I still remember that little chubby Chinese kid who can't take a decent picture as I shake my fist. Melanie laughs and we jokingly say that he should take all our pictures from now on.

As we're walking around we notice small little pieces of paper hidden amongst the plants. Now we understand why so many school children were wandering around through there, it's a scavenger hunt. We find one and motion to a Chinese kid that we found one for her. She quickly picks it up, and without thinking just runs off.

We take a few pictures, one of Melanie on the steps posing. She looks especially beautiful today; I take another on a bench as she shows off her beautiful legs. We find a few carved wooden poles sticking out of the ground and decide to get a picture taken there. I figure propping up the camera onto one of those wooden poles with a timer should suffice; I don't need a Chinese kid to take a terrible picture of me again. It works! So we make a lap around the area and come back down. We decide to slowly make our way out of the park, not much else to see and we want to go home to rest up before we decide to head to the mall for a fireworks show.

I remember, as we were getting ready to leave three guys dressed up in special costumes showed up. It reminded me of Las Vegas as these guys were dressed up like statues or robots. One guy was completely in silver paint with a silver suit and he perched himself up onto a ledge and stood still and moved as people walked by. It was impressive, mostly because it was humid as hell and these guys were able to keep their composure.

We made our way out, and took the Jeepney and bus back to our hotel. The fireworks show would start around 6pm, and we were pretty tired so we decided to just stay in our room until it was time to head back out.

It's about 4pm and we start getting ready to leave, I shower and get ready and I'm ready to head out about 430pm, but Melanie still needed more time and told me it was still too early. I agreed and we decided to leave around 530pm, which was a mistake. The roads were packed and by the time 6pm came around we could see the Mall of Asia in the distance along with the fireworks in the air. I pouted and told Melanie in a childish voice "see, I told you we should have left early". She pouted as well; it was cute.

We finally made it to the mall and it seemed like everyone and their mother had the same idea to come down there to see the show. We paid for our tickets, and made our way through the crowd to see the show. Now what was so special about this show? Well it was a special show between different countries. During this show it was the UK vs. Spain, to see who would have a more impressive display of fireworks. I would have been upset had I missed Spain, considering I'm half Spanish it was a big deal to me.

We find a little area for us to get a decent view of the fireworks, but all the best areas are already packed with people. McDonald's workers are walking around selling bottles of water, and another is selling cheeseburgers. We buy a couple bottles of water and wait for the show to start. The show starts off with the soundtrack to "Requiem for a Dream" and I hold my arm up with camera in record mode to try to capture as much as possible.

I can manage to hold the camera for about 2-3 minutes at a time before it starts to ache. Melanie supports my arm at times, but I have to switch about 5 times throughout before my memory card is filled. After the show we decide to have dinner at the Mall. I'm incredibly tired to the point where I'm ready to just fall asleep on a bench, but I'm also hungry.

Hunger wins out and after long we finally stop at a Chinese restaurant that's oddly named "Eat Well" or something along those lines. It's not very good, but its food and I'm hungry. It takes a while to order, then to receive our food then to finally pay. I'm ready to pass out and Melanie wants to stop by and give her brother some money. She doesn't want to after seeing how immensely tired I am, but I didn't want that to stop her from seeing her brother so I hold out as much as I can.

We get to the bus stop and it's quickly filled with passengers. I am separated from Melanie and end up sitting near the front, alone. I see a few women standing up, and being the gentleman that I am I get up and decide to stand. It looks awkward as I am the only foreigner on the bus and I'm standing up, but the look that Melanie gave me of approval made it all worth it. The jostling motion of the bus keeps me awake, it was either that or slip off the hand rail and fall onto the ladies that were sitting where I once was. I slowly make my way next to Melanie, and as fate would have it we get into a massive traffic jam. A trip that would have taken 20-30 minutes has now stretched into an hour.

I'm dying, I'm ready to just pass out and by the time I get to sit next to Melanie I just fall asleep off and on. I use her shoulder as a pillow and she cradles my head, I love when she does that, I always feel so safe and loved when she does it. We arrive at the intersection where her brother is waiting for us.

We meet up at the front of a convenience store and she gives him some cash, she's such a sweet sister. We run across a congested road as my adrenaline is kicking in trying to dodge traffic. We hop onto our last bus of the night and Melanie expresses her gratitude for sticking through even though I was incredibly tired. We get up to our room; I take off my shoes and just fall into the bed. I don't remember when I wake up but it's early into the next morning.

I wake up, and see Melanie next to me; it's such a wonderful feeling having her there. She's asleep as well, but it doesn't stop me from kissing her all over her face. She smiles with her eyes closed and tells me "baliw". I laugh and continue kissing her as she tries to kiss me back. I tell her I love her and head back to sleep with a smile of my face of satisfaction.

#  Tagaytay

Today we decide to visit the Tagaytay Picnic grove and I remember it being a fairly long trip. I think it was a good hour or two driving via bus to get there but it was worth it. Either way I was just happy to ride the bus and see new things I haven't seen before. Unfortunately we started this trip later in the day; I believe it was nearly lunchtime before we even went so we didn't get to stay long. We rode the long bus ride to Tagaytay and Melanie pointed out where her relatives lived. We rode through a few different towns before getting onto a long stretch of highway.

The bus we rode didn't have AC but luckily all the windows were open, hell they didn't even have a door on the bus. We had the great seat next to this gaping hole of an entrance on the bus, and I was sitting on the outside of the seat.

As we strolled through one of these small towns on the outskirts a rather ragged looking man got on board and looked around before finally deciding to sit next to me. Go figure, I knew we he was up to, and I think Melanie knew it as well. This guy was a bit handsy and it only made things worse, for him anyways. The conductor came by and picked up his fare from the man and as if to taunt him, he had his back to the man sitting next to me. He put the change in his back pocket, which was quite full and the man took the bait.

The man sitting next to me took the empty water bottles that we had stowed into the backs of the seats, not sure why but it became apparent afterward. He used the bottle to nonchalantly tap the conductor's pocket containing the change.

The conductor didn't even flinch and he did it again, of course the whole time Melanie and I are watching him. He got a bit ballsier and started reaching for the change. I saw Melanie staring at the man, looking like she wanted to kill the guy. The man never put his hand into the pocket, maybe he chickened out at the last moment but it would have been fun to see what the conductor would have done. Once again I will reiterate that we were sitting next to the uncovered exit to the bus. A quick push and the man would have been tossed out of the bus.

After the conductor finally made his way back to the front of the bus, the man started getting a little handsy with me. I was wearing my cargo shorts, and had my wallet on my right side, where he was sitting. He knew this and would brush his hand over his left leg and happened to touch the pocket containing my wallet. He did this on more than one occasion and it was starting to piss me off.

I knew, given the chance, that he would try to take my wallet. He wouldn't get far, but it would be something that would end messy, _I probably would toss him out of the moving bus_.

He kept doing this, and as a sign that I knew what he was up to I put my hand over my wallet. Still he kept doing it, and it was starting to tick me off, but the cutest thing was that Melanie was staring him down the whole time. She asked me to give her the wallet and she would put it in her purse to hold it. As sweet as that was, I wasn't about to take out my wallet in front of this scumbag.

He then decided to play stupid, and pretended he was falling asleep. We weren't sure if he was drunk (he didn't smell of alcohol) or just plain weird. We went with the latter. It was a good 20 minutes riding with this jackass trying to feel me up.

As the conductor came by he tried his same tactics again, and then would pretend to fall asleep as to make it seem like he wasn't in his right mind. Eventually he realized he wasn't going to make any money and stopped getting handsy with me. He put his hands up on the seat back in front of him then took a good 10 min nap or so before mysteriously waking up then getting off the bus.

I'm pretty sure he was just riding the bus to see whom he could try to steal money from. After he got off I quickly moved my wallet to a smaller pocket on the left. It would be incredibly hard to take out, _even for me,_ so I figured it was the best spot to have it in.

