And so it begins...

Week One: First Arrival

Hello!! I am writing to you from my hotel room in Manila, Philippines where I am currently residing for approximately three and a half months for work! The company I work for is expanding to this area and I have been given the amazing opportunity of being able to assist with training the new hires.  Today is Saturday November 8th, 2014 and it is 12:00pm noon here which equates to 10:00pm Friday back home in northern Minnesota!  This is technically day seven since I arrived here originally at 4:00am local time here last Saturday.

It was quite the journey getting here from the cold North of MN to the tropical climate of the Philippines.  My journey began Thursday, October 30th, 2014 at 8:30am at the Duluth Airport.  My mom, younger sister, and grandparents were able to join me at the airport to send me off.  I also was able to travel with one of my office mates, Kayli, which made the journey much more enjoyable and eased my mind of many things.  We had a couple layovers on the journey, starting in Chicago, then heading to Los Angeles, then from LA we went right into Manila.  Total travel time was about 32 hours.  Unfortunately we missed Halloween since we ended up 13 hours ahead of home and kind of skipped over the 31st during our 15 hour flight to Manila.

Once we landed there was a bit of confusion on where we were supposed to go since we hadn't been able to connect to our work email and determine what the final plans were for the hotel we were staying at.  Luckily on the flight as I was telling the Filipino couple that sat next to me the company I worked for, a gentleman that was sitting in the row behind me (the same row as Kayli) mentioned he worked for the same company so we were able to follow him after exiting the plane and going through customs.  At the baggage claim area we met up with four other employees traveling to the same area and they were kind enough to adopt Kayli and I into their group and brought us to their hotel so we could try to figure out where exactly we were supposed to go. 

 

Kayli and I ended up getting rooms at the hotel as well so we have been able to get to know this group better and I would say they are our "main group"!  There are people here from Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas, and California.  The first couple days here we hung out, walked around the mall that is connected to the hotel, and tried to sleep a little.  However, once Monday came around we had to be ready to go into the office and start work at 9pm local time, which was 8am Central time, and work through the night until 6am local time which was 5pm Central time.  Since we've been here the US also had daylight savings time which is not something that the Philippines partake in so now we are 14 hours ahead. 

I am excited to update more as I find time to do so, it will likely be more on the weekends since during the week normally when we aren't at the office we are usually sleeping.  Since we are up during the day on the weekends even Saturdays after working all night, I need to head to bed to get a few hours of sleep so I can still do some sight seeing and shopping later today!

Missing you all back home,
Rachel