Some notes from my first 12 days in Manila...

Day 1 - Tues 2/10: Amazingly, my flight arrived at 6:30pm last Tuesday and baggage claim, customs, and traffic were a breeze, so I made the 8pm class at the Makati studio. I got to take class from Christina, one of the departing teachers. She's terrific - it would be great to work with her, so I'm sorry she won't be here for the six months I'm here. I enjoyed class though I was a train wreck after being up and on a plane for almost 24 hours straight. Lulu, the studio manager, drove me to the Oxford Suites hotel where I checked in to a dazzling room. The owner of the hotel, a woman named Vicki, is one of our yoga students and she hooked me up with a 17th-floor room with 180-degree floor-to-ceiling panoramic views. Most importantly, a comfy bed!

Day 2 - Wed 2/11: Slept in and got a ride courtesy of Vicki to the studio at 1pm. Lulu started going over studio orientation stuff with me over lunch at a Philippine restaurant in the Greenbelt mall - mmmm, lumpia, mangoes, sticky rice! When we got back to the studio, I filled out many forms for tax ID number, work visa, etc. Got a map of Manila at the Staples-like store in Paseo Place mall across the street from the studio and walked back to my hotel - faster than a taxi because even in the evening the streets were full of traffic. There were plenty of people out on the sidewalks as well.

Day 3 Thurs 2/12: Apartment search day. Was up way early (still jet-lagging) and took a long roundabout walk to the studio. Took the 9am class with the other departing teacher Marc, who happens to be Christina's husband. (What an amazing pair those two are - killer dialogue, great energy, fun teachers. They're incredibly nice and a hot-looking couple, too! I hope they spend a lot of time at teacher training this spring - they have a lot to offer. If only we'd had more teachers who used the dialogue that consistently in my teacher training, it might have landed in my head right then and there like something I should expect to be using in my teaching five years out! As it is, it took me years to get my head around that idea.) After class, Lulu and I set out to look at about a dozen apartments with two different brokers, all studios or small one-bedrooms renting for about 20,000 pesos ($450) per month. I had initially wanted a bathtub, but bathtubs are about as common as radiators here - I saw a couple of units in a building where all the bathrooms had tubs, but the building was a little old and out-of-the-way. Ultimately I decided that a balcony would be better than a bathtub. Even if it's a freaking oven outside, I like the idea of having my own outside space. Somewhere to relax in the evening, check out what the weather's like, hang yoga clothes, put my umbrella in the rainy season, etc. Between brokers, Lulu and I got some pho at a Vietnamese restaurant in the Paseo Place mall and I had my first mango juice since arriving. Wow - I love mango juice. The food is definitely one of the reasons I came here! At the end of the day we went to the Glorietta mall by the Ayala metro station to find a place that would unlock my Blackberry. Apparently the Blackberry phones are the among the most challenging to unlock, but we found a place that would do it for P2000 ($45) ... and a place next to the SM supermarket (SM stands for ShoeMart ...) that sells bibingka, one of my favorite snack treats I remember from visiting Cebu.

Day 4 - Fri 2/13: I woke up and realized I seemed to be getting sick, a bummer because I was scheduled to go with Lyra (another studio manager) to Quezon City in the afternoon, and then to a farewell party for Marc and Christina in the evening. In the morning, Lulu and I were going to check out a couple more apartments, but overnight I realized that we'd already seen the right one. It's in a building right across the corner from the yoga studio, a 15th-floor studio with tile floors, a balcony, and a nice view. Lulu got in touch with the broker, we had another viewing, and I decided to go with it. It being Friday, we scheduled the move-in day for the following Monday. By the time we got back to the studio I was feeling pretty crappy - sore and feverish, in fact I took my temperature and it was 101. So Lulu took me to get some hot soup at a Chinese restaurant at Paseo Place, and I went home to crash. I was hoping to make the party - I'd actually come to Manila deliberately to be there in time for it - but I was just too much of a mess and didn't want to expose anyone else to my bug, so I stayed in.

Day 5 - Sat 2/14: Valentine's Day - Spent most of the day in bed, the sore throat kicked in, great! I did venture out to check out the weekly farmers market down the street from the yoga studio - I actually have a view of it from my apartment. It's a nice little market, fresh organic produce, fresh breads, local specialties, etc. When I'm not sick it will be a great place to shop - I only went this time to give it a quick look-over and to give the hotel staff time to make up my room.

Day 6 - Sun 2/15: My first teaching day - on the schedule for the 3pm, I figured I'd better take the 9am class - if I survived that, chances were I'd survive teaching the 3pm! Still had a 100-degree temp, and every muscle and joint in my body hurt. Miserable as it was, and despite several postures I had to sit out of, it was a great class to take. I thought I could empathize with students who say "everything hurts" before, but it's one thing to imagine it, to feel it in your body is a world of difference! I felt it in that class. After class I called home ... I'll have to find a more economical way to call, as I spent P400 (about $9) on my prepaid cell phone talking for about 25 minutes, but it was nice to talk to my sister and parents. Taught the 3pm class. I have never taught in such a humid climate - the room felt cold to me, but the students were dying! It reminds me of how if you're jogging on a drizzly 60-degree day, when you get hot and start sweating you get really hot because there's no evaporation. The person you jog by could be standing there shivering and freezing but you're overheated. Now try that at 100 degrees ... swelter city. Then it was back to the hotel to crash as soon as possible to get up to teach the 6:30am and 9:00am on Monday.