About 15 minutes after that we arrived to the Tagaytay Picnic grove. I remember seeing pictures of Melanie riding the zip line across the lush plant life beneath. It was quite a beautiful sight, I just wish I had a better camera to try and capture what I was looking at.

There were plenty of people that day, so it was pretty nice. We made our way down to the zip line. Initially I was a bit worried because I didn't have much money on me. I couldn't use a card because most of these places only take cash (pesos) and I remember asking Melanie how much it cost for the ride back and such. I was worried we'd pay to get on the zip line and that we wouldn't be able to pay for our way back. I did the math and it would be tight, but doable. I really wanted to try the zip line with Melanie; I thought we could recreate the photos that she had with her friends.

We decided against it, after all Melanie wouldn't have any way to secure her bag, unlike before where she was with her friends. The cable car that could seat 4 people had a snapped cable so we couldn't ride that either. It was a bit upsetting, but we made due.

I took a few pictures of the islands in the distance, one of which was a volcano that Melanie had been to previously. It was pretty pricey, and the weather wasn't the best so we couldn't go at the time. It's definitely on my "to-do" list when I return though, so I'm not too worried about it now.

You could see the small boats heading up to the island in the distance, along with the vast ocean surrounding them. It was quite a beautiful sight to see. I had seen a similar sight when I visited a beach in Aomori, but this was definitely on a much grander scale.

The stairs lead up to the picnic huts were constantly being paced up and down by students and a few foreigners. I got a few pictures of those riding the zip line across the huge drop of trees below. It was funny to see them sliding across and running into the tire stop at the end. Then they would push them out a bit to take a picture of them "coming in" the second time.

It was a really beautiful place, _had we been going on a picnic,_ but it was nice to get out and see something nice like that. I was getting a bit antsy to get back home, it was getting a bit late in the day and I was already quite tired from the heat and trip over there. Another long trip home, and after a nice shower we had a nice meal at Tokyo Café and prepared for another day. Tomorrow would be a special day.

#  New Friends

Well today would be my first day without Melanie, least for a few hours. This proved especially convenient because tomorrow would be our "monthsary". A monthsary in the Philippines is basically a month version of an anniversary. It was our second month together as a "couple", and I wanted to get her something special to show her how special she was to me. Also I wanted to make it up to her because I didn't get her a birthday gift, which was a few days before I arrived to the Philippines.

Melanie had to take care of some "legal" issues with her prior boyfriend in which they shared a house together. Apparently the house was in her name and the guy wanted it back. She didn't need me to be there, so I decided to stay back and use this time to shop without her knowing of it.

We got up early and decided to grab some coffee at a Starbucks, which seemed to be hidden from everyone but the call center workers located in the same building. I remember it was raining that day, so walking around on the tiled floors was incredibly hard, it would literally be my downfall later on. So we stop into the Starbucks and I grab a café latte as usual, and a cinnamon roll. Melanie gets an iced coffee of some sort and a massive burrito/sandwich thing. It had egg and ham within a bread-like covering.

Every Filipina woman that seems to walk through stares at us and I try not to make eye contact for the 10th time. Melanie is smiling and she looks so beautiful, I can tell she's happy and it just makes me smile. After our Starbucks meal, we head out and pass the numerous young looking Filipinos in business attire going up the escalator with us. Around the corner is the McDonalds we've eaten at a few times, and we walk across the street to the bus stop.

She makes it to the bus and I wave her goodbye, it's bittersweet but I'm almost relieved because now I can shop and do things without her knowing. Hah! The mall wouldn't open up for another hour so I decided that I would stop by McDonalds and head back to my room to eat before I needed to get up again. It was a bit boring, yet nice to just be alone since we had already been together for a week.

Not that I didn't enjoy her company, but I've been alone most of my life so that's my default _comfort zone._ I took a nice nap and woke up just in time to head to the mall. I didn't want to waste any time because I wanted to get some gifts for Melanie and it would suck to get back to my room with the gifts in hand only to see her waiting for me.

After a quick nap I got dressed and ready to go. It was still raining and the roads where slick. Being a foreigner I stood out pretty easily, what happened next _didn't help_. So the building where our hotel is located in is just across from the mall, which is almost adjacent except for a small passageway that vehicles use to get around the building and such. It has a crosswalk and it's quite busy at that. As I was getting ready to cross, I noticed a truck coming my way; being impatient I decided to quickly make my way across.

Of course as you know paint and water are incredibly slick and I just happened to be running across a painted crosswalk. Before I knew it I was laying face up on the ground. It was very wet outside and I knew my entire backside was wet. I laughed at what had just happened, and knowing that everyone had probably just seen it, including the man in the truck who had a front row show to my demise.

I quickly jumped up, and noticed the guard had walked inside just as I had fallen. It was a dick move, she didn't even bother to ask if I was all right, but I just quickly made my way through and got inside. I walked around the mall a bit hoping to dry off, I'm sure I looked really awkward with a huge wet stain across my entire backside. Luckily I had been wearing some dark colored clothing so it didn't look at bad.

I was looking around for a place that sold roses, or flowers of any kind so I stopped into the grocery store they had in the mall but to no avail. I bought some toiletries and made my way to the bookstore on the first floor. I looked around and found a few cards I wanted to get her. I have this thing about getting people two or even three cards for special occasions, I often don't find just one that I like so I get more.

I found a few I thought were touching, usually one sincere and romantic one and one funny one. Then I made my way to the jewelry counter. I remember seeing a few of these near the end of the mall on our way out.

The first one I stopped to had some decent jewelry, I saw a few things I liked but for some reason the woman was oblivious to me standing there. It almost seemed like she was going out of her way to ignore me, so it pissed me off and I said screw it.

I moved to the other jewelry shop, which was smaller but at least the woman at the counter was delighted to see me and give me all the help I needed. I found a nice necklace that had a heart shape. I tried to get something that looked like two hearts combining, but the necklace I got had to do. I didn't have much time, and I wanted it to be a surprise so I bought it without thinking twice.

It was a lot cheaper than I expected it to be, but I was pretty happy with the purchase. I was tempted to get Melanie something else as well, but I knew we would be celebrating our monthsary at Villa Escudero, which would be pricey as is.

I was done with my shopping and I made my way back home. I wanted to write a nice letter to Melanie within the cards. When I got home I hid the necklace in my gym bag and opened up the cards.

I had finished writing a lengthy letter to Melanie in one of the cards, and started on the second card when I could hear Melanie opening the door. I quickly sprung up and hid the cards inside the bag before she opened it. I remember saying, "wait wait!" I think she knew what was up but she kept quiet. I was able to hide the cards in my bag, and she was none the wiser (least I believe).

I was happy to see her again and while she was away I had been sending her text messages via Skype to her phone. I would send her cute kissing emoticons and tell her I love her and I missed her. She thought it was sweet, and I'm sure she was receiving them while she was taking care of the housing issue.

This would be a fun day because we were going to meet some of Melanie's friends. Melanie was good friends with a woman named Kathrina, and she definitely wanted to meet us. Initially Kathrina was supposed to come down to see us directly after she got off work, but the plans changed and we decided to visit her where she lived. It was fun to once again ride a bus to a new town. It was one thing to stick out in Manila, where other foreigners frequented, but in this town I definitely stood out. I don't think I saw one foreigner there the whole time I was down there.

We arrived to Kathrina's "neighborhood" and walked down the narrow streets leading up to her house. We passed a group of women preparing a chicken for dinner and a few of them looked up at me as if they had never seen an American before.

I remember walking into Kathrina's house, first through the outer gate, then through the entrance to her house. I was soon greeted by a very friendly dog, which seemed to really be enamored with me. I love dogs, and I think this dog sensed that. It was funny because this dog followed me around and wanted me to pet it and play with it. Kathrina mentioned how the dog never did that with anyone else, so I felt honored.

