A Dozen Things You Don't See in the USA!

#1:It's called "star apple", but it looks and tastes nothing like an apple! It looks sort of like a large plum on the outside, and on the inside it's slimy and tasteless.

#2: Not your typical laundry room! This is where we do all the laundry in project 4, by hand, in large plastic bins.

#3: Whitening creams and lotions are everywhere in the stores here! Ironic, isn't it... in the US, we buy tanning lotions and spend tons of money in tanning salons!

#4:Chicks on a stick! Poor babies... :-(

#5:Bilo-Bilo. This is a Filipino dish that is sort of like hot vegetable/fruit soup. It contains coconut milk, bananas (different than the bananas in the US- cooking bananas), and a sort of sweet potato as well as balls of a sort of dough made with glutunous rice flour.

#6:Chicken Feet! MMmm!!!

#7:People sleeping in the public transportation terminal.

#8: This cute little (big) fuzzy critter (rat) decided to come out for a photo... awww!!

#9: The air conditioning of the van really isn't strong enough to cut through the intense heat, even on full blast... so how to keep the chocolate from melting? Stick it right in the AC vent!

#10: Bamboo as big as trees!!! It's hundreds of years old!

#11:Beetles!!! yummy! (Yes I eat them).

#12: Typical "neighborhood" in one of many, many, slum areas in Manila.