Parties and finding the balance
Within our first 24 hours in the Philippines, we went already to two birthday parties.
We arrived around 2 pm in the afternoon in our house in Davao and learned that we were invited for the 60th birthday of our Ninang Bernadette Al-ag that evening. We enjoyed the party and it was also nice to meet the new vice mayor of Davao City, Bernie Al-Ag and his wife.
The next day our nephew celebrated the first birthday of their son Chase Noah. Celebrating the first birthday is a big thing in the Philippines. The parents spent lots of time and money to prepare for a wonderful party. Rose also prepared materials in Germany for the birthday cake and we were so excited to meet our grand-nephew for the first time ever.
Also this party was great. There were around 100 guests – most them we did not know and there were lots of activities for the children.
It is great to meet friends and to have good food. But on the other side especially Thomas also wants to rest and relax. So we have to a balance between meeting friends (and we still do have many friends here in Davao) and having time to relax and for ourselves.
This might be even a bigger issue for couples where only one person has friends in her country and only one person speaks the local language. For us, it is a bit easier as Thomas also has many friends in Davao and he can understand Cebuano.