I also met the lovely ladies living in that house, Kathrina and her sister who goes by "Tets". They lived with their father who was asleep when I first arrived, but kindly woke up to shake my hand and greet me. I thought it was a very respectful thing to do, and they made me feel welcomed in their home.

They asked me to make myself comfortable so I sat down, while Melanie reached for something in the fridge to drink. She grabbed a glass from the cupboard and asked me if I wanted some water. Initially I thought she was going to pour me some water from the tap and I said no, worrying that I would get sick. She pulled out a bottle from the fridge, which actually looked like a bottle of wine and said "mine drink". This time I thought it was alcohol and I said no again, then she told me it was water and I agreed.

They laughed a bit as we drank and sat around their house talking. Tets was very shy and quite, but very sweet at the same time. Kathrina was very warm and welcome as well, they looked like a very loving pair of sisters. They were a bit shy with me, and always spoke with Melanie as if to make her a middleman between us all.

We walked out to the main road to try and catch a Jeepney so that we could go to the SM Calamba mall to eat and have fun. It must have been a sight to see three petite Filipina women accompanied by a bigger American trying to flag down a Jeepney. A few passed by honking at us, but they were all full and we wanted plenty of room. We finally found one that was nearly empty and we all piled in.

I remember the woman sitting across from me would stare at me from time to time then look away and repeat the process. I was sitting next to Melanie and Kathrina and Tets sat across from each other. I started waving at random people walking along the street. It was funny and I was feeling pretty great knowing I was probably the only foreigner in the area.

We stopped off just a short walk away from the mall and made our way through the small huts along the road trying not to get hit by tricycles and Jeepneys passing by us. We walk up an overpass and finally make our way to the entrance to the mall. We decide to first get something to eat, I ask them where they would like to eat and we settle on "Greenwich". Greenwich is a unique restaurant, like many "hybrid" restaurants in the Philippines; this one offered an assortment of fried chicken, white rice, Pizza and pasta. I told them to order what they like and after a meeting between the three of them Melanie decided to tell me what they thought was best. It was cute. We decided to a get a family combo meal, which included fried chicken, rice, and pizza along with drinks and macaroni and cheese. Kathrina and Melanie were shy to ask, but they also wanted some fries that they served there. I laughed because I thought it was funny, yet it was very cute and I said, "yes of course, get what you want".

The whole meal probably cost about the same as a meal I would regularly have on my own at Applebee's. We took a few pictures and we started to talk, well except for Tets. After finally overcoming her shyness Kathrina finally asked me if I was real. She asked me if my feelings for Melanie were true. It was a sincere question and one that almost threw me off guard.

I loved Melanie with all my heart, but I was quite shy and reserved opening myself up to someone I had just met, even if she was a close friend of Melanie's. I had mustered up a "yes, I love her, truly" and looked over at Melanie and she smiled. I was wondering if this was a test, but I know Kathrina was a true friend and wanted to know my intentions.

She said _good_ and we spoke a bit more before we received our food. The food wasn't exactly anything to salivate at. The pizza reminded me of something you'd get from Cici's Pizza, and instead of mashed potatoes you received mounds of white rice and gravy. The chicken was standard KFC fare, paired with a sweet tea (I usually prefer unsweetened tea). Still, I was a bit hungry so decided to get my fill.

I must have looked _really foreign_ when I decided to pick up my piece of chicken and eat it with my hands. I looked around and noticed all of them were using a spoon and fork to pry apart their chicken to eat. It was a concept I wasn't familiar with and thought it was odd, but I continued to eat my chicken in a way I believed was easiest. Hell, I am an American after all. I ate a few slices of pizza and had my fill.

I gave my white rice to Melanie and my plate look like a spoiled kids' plate with half eaten chicken, pizza crusts and spoonful of rice covered in gravy. I had enough, and just wanted them all to enjoy a nice dinner. I paid for the meal and we walked around.

Melanie and company were pretty big into karaoke, I mean a lot of women are, and much to your surprise _I am not_. I wanted to have fun with them; after all if they were happy then I was happy. I was just going along for the ride, enjoying the sights and sounds of a different lifestyle.

We had been walking around for a good 10 minutes trying to find this mysterious karaoke bar that they were sure was located in the mall. I was beginning to believe otherwise. It was a bit funny walking around like we didn't have a clue where we were going. We went up stairs, then downstairs, then finally asked a few people and there we were. We walked into an arcade like area that was packed with people.

We walked towards the end where a big screen displayed karaoke while some poor sap tried to replicate the melody of the artist they chose. There were people sitting on benches waiting for their turn. Surrounding this area were about 6-8 private karaoke rooms filled with students trying to showcase their vocal talent. We get one of the managers to let us into one of the empty rooms, and they come in with a microphone and plug it in and set everything up. We have to select the songs we want to sing so that he can input them into the machine.

Melanie and Kathrina each have a list of 6 songs each and I manage to find 3 songs I like but not really. We spend a good hour in there singing songs and I manage to get stuck with a religious song that Melanie insists I sing while she laughs. I play along and sing one verse of "My sweet lord" which I finally get tired of and give up. Melanie is laughing saying "wow mine so good". The reason she's laughing is because she knows I'm an Atheist.

We have our fill, or I should say, they had their fill of singing and we decide to leave. Melanie and I manage to sneak off while Kathrina and Tets aren't looking and we find a few games to play. As usual we gravitate towards the basketball game.

We have our fill, or I should say, they had their fill of singing and we decide to leave. Melanie and I manage to sneak off while Kathrina and Tets aren't looking and we find a few games to play. As usual we gravitate towards the basketball game.

I'm feeling out of place here, wondering why so many people are so damn good at this game but me. Next to me are a few pros who manage to get 180+ continuous shots, I'll be lucky if I get 60 before time is up. First round I don't make it, while Melanie continues onto round three. I play again; I need 80 shots to progress to the next stage. I make it past stage one then but can't make it past stage two.

I finally get in my groove and manage to beat Melanie once, _just once._ Naturally that means I get to gloat and feel superior over her for beating her once. She happens to beat me a few more times after that, and I feel deflated.

Kathrina and Tets finally find us and we all decide to head back home, it's getting late and we're far from home. All three of them head to the restroom while I wait in the food court. I notice a few people looking at me and then looking away. There is this woman at the restaurant nearby that keeps looking at me. She laughs and talks to her friend while looking at me. She isn't particularly attractive and I'm starting to feel a bit weird.

She continues looking at while smiling and eventually she gets out behind the counter and starts to clean the sign in front of the restaurant. I know she did it to try and get a closer look at me, so I walk towards the bathrooms waiting for Melanie to get out. She continues looking my way and I'm just waiting for Melanie to make her way out so we can go. Finally they all come out and Melanie smiles at me and our hands intertwine. We walk out and that woman is still looking at me, then at Melanie.

I was never able to get Melanie the clichéd heart of chocolates for Valentine's Day, so I wanted to try and make it up to her that day. We search around looking for a place that would still sell them, remember it's about a week after Valentine's Day. We couldn't find any, none that she liked but eventually we settle on a box of Belgian chocolates shaped in the form of sea creatures. I buy them for her and she says thank you and puts them in her purse.

I'm feeling particularly generous that day and decide that I wanted to do something special for Kathrina and Tets. I whisper into Melanie's ear that I want to buy them dinner so that they can take home and share with their father as well. Melanie thinks it's a good idea and she ends up asking them what they would like for dinner.

Much to my surprise they just want pizza from Greenwich again and I oblige. We get it to go, and I hand it to Kathrina and they both say thank you. I feel great knowing I could give them all a little something nice. We walk out and around the mall trying to find the bus. I would have never found the bus stop had they not been there. We walked through what seemed like back alleyways and walked down a road and we finally found the bus waiting for us. Kathrina and Tets had to take a Jeepney to get back home while Melanie and I were going to ride a bus. We bid them farewell for a great night together and Kathrina thanks me again. Tets smiles my way and I feel good knowing they had a great night.

