Balut, Lechon, and Pusit...

Last January my boyfriend, Jesse, and I (my name is Natalie by the way) went to the Philippines, my homeland. I grew up there and was excited that I could bring him there.

I moved from Las Pinas, Manila to Quincy, IL about 10 years ago. I moved from Quincy to Springfield, IL about 4 years ago for college and that's where I met Jesse. Jesse grew up in Illinois, and moved to Tampa, FL to finish up his degree. The details of exactly how we met is still up for discussion. We met at a dance that the college had. Three years after we met on the dance floor we still debate about who initiated the dance.

Yes, we have been together for three years and that was why I thought that it would be awesome for him to see where I grew up. We took the trip because the fireworks during New Years is one of my favorite memories. We spent two weeks there and it was just not enough to see everything. We decided that we were going to come back.

Jesse and I travel. We love to drive, and visit places. Last September we visited my parents in Nova Scotia, Canada. We also drove to Minneapolis, and Jesse just returned from a trip to Spokane, WA.

This August we will be relocating to Arizona while Jesse finishes graduate school. We are both looking forward to exploring all that Arizona has to offer. However as excited as we are about Arizona, we both are determined to make it back to the Philippines. That is the real reason we started this blog. We want to let people know about our plans, but hopefully it will help provide us with some motivation.

You see, our plan is to relocate to the Philippines for a full year as soon as Jesse finishes with grad school, and I finish my bachelor's degree.

Hi, it's my turn now. As Natalie wrote above my name is Jesse. She already filled you in on most things, but I wanted to point out that I am currently also trying to learn Tagalog (the national language of the Philippines). I thought I would blog a little about how that is going and how much progress I am making.

As we write we will hopefully fill you all in on some of our past trips, and get some of our pictures up (the pictures from Canada were especially cool), however our main goal will be to write about our planning and preparing for our big trip, our year long excursion to the Philippines.

Natalie wants to make sure that I mention that the Tagalog is coming along, slowly but surely. We both hope that I can have at least a basic understanding of the language if we are going to try to live there for a full year. Assuming I can get a grasp on the language before we go, the next big challenge will be trying to find jobs, but we will cross that bridge when we get there.

That's it for now. Check back soon for more pictures and updates.

Thanks,

Natalie and Jesse