Daily life

 There are cell towers everywhere here. I'm told that there's 100% cell coverage throughout the entire Island. There is virtually no landlines here. However it's only 3-g service. You pay by the call. Still we only use about $10 a month on cell service.

 Because labor is so cheap here businesses have a lot of employees. In our apartment complex that has about 20 units there must be 8 full-time employees. This is a Allatino. His job is to stay by one of the two gates and open it whenever someone wants to walk through or a car pulls up. At night he sleeps in a small room by the gate just in case someone needs in or out. He also vacuums the pool.

This is Azito. His job also is to open and close the gates. In addition he takes propane tanks a couple blocks away to be filled. He also vacuums the pool and hoses down the premises every day. He also does a lot of gardening.

The guards usually sleep on the concrete floor with no mattress or pillow. And they usually keep the light on.

 We eat dinner out about five nights a week. There is a nice restaurant about one block from our house. The menu is pretty limited and so they're only about 7 entrees that we rotate through. On this night we skipped the entree and went straight for the desserts. The chocolate cake wasn't as tasty as it looked but mixed with the ice cream it was moist enough. We eat out so much because it's hard to find groceries in the store. Rarely do we ever find any lettuce and sometimes there are no vegetables. Our entire restaurant bill that usually includes a salad and entree and some type of starch and of course bottled water comes to about $11. There is no tax here on purchases. Tipping is not required but we usually leave our waitress a dollar.

 On our walk to the restaurant each night we always pass through lots of families who are out on their porches and kids playing in the street. The small kids always want to come out and Shake our hands. They call us Malai which is a complimentary term for Foreigner.

 These are satellite dishes across the street from our restaurant.

 You see a lot of these in the neighborhoods. It's chicken on a stick. We will probably never try one.

 This is Nikki. She is one of the four adult members in our little church group. She is from the Philippines. She works in the Philippine Embassy here. She has been here for four years and has another year of service before she returns home. She comes from a very active church family. Her brother's have served missions. Back in the Philippines she served in the young women's program. She lives alone in a one bedroom hotel room about a block from her employment.

This is Eden. These are her three children. She is amazing. I haven't found out where her husband is yet. But here on the island it's just her and her children. She owns a laundry service, a party store in the mall where she will rent party props and activities and she also owns a cleaning service. She is also from the Philippines but has moved here because she can make more money doing these things due to less competition. Her children are watched buy a nanny during the day. In May her children will be going back to live in the Philippines with their grandmother because the cost of school is less expensive there. Here she sends them to a private school. She recently moved to a new house so her rent would go down from $300 a month to about $150 a month.

For her laundry service she has a drop off storefront in the mall. She then takes the laundry to her home where she has two employees that do the washing drying and pressing. She then brings the laundry back to the store front and they're picked up by the customers.