We walk into the bus and sit near the front of the bus. Melanie takes out the chocolates and takes a picture of them before she eats them. I manage to eat a few, but leave the rest to her. She eats them all before the bus even leave and she says "thank you po, delicious".

We had a wonderful night together and we were ready to go home. It was pretty dark and still raining but we were in a nice air-conditioned bus so it wasn't so bad. We watched a few movies on the way home. I was excited for the next day to come.

#  Happy Monthsary

I wake up early, and so does Melanie. It's early, 3AM I believe, and I think to myself "today is our monthsary". I tell her happy monthsary, it was the first time we spent together during one. I tell her I have something for her, and I give her the two cards and the necklace. She opens up the necklace and she smiles and says "thank you po, I love you too". We were both still a bit tired, so she puts the gifts away and we head back to bed. I wake up and I notice she's getting ready and she's wearing the necklace. She has a card for me too, and I'm thrilled to open it.

In the card she wrote a lengthy letter on the inside left side and at the bottom she included one of her work photos of her smiling. It was very cute and made me smile. I said "awwww, thank you po" and kissed her. I thought it was so sweet and I love it when she writes me, the thumbnail picture included was a sweet addition.

Today we would be going to Villa Escudero. After researching it online we decide it would be a wonderful place to spend our monthsary. It's quite a drive out there so we leave early in the day to catch the bus. Neither one of us had been there so we weren't exactly sure where we needed to get off. On the way over there we both kept worrying if we missed our stop. We kept looking out the window trying to see if we would see something that would give us a clue.

It seemed like we would never find out and finally we made it to Villa Escudero. Luckily the conductor had remembered when Melanie told him where we would be going and we quickly rushed out.

The place was pretty isolated, and far from anything. We were the only two people to get off the bus, right before the sign that said Villa Escudero. We walked to a small hut that had a few guys lounging about. We saw a few tricycles on the side so we knew we would have to ride one to get to the actual "park" if you will. We both got in, and I pulled out my camera to get video of the beautiful area. Everywhere around us were massive palm trees, very thin in the trunk but tall nonetheless. The pathway leading up to the park must have been at least a few miles away from the main roadway, I'm glad we didn't decide to walk the whole way, we would have been so tired by the time we got to there.

When we arrived it was very quiet and peaceful. We walked through the main archway and into what seemed like a huge seating area. I walked to the front desk and told them what we wanted. It was pricey, but it was well worth it. We had our buffet vouchers; I was looking forward to a good buffet, as we had not eaten yet. They offered us some weird coconut gelatin drink, which I threw away once we were out of sight.

The buffet would only be open a few hours so we quickly made our way over there. The woman at the desk said they had a carriage that would take us over to the buffet area. We take a few pictures of the main area that includes a few replica aircraft from the 1940s it looks like. I also snap a picture of the Philippine flag with the beautiful mountains in the distance. We make our way over to the caravan and we see a man waiting in the "driver's seat". We ask for a picture of us together in the carriage and he agrees.

There is a massive Carabao, or at least what I believe to be a Carabao as I've never seen one in person, is at the front waiting for us to take off. The driver smacks the Carabao a few times to wake him up and to get him to start moving. The Carabao growls and moans and finally starts to slowly move forward. You can feel every step he takes as you feel the carriage lurch steadily forward. The ride is painfully slow, comparable to walking on foot, but we enjoy the ride regardless.

We stop by another building and a lovely woman in traditional Filipino garb sits in the back. Another man carrying a guitar follows her and has a seat next to her. As the Carabao moans yet again as we lurch forward, I hear the guitar start to play a very soothing melody. The woman starts singing in Tagalog and it just makes the whole experience that much more romantic.

I was tempted to turn around and get video of them, but I thought that would ruin the mood and just make it feel awkward, so I decide against it. They sing the whole way down to our last stop, before getting out and thanking us for joining them. We say thank you for the lovely song and make our way down a path to the buffet area.

As we're entering we can hear rushing water nearby and it's starting to feel much cooler. The whole area is very well shaded and we make our way down the stone steps to the eating area. They ask for our vouchers and we give them to the lady at the front.

The whole area is incredible to look at. They managed to divert water from a river nearby so that it creates a waterfall that flows down through the eating area. We take off our shoes and carefully maneuver through the rushing water. It feels great; its nice and cool. I slip a few times as the water managed to rush under my footsteps.

Nearby Chinese tourist look at us as if we had barged into a private dinner and we make our way to the small table of food. To be honest I was expecting a lot more from the buffet, not in terms of quantity but quality. They had traditional Filipino foods but a lot of it felt like finger foods than a real meal. I had a few of what looked like egg rolls, and then got a couple of small banana looking fruits on a skewer.

I had some rice and some of the noodles they had and walked back to the table. Our "waiter" came by and asked what we would like to drink, and being a special occasion I asked for coconut water. I knew I would have to pay more for it, but hell we were in the Philippines; I don't think it could get fresher than that.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a fresh coconut that had a slice across the top with a straw in the middle. I never had coconut like this before, so it was a welcome treat. It was pretty good, although it was mostly coconut cream and coconut flesh. It was a nice memento, and Melanie didn't want me to waste any of it so she ate some of the coconut cream and coconut.

For dessert we ate what looked like Jell-O, with coconut milk and some sort of rice cereal. It was actually pretty good, wasn't too sweet but was tasty. I had two servings of this; seeing as how I didn't get my fill on the finger foods they provide us earlier. We sat facing the waterfall and it was probably the most amazing way to have dinner. I knew it was man-made but it was

just an awesome thing to see and hear. It was also awesome that it felt like you were sitting down to eat in a river as the water coursed over your naked feet.

The water flowed down what seemed like another river, and it felt like we were in some hidden jungle that was carved out for this special eating area. We couldn't follow the water all the way down, but it was an impressive thing to see. Just this alone was worth the payment of the place, and the one thing I was looking forward to the most.

After cooling off our feet, we decided to walk around and see what else was around. I took a few cute pictures of Melanie riding a concrete painted whale. To be honest the whole area wasn't all that great, there was a lot of construction going on and if it wasn't for the waterfall dinner, I doubt I would have come out here. We rode the painfully slow Carabao ride back to the main area to enter into the "Escudero" house.

The house was pink, and massive, and we were parading around their yard. We couldn't take pictures inside the house, but it contained a ton of historically rich artifacts from around the world. Being the Philippines, there was a massive area near the center, which revolved around Christian characters. We saw a statue of just about every significant character from Jesus to Mary to the Prophets.

They were all very elaborate, but boring if you ask me. We decided to check out the more impressive stuff, which was on the second floor. The whole area was being cooled by a couple of industrial fans, that didn't really cool much but the 10 feet in front of it. I was sweating pretty badly in there, so every now and then we would stop in front of these fans to dry off.

Upstairs contained all sorts of relics from every time period. They had tons of stuffed animals and "frozen" bugs from all over the world. There were famous paintings and busts of noblemen around the world, to include those from the Escudero family.

They also had some very old pottery and trinkets from Asia that were from the caveman days. It was interesting to see such historical pieces in this house. In another corner of the house they had mannequins in traditional Filipino attire, along with military uniforms and even some Japanese Samurai armor.

After we had our fill, we ventured back outside and took some photographs of the house. We moved out into the front yard of the house, which included a water fountain and we took some more pictures. I asked Melanie to take a picture of me with the house in the background, and she managed to get 90% of the house in the picture with my head poking out of the corner of the picture. She still laughs about that saying "Where are you po? Oh there you are ha ha". It's funnier too because the image is a bit dark, I decided not to upload that one to share with others.

We took a few more pictures near the aircraft, including one where I surprised her at the last minute by kissing her right before the flash went off. We were probably the last ones in the place and we decided to call in a tricycle to pick us up so that we can take the bus home.

