1 Month (or 4... depending on how you see it)

I've now been in Bohol for just over a month!  I would have never realized that it had been that long, but it was time to pay my rent again... oh well.  I haven't taken many pictures in the last few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been going exciting places!  The most notable over the last few weeks was a trip to Cebu.  Cebu is the largest city in the Visayas, and the closest major city to Bohol.  All in all, the trip was pretty terrible... The boat to get there left almost 2 hours late, and the ride was really rough due to a low pressure system, the restaurant that we were there to eat lunch at (real Mexican food) didn't open till 5, and the boat back to the port in Bohol that is closest to where I live was canceled.  We ended up eating in a mall food court... I still got a burrito though... So not all was lost.

Also, I experienced my first (but surly not my last) earthquake since being in the Philippines.  It was on the night of October 15, and was just enough to shake my bed a little.  More significantly is that October 15 was the one year anniversary of the Bohol Earthquake.  

My food item for this post is called kinilaw.  Kinilaw is a mix of raw fish, ginger, calamansi, and onions that tastes delicious.  I've had variations on it from multiple people over the last few months and I really like it.  Peace Corps gives your first host family a list of things you can't eat until you've been here for a while (to give your digestive system a chance to prepare itself), and raw fish is one of those things.   Kinilaw (or kilawin as they called it) was the first one of those forbidden foods that I got to eat.  Really been enjoying it ever since. 

So something that I've noticed here are things like these Fita Crackers and snack foods made by the Fibisco company... I've picked up a few of these things that took me a while to realize that it was not the exact product I thought it was.  I guess that's a testament to how well American food companies brand things... I can just see a color scheme and associate it with a flavor. 

So this guy lives in my room.  He's almost a foot long and likes to hang out on the wall by the window or behind/under the stuff in the storage area.  I've been thinking about naming him/her, but I'm not good with naming lizards.