Winter weather

If there's one thing that I'm going to miss in this place it would have to be the weather, specifically the winter weather (I've heard summers here can go as high as 35 degrees Celsius). If I'm permitted to miss other things, then I'll also miss the friendly people and their peculiar use of handshake as an everyday-greeting as opposed to what I'm used to back in the Philippines. There the handshake is reserved for the initial meeting. The beach, particularly the public one in Flic en Flac, is another thing that I'll miss. For three months I lived within a walking distance to one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to (not that I've been to many). Coming in here with the tall sugar canes lining up the majority of roadsides, I thought the roadsides here are picturesque. But now that most of the crops have been harvested, the view of wide empty spaces of land is even more breathtaking. The mixture of rural structures and urban structures that I see on the way to work is a welcome change to the short ride over a few city blocks in Cebu that I used to travel to go to work.

But at the end of the day, the notion that there's no place like home still ring true. My country, my city is just as beautiful. This place just happens to be different.