We rode the tricycle to the main road and I snapped a few pictures of Melanie and I near the entrance. We managed to get on a bus and it was a long night driving back. I think we both nearly fell asleep, as it took much longer than we expected due to traffic.

Everything was closed by the time we went back home, so we decided to just go back to our room and sleep. We stopped by the Mini Stop to pick up some cookies and a few drinks as we hadn't eaten anything since our _binge_ on finger foods earlier. We both passed out after a long day, we said happy monthsary to each other and kissed. It was a wonderful day.

#  The Rings

We missed MoA and decided we would go see another movie today. For once it seemed like the "movie gods" smiled upon me and finally played a movie I wanted to see. They had "This Means War" playing, so we got the first showing that we could and bought tickets. It was still a few hours before we would be watching the movie, so I wanted to surprise Melanie.

I was never one for promise rings, and I remember on the second date with my ex-fiancée she wanted a promise ring and I said no. I didn't want to do that with Melanie, she had never asked for them but I knew she would really appreciate the gesture. So I dragged Melanie around the mall trying to find a nice place to get a ring. She didn't know what we were going to do, but once we stepped into the first jewelry store she knew what was up.

I was trying to find a new place to get a ring, but we had to make it back to the movie in time so we went there first. Afterward we walked around and we were determined to get a pair of rings we liked.

Unfortunately it made it harder when I realized Melanie wanted us to both wear the same ring style. Apparently it's Filipino tradition that both the male and female wear the exact same ring. I'm a man and I like a thick black band, I just love the way it looks, it's very _masculine_. Obviously something that big on her dainty fingers wouldn't look good. She cringed when I told her what I wanted. We went to three or four different places before finally finding a ring place right next to the movie theater that we liked.

It was pretty common to see older white guys with really young Filipina women, but not once did I see a foreign couple (Filipina and foreigner) our age. I felt great knowing that not many people my age would do what I did.

We searched around looking for some rings that we would like. We found a few, but ended up settling on a ring that looked unisex. It was stainless steel and had a thin gold ring around the center of it. It was the only one we would settle on, so we went with that one. It was fairly cheap; we just wanted something to wear.

We both wore our rings right out of the store. When we arrived home she took a picture of the rings in the box and posted it on Facebook. We also took a picture of our hands with the rings, which many people took as us being married, including _my mom_.

My sister had been friends with Melanie on Facebook and saw the picture of our hands with the rings and showed my mom. My mom thought I had run off to the Philippines and got married on a whim. I had a habit of doing things spontaneously, so it doesn't surprise me that she thought this.

I told my mom that we had not gotten married, but my mom was still worried that I would do something crazy like _get married._ Many people online commented on Melanie's picture of the rings asking her if she got married, and others congratulated us. It was funny. It was a pretty relaxed night and we ate at Tokyo Café again. Melanie had Vienna coffee and some fries; I had a club sandwich with a coke. It was a rather mellow day for both of us, we went back to our room to watch TV and cuddle.

#  It's All Relative

Today we decided to visit Melanie's Aunt, which also happened to be Anna and "Tin Tin's" mother. She wanted to see me, so I thought it would be nice to get out again. I wanted to get dinner for them and a nice cake as well before we went there. We arrived at a small mall to meet up with Anna then we decided to go to the grocery store to get a rotisserie chicken.

I walked past the fried Balut and nearly puked. It's a smell I will never get used to, and always has that effect on me. If you don't know what Balut is, it's basically a baby chick still in the egg. It has feathers, a beak and bones and people eat it as a delicacy down in the Philippines. You'd find these small huts all around serving them out like hot dogs.

I never had the courage to try one, even though I told Melanie I would. She didn't like them either, so the deal was that we would both eat one, but in the end I never had the guts to do it. The smell was overpowering so I always held my breath when I walked past them. I walk in and notice the guard looking at me, and then he quickly looks away when I notice him looking at me. We walk around and I get a cooked chicken. I ask Melanie if they'll want anything else and she says no, so we decide just to get that.

Once again I think I was the only foreigner in that whole place, and I keep getting looks. I give the chicken to Anna and we look for a cake place. We find Goldilocks, which happens to be one of the most popular cake places in the Philippines. We walk in and decide what kind of cake we want. We decide to get a cake that looks like one giant Strawberry roll.

We pick up our cake and walk out; it's going to be awkward carrying these. We all somehow jump into a tricycle trying to keep the food from bouncing out of the side car.

Her aunt lives on the second floor, so we walk up a steep set of concrete stairs to her home. Everything seems to be made of concrete here; I suppose that's a good thing. I walk in and greet her aunt and say hi to Tin-Tin as well.

They are watching TV in the corner of the dining area and I sit the cake on the table and Anna tells her mom that they brought chicken to eat. I wasn't really hungry so I told them to eat; after all I bought it for them. I didn't want to eat what I bought for them. I had a cup of coke and a slice of the cake.

I was starting to feel a bit weird; maybe I was just really bored or just felt down. I felt very tired as well, so all that at once seem to bring me down. I left to sit in a room adjacent to the dinner table to rest. Melanie came in there and asked me how I was feeling and I said fine.

To be honest I felt out of place, this was her family not mine. She wanted me to talk with them and be friends, but it's always awkward trying to talk to them, especially when the age difference is so big. The biggest issue was the culture difference, if they were accustomed to American culture or I was accustomed to theirs, it wouldn't have been so difficult. So I sat alone hoping things would liven up my spirit soon enough.

Melanie knew I wasn't feeling great, and constantly asked me if I was doing well. She would come by and sit next to me and hold my hand. I assured her I was doing fine. Her youngest cousin came in and they wanted me to play a game with her. She was fairly young, maybe 10 or 12 at best and very sweet. She looked like a much younger Anna.

The game we were about to play was called Sungka, it's a very easy game with few rules but somehow I managed to suck at it. The game revolves around a wooden plank with oval indentions carved out of it. Each end of the plank has a much bigger circular indention. You play the game with seashells. You split the amount of seashells that were in the bag that it came with into each of the smaller oval indentions. I forget who goes first, but someone will collect all the shells out of one "groove" and place one shell in each groove until you run out of shells. If you land on an empty groove, your turn is over. You keep going until one groove is empty.

The point of the game is to clean out all your grooves; the person who still has shells in their grooves loses. She managed to beat me five times in a row. The one time I did beat her was because he aunt was overseeing the game and told me what to do. It was a fun diversion, and after a photograph together we decided to go to the mall together. I was honestly not feeling wonderful at that point, so we decided to have some fun at the arcade. We played some games, to include basketball as well as hockey.

As we were walking around I wanted to buy some Dead Sea salt for my skin as it felt pretty bad. Previously in the week at MoA we had met this nice foreign woman who was working at one of those Dead Sea salt booths. She got our attention and we became her test subjects to wow us with what the salt could do for our skin. We had essentially just washed our skin with the salt and the water that resulted from it was pretty dirty which made us believe that it just cleaned out all the junk from our hands. It does work plenty well, I've used it before, so I wanted to get some and then later give it to Melanie.

So anyways, I wanted to find a similar place in this mall that we were at. I found a booth that was selling it, and the guy seemed pretty adamant about giving Melanie a Dead Sea mud demonstration. I wasn't too fond of this and was ready to tell him to screw off. It made it worse when he was insinuating that she had bad skin, and I could tell Melanie became offended by this and felt bad.

I hated that but eventually the guy apologized and said he would just try it on her forearms if she'd like. Melanie finally agreed to it and he applied a small strip of mud to her forearms. After it dried he washed it off and compared it to the other forearm. It did work fairly well, you could tell a visible difference between both so Melanie was intrigued. At the price they were selling it at, I wasn't.

I bought the salt and we made our way to the food court. I hadn't eaten all day other than the slice of cake I had earlier so we stopped by to get something to eat. We landed on Jollibee and I got the biggest burger they had with some fries. Melanie got something similar, although I had to wait for my meal. It was less than satisfying when I got it, but I was hungry so I didn't care.

