Cost of Living

The cost of living here is on a completely different scale. Someone who makes 20,000 US Dollars a year is very wealthy and can live a very comfortable life with a big house and a helper who cooks and cleans, a YaYa who helps with the children, maybe even a guard. If you make that much it would be insulting if you didn't hire some people to do jobs for you, because there are so many people who need those jobs. The average wage for people who work on that scale (a helper, a guard, or a jeepney driver) is (400 piso) $8 a day. But that goes much farther here than it would in the US. They are poor by our standards but they can support a whole family on that wage. Our team went out for dinner at a nice resturant (12 people) and got all the drinks we wanted, two chicken dishes and a vegetable dish to share, with all the rice we could eat. It cost (2000 piso) $40. I bought an outfit for Shane for (100 piso) $2. A small bag of chips is 8 cents. So someone who is pretty poor in the US could be very rich here if they bought local stuff! (But some things, like electronics, cheese, toys, anything imported from the US is about the same price as it would be in the US. ) Lots of people ask us what our helpers and nannies are like at home and it's hard to explain that we don't have them!

Last weekend we went to Taal Volcano, too. We rode in a boat across a lake (and got very wet) and hiked up the volcano and looked at the lake inside it. That area outside the city reminds me of pictures I've seen of Hawaii. It's beautiful!!!