Day 7 - Mon 2/16: My last morning in the hotel was a brief one, up at 4:30am I packed my bags and headed over to the studio to teach the two morning classes. Living across the street from the studio will certainly be nice for the ass-crack-of-dawn classes! After class, I went over to my new building to meet the the rental brokers and sign the lease, then poked around with Lyra and Lulu at the studio learning more of the ropes. At 2pm I got to move in - yay! Went back to the Vietnamese place at Paseo Place Mall for a late lunch/early dinner, then spent the evening puttering around, unpacking, rearranging furniture.

Day 8 - Tue 2/17: Had to get up at 5:30am to let Lorrie, another teacher, in as she needed the key to the newly-repaired lock at the studio. Checked some emails at Paseo Place Mall, then headed back home to veg for a while until the 11:45 teacher meeting. Met two other teachers - Ryan (a guy from the London area), and Jean (Jean and Lorrie are Filipinas from Manila). We had a big lunch meeting at the Chinese restaurant at Paseo Place, then headed back to the studio to do dialogue, which was a wake-up call! All the other teachers pretty much knew the postures we picked out of the hat verbatim - Standing Head to Knee and Locust. I didn't ... well, now I know them as I've gone back to rememorize them, but I sucked. Good for me to finally face that - I want to know the dialogue completely verbatim, and I don't. I've got my work cut out for me the next few months, when I leave here I want to own those words! Taught the 6:00pm - 8:00pm double in the evening.

Day 9 - Wed 2/18: Took the 9:00am class ... starting to feel like myself again! In the afternoon, Lyra and I took the metro to the Quezon City studio and I taught the 4:30pm and 6:30pm classes there. On the way to the metro, we walked right by the bibingka stand at the SM Supermarket, so I grabbed one for lunch. A nice studio - the back of the room is a curved wall of windows all the way around presenting a lovely view for the instructor. It's a little over an hour commute when you factor in getting from one studio to the metro, the 20-25-minute metro ride, and getting to the other studio. The students got a kick out of my having bibingka for lunch, I guess it's considered sort of an indulgent treat though it seems pretty sensible to me - a baked batter of coconut milk and glutinous rice baked with salted egg in it. Whenever I talk about liking the local specialties someone mentions balut - apparently this is a cooked duck egg in which the egg has been fertilized and allowed to develop for about two weeks into an embryo. I will have to get some locals to show me where to find and how to eat this. I'll give it a shot if the locals are so into it ... hopefully it's better than eating chicken feet at dimsum, which are all skin and gristle.

Day 10 - Thu 2/19: A day off! I slept in and got a mango drink from the juice bar at Paseo Place and headed towards the conglomeration of malls near the metro station. Vicki, the hotel owner, also owns a swank spa (Spa 6750) there and had given me a gift certificate for a massage. I went in to make an appointment and they had an opening right then, so I got a wonderful 90-minute massage! I'll be back to try the hot stone massage. Blissed out from my massage, I wandered around a bit and picked up some groceries. The last two times I was at the SM supermarket I had bibingka, but this time I was craving protein so I tried the Shwarma sandwich window. Yum! I couldn't go home without getting another Shwarma sandwich - one small one (P40) was not enough of such deliciousness!

Day 11 - Fri 2/20: I thought I was on the schedule for the 6:30am and 9:00am classes, I got there early and started opening up and then Tristan appeared, I was teaching the evening classes, not the morninng classes. Doh! Instead of flopping back to bed I was a good yogi and stayed to take the 6:30am class. I went back to the studio after the 9:00am to meet up with Rochelle, a student who's heading to teacher training in April and whose husband works at the US Embassy. She needed to pick something up there so offered me a ride to register with the Embassy. An interesting life she leads - she's a triathlete, an Ashtanga yoga teacher, a mother of two, and the wife of a US State Department worker who's been posted in Kathmandu and now Manila. After a back injury a couple of years ago, she got into practicing Bikram and has decided to learn to teach Bikram as well. After the embassy, we headed back to Makati and had some awesome ramen at a Japanese noodle place, complete with actual Japanese chefs in the kitchen. I'd never had a proper bowl of ramen before - these noodles were amazing! A little chewy, a little soft, subtle and delicious. I absolutely stuffed my face and when I was teaching the 4:00pm and 6:30pm classes later I was definitely feeling all those noodles and soup in my stomach, but it was totally worth it.

Day 12 - Sat 2/21: Another day off. I headed over to the farmers market that's around the corner from my apartment. When healthy, it was much more fun! Right as I came in was a fruit drink stand, so I got my favorite mango shake. The Paseo Place shakes are yummier and less expensive, but it was still pretty good ... this time I went for chicken empanadas and some budbud, glutinous rice treats wrapped in coconut leaves. Why budbud aren't easier to find around Manila I don't know, as the stand was busily selling out of them quite early in the morning, but hey, at least I got some. I'll have to show up earlier next week to get the Ube ones! I took the 3pm class and then got an invitation to join a student, Pilar, at her house for a simple dinner. Also joining us were another Yoga student, Luisa, who got Pilar started practicing about a month ago, an Austrian woman Sylvia who works at the Austrian embassy, and Pilar's middle daugher. Pilar has four teenaged kids, a daughter who's 18 and going to Macalester college in St. Paul, MN next year (having never actually stepped in snow in her life - brave girl!), boy-and-girl twins who turn 16 this week, and a 13-year-old daughter. The youngest was already out when we arrived, but we saw the others and they are so delightful. Gracious hosts, they came and greeted us all, introducing themselves and and kissing us on the cheek as they headed out for their Saturday night festivities. None of the locals at this dinner liked Balut. But Luisa says she'll take me shopping at the amazing Greenhills mall in a couple of weeks and if I haven't tried it by then, I'll try it there.