We decided to walk back to our hotel from there as it wasn't that far away and it would take too long to wait for a bus. Overall it was a decent day, although I wish we had more a more thrilling adventure. That day would have to come tomorrow as we had prepared a very special day at La Virginia; it was going to be a special day indeed.

#  A Proposal

Today would be an exciting day for us as we would visit "La Virgnia" resort in Batangas. Melanie was really looking forward to it and told me it was a really nice place. She had been there before for a work event so I wanted to see what it was all about. I wanted this to be a very special day, and maybe Melanie knew, but I wanted to propose to her.

I had known everything I needed to know about Melanie, I never felt the kind of connection I had with her with anyone else. Even in my previous engagement I had not felt the same chemistry that Melanie and I shared. I figured it was now or never so I made plans. Regardless of my intentions it would be hard to surprise her since we were basically attached at the hip it made it hard to do anything without her catching on.

It would be a long drive yet again and we would need to change buses a few times before we arrived at our destination. We decided we would have a "picnic" out there, so we stopped by the mall on our way to La Virginia to get some food to go. We walked into the mall and found a Pizza Hut near the entrance and ordered a large pizza to go.

We walked outside looking for a Jeepney that would take us to our destination or at the very least our next bus stop. We waited for a good ten to 15 minutes before we finally found one heading to our next stop. I jumped in the back, pizza in hand, followed by Melanie.

We still had a long way to go before we would arrive to the resort. The pizza was starting to get cold and I wondered if it was all for nothing. We took the Jeepney then a bus, followed by a tricycle ride to La Virginia. The place was located near the edge of the town, as you could see the ocean nearby. The entrance itself was very elaborate and had carvings of eagles perched on top. We walk in and it looks like something you'd find in a Disney theme park, sans the massive rides.

We go into the entrance and they discuss prices. Apparently you can stay there overnight in some huts if you want to. It's not cheap so I try to dissuade Melanie from inquiring about it. Luckily Melanie didn't push the issue, but I was a little upset feeling that she was making the decision without telling me. It was a misunderstanding, which later led to us being upset at each other. Melanie and I don't really fight, we usually just get really quite and don't talk to each other until one of us caves in and apologizes.

As we were eating pizza I expressed my feelings, which made Melanie upset and made her feel bad. I didn't mean to do it, and I know she wasn't trying to make all the decisions. Honestly I had put her in a bad spot and I felt bad about it afterward. We made up, as we

Always do and we started to smile again. I was worried this was going to ruin the mood entirely and I wouldn't be able to propose to her how I'd like.

We walked down the path to where we noticed a bunch of weird statues and animals. One was a dinosaur that I remember Melanie took a picture of before, so we recreated that memory. There were a few people out and about here, but it was far from busy. It seemed a bit lonely to be honest, but I didn't care because all I needed was Melanie. We walked down the

stairs to the bottom. They had a zip line here as well but it was closed. I did happen to catch a picture of a zip lining Santa Claus stuffed toy stuck on the line.

Melanie had to use the men's restroom, as the women's was closed. I stood guard outside to make sure no one walked in. We walked around the bottom on a stone road overlooking the massive ocean out into the distance. You could see another island and the incredibly lush jungle surrounding us. The pictures just didn't do it this place justice; it was incredible to see everything.

They had an odd assortment of religious figures around this place, including a massive golden Buddha, which we managed to get a picture with. Down below, way below us was some weird statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by unknown smaller statues. Not sure why it was down there, it was a creepy to be honest. Looked like something that would be used during some sort of ceremony.

Melanie then told me to take a picture inside what looked like a giant apple. As we were walking around I was scouting for a place that would make for a great proposal. There we some

places I was interested in, namely one massive castle looking building to which I found out later was still being built.

I found a place, which looked like a tree house that overlooked the entire area. I knew this would be the perfect place to propose to Melanie. We walked up this steep hill to take some pictures near the castle and we found a pretty awesome looking water park type area. We took some pictures next to this massive "screaming" head and Melanie kneeled under the incredible Hulk.

We tried yet again to take a jump shot that Melanie was so fond of, and I managed to capture a decent one within three shots. Progress!

We stayed there for a bit and I told her I loved her and I gave her a kiss. She was shy because there were a few kids playing basketball near the bottom of the hill, although they couldn't see us. I continued to be affectionate with her.

The sun was starting to go down and we were both getting tired, but I didn't want to leave without proposing to her. We made our way slowly up to the tree house. I remember my heart racing as I was walking up the stairs. There was another couple up there, but they were making their way down. It was just Melanie and I up there; it turned out to be perfectly timed. We took a few pictures as we were looking at everything around us it looked amazing to be able to see out for miles in every direction.

I was incredibly nervous. I think every guy gets nervous no matter how sure they feel about everything going their way. I knew Melanie would say yes, and I knew she would love it, but still my heart was racing so bad and waiting just made it worse. It was as if my heart was punishing me for prolonging this. What made things worse was that Melanie was shy about a few people across the way in another building on the patio that could see us. They weren't even looking at us, but that seemed to add more pressure. We both sat on the bench in the middle of this little patio area as I held her hand. My hand was incredibly sweaty. I didn't have a

ring, but I knew I had to ask her to marry me regardless. So finally I bit the bullet and without much hesitation I got down on one knee and told her "Melanie, will you marry me?"

She laughed, she was quite nervous and it only made me more nervous. It felt like when you've just finished a test and you're scared about what you scored on it.

I was feeling like she wasn't taking this seriously, even though I put a lot of effort and courage to ask her to marry me. Finally after a hug she said "yes baliw, of course" while still giggling. I'm the kind of guy that wants a definite answer to something that serious so I don't end up feeling like an idiot when I misunderstood. I was skeptical, wondering if she understood everything that was happening.

We walked to the edge overlooking the resort, and I held her from behind. I told her I loved her and I was very happy. I wanted to confirm that she wanted to marry me. She turned around and got serious and touched my face and said, "Yes mine, of course I want to be your wife".

I was ecstatic about it, although I was expecting her to feel as happy as I was. I was wondering if she knew how important this event in our life was or if she was just keeping it bottled inside her. Just after we did that, I told her how I had been waiting for so long to tell her, and by that point I had already told her many times over that I wanted to marry her. She said it didn't come as a surprise to her when I finally did pop the question, but she assured me that she did love it.

She knew that I was going to propose to her, I think she even knew it would be that day. Even before we had met, I had expressed my wish to marry her, so she already knew what my plans where. She was nervous as well, even though I was the one that had to pop the question. Unfortunately laughing when someone asks you a life-changing question is probably not the best way to answer. I understood though, and I was happy that we were now a step closer to being married. I had been engaged before, and I know it's a big deal when you're engaged because it's the next step up. You're no longer boyfriend and girlfriend anymore you're something more. I take relationships very seriously, so an engagement was on par with marriage as far as I was concerned. I seemed to be the only one thinking this, even though Melanie had not been engaged before. I wanted to celebrate, but it was getting late and not much was going to be open so we just stopped at the Robinson Mall across the street from our hotel. I wanted us to get a small cake or something sweet we could share, nothing big, but we couldn't find any such thing.

We also decided to get something alcoholic to drink, I don't drink and Melanie didn't really drink either but I figured today was a special day. She let me pick the wine, which was a terrible idea, as I had no clue on what to get, but to be fair she didn't really know either.

We ended getting a few single serving bottles of red wine, and two slices of some sort of chocolate cheesecake. We went back to our room and celebrated our newfound engagement to each other. The wine was strong, but I drank it all. It reminded me why I didn't drink alcohol to begin with. Melanie was struggling with hers as well and looked like she was drinking gasoline. She drank about a fourth of it and in disgust said she didn't want to drink anymore and gave it to me. Of course not wanting to waste it, I drank it all myself.

