We knew we were moving to the Philippines in August 2018. Towards the end of that month our friends (living in Indonesia) posted on Facebook that they would be spending Christmas in Phuket, Thailand and asked if anyone wanted to join them. Matt & I saw the post and quickly said, YES! We met Derek & Cathy in the Philippines in 2012 and became fast friends. Our kids got along well with each other and the parents too six years ago and still today. They booked the hotel, Horizon Karon Beach Resort, and once we got to Phuket we came up with an itinerary for our duration there.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

More photos from Phuket here.

At the end of November we had plane tickets to fly to Cebu for the long weekend. But Blake started to seem sick and after taking him to the doctors we found out that he had the “mouth” part of Hand-Foot-Mouth virus. So, Matt & the oldest two went to Plantation Bay resort in Cebu, while Blake and Tia stayed in our empty condo resting.

During the three years that we lived in the Philippines the first time (2013-2015) we traveled to a lot of foreign countries. Now that we are back and planning on living here for a couple of decades, we want to explore more of the Philippines! Many people travel to Subic Bay as a get-away from Manila and we finally went to see what it’s all about. November 1 & 2 are holidays here, so we drove up to Subic for a long weekend.

Day 1 – Zoobic Safari

Since our driver had the day off, Matt and I drove our huge 11 passenger Super Grandia up to Subic Bay. Our first stop was at Zoobic Safari.

Day 2 – Ocean Adventure & Water Park

In the morning we spent time at Ocean Adventure. The best dolphin and sea lion shows we have every experienced were here. They were educational and very funny. Then in the late afternoon we went to the nearby Adventure Beach Water Park. (no photos since we were busy swimming and having fun)

Day 3 – Inflatable Island

We had a great time being together as a family and exploring more of the Philippines.

In 2014 Matt started to look into what kind of career opportunities were offered by Asian Development Bank (ADB), since many of our children’s classmates had parents working for them on permanent expat assignments. One of Mason’s classmate’s father worked in their I.T. department, so we had them over for dinner and Matt asked him about working there. Matt then subscribed to the job postings and was curious to see how well their compensation competed with what we currently had. We have always been very happy with Chevron and how well they have treated us for 12 years. After spending 3 weeks in the Philippines for our 2017 Christmas vacation, Matt felt a strong pull to live in the Philippines once again. In the spring of 2018, Matt told me he was going to clean-up his resume and really put forth some effort in getting an interview with ADB. He told me not to worry about it, that we have a beautiful home that we had just built and moved into the previous year and that he had applied before to ADB, but never heard from them. I knew that if Matt really was going to put forth the effort to apply, then I needed to get myself ready mentally for the possibility of a move. I tried not to think about it since I had a fun road trip coming up with my sister for the summer. Well, that is when things started to really move quickly, while we were apart for 3 weeks. Matt was given a job offer on August 1. By August 8 we told them that we would accept the offer. Our “dream home” was put on the market on August 25 and we accepted an offer about 2-3 weeks later. Our house was all packed up on September 21 and we were on a flight to Manila on September 23. In less than 2 months we sold everything that we didn’t want/need in the Philippines and started a new career and school in another country.

When we knew that we were returning to the Philippines I quickly emailed the International School of Manila (ISM) to get our kids into school. Luckily there was space available for Kalani and Mason to start school on October 1. It was helpful that they are former students and that we were coming back with ADB. Blake was put on the waiting list for Pre-school 4 since there was no space available at that time. Kalani and Mason were able to jump right into school. Some of their former friends/classmates were still at the school and they knew where things were located so they had a pretty easy transition back to ISM. Many teachers told me that they are the most well-adjusted “new students” they had ever met!

Although we miss our friends and family in the US, we feel like this is the place that we are suppose to be at right now in our lives. Everything fell into place perfectly. And now our friends and family can come visit us in the Philippines!