We ate our cake and Melanie kept the bottles and the cake containers as mementos of our special day together. I didn't realize it till afterward, but the wine definitely hit me hard and I was feeling very good, but very sleepy as well. I told Melanie I loved her and that I was so happy to be engaged to her. Maybe it was the effect of the wine combined with the emotions of the day, but she started to tear up and started crying a bit. She said she was crying because she was very happy, but I always look at crying as a sign that something is bothering someone deep down.

Something was bothering her. After some talking I found out she was worried that I would be leaving the country again and we wouldn't see each other for some time yet again. She was also happy that we had met and that everything was going amazingly well. I was quite happy to be her husband to be. I knew she was a very wonderful woman and I wouldn't trade her for anything. She had the same fear people have when they're waiting for the storm to hit. She knew I was much different than any guy she had ever met and she was scared to lose me.

I knew she was thinking a lot about when I would return back to the US and it hurt me as well, but I didn't want to think about that now. We still had a few more wonderful days to spend with each other and I didn't want to waste any of those moments feeling bad. I told Melanie how much I loved her, and that we should be happy and enjoy our last few days together as much as we can. She started to cheer up and she apologized for crying. She's such a sweet heart, and I'll always take good care of her, I just hate when I see her cry.

We had a romantic night, whispering sweet nothings at each other while we looked at each other. You could hear the busy Manila nightlife down below, as our window was cracked open. It was the start of a new relationship, one that was now much more serious than it was before. We both knew it would lead to this, and although it was pretty quick I knew that asking her to marry me was the best decision I ever made.

#  Mine Forever Forever Mine

By now we had done just about everything we wanted to see in the Philippines and took the day to relax a bit. We decided to get our rings engraved before I left, as we had been trying since we bought them to get it done. That was the goal for today just to get that done, and it seemed to be harder than we expected.

We arrived at the Mall of Asia to try and get our rings engraved, as other malls didn't have much to offer in that sense. We played some games and had something to eat then started looking for jewelry stores that would engrave our rings. Just about all of them said they didn't do it for rings that were not purchased through them, and the store we bought it from didn't engrave either.

The few that did offer it charged a significant amount and couldn't guarantee it being done before I left the country in a few days. It needed to be done while I was there and preferably within the day. We entertained the idea of riding out to a place in Makati that would do it for us, but it was too much hassle for something we could find nearby. Feeling stuck, we tried every story possible and our luck seemed to finally change. We finally found a place that would do it for a small fee.

They said they would engrave our special message, which would read, "Forever mine" and "Mine Forever" respectively. It was fairly cheap and they said it could be done within a few hours. We were thrilled we were finally going to get it done. We had a few hours to kill and we didn't know what to do, so Melanie said we should go to "Music21".

We boarded a bus and made our way down to this karaoke place. We arrived and paid for the entrance to get in. It was just us two in the whole place and she wanted to sing. She was happy and thrilled to sing, but I was feeling a bit down and even a bit upset.

The reason I was feeling this way was because I thought that Melanie didn't take our engagement seriously. I was under the impression that she took it lightly and didn't care that I proposed to her. I'm not the type of guy that's vocal about being upset, I just get very quiet and I tend to be short with people. Quick answers and I rarely smile.

Most people wouldn't notice this, as I'm usually very reserved with people I don't know, but Melanie knew me well and could sense something was off. She asked me what was wrong, and I didn't say anything, I just kept it to myself. I just kept thinking that maybe Melanie didn't care as much and started thinking the worse.

After we left, Melanie wanted to go back home thinking I was too tired and just needed to get back to the room. I _was_ tired but I wanted to stay out and besides we needed to pick up our rings. We made our way back to MoA and picked up our rings. I was a bit disappointed with the engraving as it was barely noticeable. I was expecting it to be etched in fairly well but it looked like the text was slightly "polished" into the inner portion.

It was as good as it was going to get, so I didn't think much of it. Mine ring read "Mine Forever" and hers read "Forever Mine". After that we left, but I was still feeling down, _I mean why wear rings if our engagement isn't worth anything to her?_ I thought.

I was like a little kid in the bus, pouting the whole way home. Melanie having the same personality traits as me didn't talk either. She knew I was upset and wasn't feeling good so she thought it would be best to not say anything at all. Of course no one wants to truly be left alone, we all crave attention to find out what's wrong, it's the only way pouting is effective.

So finally she said what's wrong, and not wanting to be any more of a pain I finally asked her "What am I to you?" She was caught off guard by the question and said "Huh?" I repeated the question to see what she would say.

She didn't understand what I was trying to get at and she pouted herself. I tend to try to be "deep" with my questions and often times it results in the question going over someone's head. I explained why I was feeling down. Then I told her how I thought she didn't think much of our engagement. I asked her if she was excited that we were engaged and she didn't think it was that big of a deal. I then asked her if she was ever engaged and she said no, and I told her that it's definitely a big deal then.

I told her how happy I was to be engaged to her and felt like maybe she didn't think it was as good as I thought it was. She said she was happy as well and then showed me her phone revealing messages she shared with her friends stating how she was now engaged and how happy she was.

I had not known of these messages or the fact that she had told this to anyone else. I felt dumb for being depressed over something silly. I instantly felt better knowing that she did take it seriously, although I'm not sure if she ever took it to be as wonderful as I did. Either way I couldn't change that and just figured it was the best I could hope for. It was a pretty "meh" day overall, but at least we got our rings engraved and I felt better knowing that Melanie was happy to be engaged to me.

#  Bittersweet Love

The day before I was set to leave the Philippines we were both a bit sad to know that the following day we would be sleeping alone. Things back home for me weren't looking so bright, I had failed a fitness test prior to coming to the Philippines and was due to receive one when I came back. I was also a month out from a deployment, so the added pressure when I would return would be pretty big.

I didn't want to think about that, all those problems where literally half a world away and I wanted to enjoy every last minute I had with Melanie. I know she was feeling a bit down, but she didn't cry nor show me she was feeling sad that day.

We didn't want to do anything big today since I had to be home early for my flight the next day. We went to MoA once again to have one last night romantic night together. The plan was to have a nice dinner at a fancy place. We got ready and made our way to MoA and decided to see 'Hugo'.

It was a pretty cool movie and we both enjoyed it. By the time we got out it was starting to get a bit dark out and we didn't know where we wanted to eat. I saw a few classy places around the mall but they were pretty packed. Eventually after crossing back and forth through the mall for half an hour we decided to be put on the list to get a seat at the Lugang Café. It was a fancy authentic Chinese restaurant.

As we were waiting to be called in for our seats we waited outside, sitting together looking into the mall. Melanie was very quiet and I knew she was feeling down that tomorrow I would be leaving. I was starting to feel it as well. You can only hide it for so long before your mind starts racing with thoughts. We were both a bit quiet while we were waiting to be called in. I tried to assure her everything would be fine.

It's hard to comfort someone when you really don't know how things will turn out. I knew I was committed to her, but being away for so long does things to people. We both knew personally how a long distance relationship can test people and ultimately break up a relationship. She and I had both been in a long distance relationship before, and by long distance I mean in separate countries altogether. I was afraid that she would give up on us, and that the love would dissipate. I believe she was afraid of that as well, and that I would find someone else in her place.

We tried to make the best of our last few hours together. I didn't want to think negatively, especially when we had just a few hours left. Eventually after about thirty minutes we received a text message saying our table was ready and we walked into the restaurant. Melanie and I were a bit underdressed but it didn't really matter. We got in and sat at a table for two, it was really busy as waiters were constantly walking around with multiple plates of food.

The menu was a bit different from the typical Chinese food I would find in the US, but then again this was _authentic_ Chinese food. We both ordered drinks, I had a special brewed tea and Melanie had some watermelon drink with milk tea as well. I wanted to try some of the pot stickers, but much to my surprise they were much bigger than what I had expected. I was pretty hungry so I figured it would be fine, and hell this was our last meal together so I didn't think much of it. The waitress comes back with a small plate full of pot stickers that were the length of the plate. Each one had to be about 5 inches long. They were good, but way too much food. I had also ordered sweet and sour pork with rice, so this was over the top for me.

Melanie received her usual dinner of fish, and she looked so beautiful sitting there. She felt a little shy being in a place like that, _hell I did too_ , but being with her made me forget everything else around me. Afterward I paid for the meal and walked out wanting something sweet for dessert. We stopped by a cookie booth to get a small box of different flavored brownies. My favorite being the espresso brownies and I ate two of them. I needed something to lift my spirits, after all this would be the last night I would spend with Melanie for a very long time.

That night we packed up everything we had. Melanie had not been home in a while, so she had everything that we collected with her in the room. She kept everything I gave her; it was sweet. She always wore her ring and always wore the necklace as well.

In my previous engagement she (my ex) never wore what I gave her unless I brought it up, to which she mentioned she didn't want to lose it. It wasn't a very convincing reason, so it was nice to see that Melanie truly appreciated the things I gave her. It really made me smile, and I knew I had someone truly special that loved me. She's the reason why I wear a ring even though we're not yet married. If she's willing to do those things for me, I'm willing to do them for her as well.

It was our last night and it was hard to sleep. I stayed up until probably 6 am trying to enjoy every last minute we had together. I was tired, but figuring I would spend the next 18 hours travelling, I knew I could sleep on the plane. I wanted to spend as much time feeling her warmth, her love and her touch. Eventually I had about an hour of sleep before our alarm clock went off followed by a phone call to our room. This was it, our last morning together in that room.

#  A Quiet Morning

I had reserved a driver to drive us to the airport early in the morning so that we wouldn't have to rush to find a Jeepney or bus. The last thing I wanted was to feel rushed for my flight out of the country.

We grabbed our bags and walked out of the room holding hands. Melanie was quiet, but she was happy. I think she was trying to wait until I left to cry. I didn't want to feel bad either, and we didn't say a whole lot that morning.

We made it to the elevator and saw our driver waiting for us when we got to the counter. He said to meet him on the ground floor when we were ready. I checked out and gave them the hotel cards we had. Melanie and I took the elevator down to the ground floor while the driver came around in a small van.

Melanie and I sat in the back, we didn't say much, just small talk. Neither of us talked much on the way to the airport, I think we were both afraid we'd start feeling how much we'd miss each other and not let go. Traffic was pretty hectic, even at this early time. I'm glad we had a competent driver.

I was holding Melanie's hand the whole time, and she didn't really want to look at me. I gave her a kiss on the check and smiled but didn't say anything else. As we were pulling up to the airport, I asked Melanie if I should tip the driver. She said it's not necessary, but it would be nice. I tipped the driver and said thank you, he was shocked that I gave him a tip and was grateful.

Melanie and I stood outside. I was hoping that we could wait inside before my flight was getting ready to leave. Unfortunately right when we walked into the entrance the guards stopped us and told us that only those who were flying out can enter the airport. It was a surprise to me because I didn't expect to say bye to Melanie this early. I was a bit sad inside, and I think Melanie was too. This was the moment of truth. I walked outside and around the corner with her and I gave her a big hug and a kiss and told her I loved her very much. I told her that I will miss her and thanked her for the wonderful time we had together.

She started to get a bit teary eyed and she said she loved me too. I pulled out my wallet and gave Melanie all the pesos I had except for a small amount I would keep as a souvenir. She didn't have time to say no and I just told her to keep it. I knew it would help her, and I sure didn't need it. She smiled with tears in her eyes and said thank you. I said I love you once more then waved good-bye as I entered the doors.

I entered the massive lines waiting to check into my flight, which lasted roughly an hour. I'm glad I arrived well ahead of time, because I knew I would've missed my flight otherwise. I was starting to miss Melanie, and I knew it was going to be a rough road ahead of us but I also smiled knowing that it was all worth it.

I spent two weeks in a different world with someone I met online, all on a chance to find love. It ended up being the most wonderful experience of my life, the kind of experience that makes you look back and say, "Yes, I would do that all over again".

#  Words of Wisdom

I want to leave you with some words of wisdom and inspiration to help you along your journey to finding someone great as well. This trip was much more than finding someone, it was much more than being in love. This trip was about doing something I once thought was terrifying and still deciding to do it. Doing something that scares you, that makes you think _'that's crazy'_ and still doing it makes you a stronger person in so many ways. You start to realize that it's never as scary as you think it is. Stop following the norms, it doesn't lead you anywhere new and exciting. It leads you to a life following the crowd. Deep down we all have a great desire to live a full rich life.

Meeting someone amazing is not easy, and you won't find them sitting on the couch wondering where your life went. If you want to do amazing things and find someone just as amazing to share them with you need to get out there and push yourself. Realize that you will be spending the rest of your life with this person, so why would you limit yourself? Why not go all out trying to find that one special person?

I never believed in settling for someone that didn't make me feel special, that didn't make me want to share every part of my life with them. I believe I found that person. I had to fly across the world to find her, but I have no regrets. It's expensive, it's time consuming and it takes plenty of sacrifice. It's worth it, every bit. This is the one thing in your life you should not skimp on. It's not time to sit down and hope for the best; it's time to put in the work. Flying down to the Philippines to spend two weeks with Melanie was the most amazing experience in my life. It's not like I haven't done anything great in my life prior. Hell I've lived in South Korea and Japan and flown on helicopters, yet I would still rate this experience as the most thrilling.

I rate it the most thrilling because I was alone, because I didn't have a "safety net" If things went bad. Ironically enough that is what made the whole experience so enlightening. I cannot share these experiences with anyone else, not even Melanie. My experiences and my world view is _my_ world view. Only you can recall the way you feel about an experience. The culture shock, the feeling of being a big kid in a new country, doing things you've never done before. These are the experiences you'll treasure most in your life.

I knew what I wanted to find when I set out to find love nearly a year ago. I've been through many trying times, but you just have to have faith that things will turn out all right in the end. It's like they say,"If it's not alright, then it's not the end". You have one life to live, and hopefully only one person to share the best years of your life with. Find someone truly special; everyone has someone amazing waiting for them. You can either venture out and decide you will not quit until you find them, or you can complain about it and get nothing done. Either way life goes on.

I hope the short insight into a two-week period in my life gives you inspiration and hope to find new experiences and love in your life. Mabuhay!

***
Thank you for reading our story. Melanie and I are to be married before the year is up. We have already made plans to spend Christmas and New Years together. We will be spending our honeymoon in the beautiful island of Palawan to signify the start of a beautiful new life together. Please visit my blog at burningtoday.com for future updates on our wedding and useful travel guides to come.

***

 About Jonathan Gonzalez

Jonathan lives a weird unconventional life, often forgoing traditions for new experiences. Growing up in El Paso, TX he left home to join the US Air Force at the ripe age of 18 after a failed freelancing career as a web designer. His love of all things Asian led him spending three years living in South Korea and Japan.

It was through that time he decided he wanted to settle down with a nice Asian woman. He lives for the experience of doing amazing things from shooting mini guns on a helicopter, to eating rabbits in survival school. He's always looking to expand his horizons and live a life worth living.

He became interested in writing a book ever since he met his fiancée. Having found a love of writing lengthy inspirational articles and blog posts led to the writing of this book. He doesn't know the meaning of a "short article" as his always seem to span pages. He owns and operates a blog (burningtoday.com), which was started on his 26th birthday to showcase his progress in achieving goals listed on the site. Ironically enough this book was created from that brainchild.

When he's not writing he's reading other books of people he admires or learning how to develop games. An avid gamer himself, he hopes to one day develop his own game studio and teach others how to develop their own games. Jonathan is an up and starting entrepreneur who hopes to inspire others to live an unconventional life and to pursue their dreams and desires with passion.
