palawan to phx

i am just relaxing in the taipei airport until my flight leaves in a couple of hours. the couches are really nice here and they have all the best stores, so i am pretty pleased to be waiting in this airport. i started this morning off waking up early to david and phil (my legend hotel roommates) packing getting ready to go. lucky enough for me, i packed the night before. but i got up and got on the van to the airport in palawan. the computers were broken there, so we spent quite a lot of time waiting in line, sweating due to the lack of air con. i was happy enough talking to a nice guy dave i met at the conference who lives in kl, malaysia. we also talked quite a bit with some ethnomusicologists. after taking off in palawan, i arrived in manila said my goodbyes to my conference buds and went to the international airport and waited for about four hours before taking off. that leads me to where i am waiting in the taipei airport. from here i am going to la and then on to phoenix.

i have been saving my many pictures until now. my trip is coming to a close and overall it has been a really great trip. i learned a ton at the conference and met quite a few people there, too. these are kind of the celebrities of the austronesian linguistics world (i’ll explain what this means later). one of the great things about going to the third world is things that you wouldn’t see other places, so as i look back i am including two of these moments.

1. as I was waiting at the baggage carousel in manila i saw a guy pick up his pet chicken
2. a pastor fell off the stage at church on sunday

i also wanted to go through and give you some idea where i was and who i met. so here's my first picture of some a beach i went and saw. they call it white beach and it was really beautiful. it was nice too cause it wasn't full of euros. i also met a nice palawan family that didn't speak much english, but enough to get me to take pictures on my digital camera and show them afterwards.

besides the good conversations with people at the conference about life goals and dissertation research and the such, i made some good indonesian friends who i could have fun with. obing works in jakarta and is a language researcher for the government, and june is the director of the english depart at a univeristy in kupang in eastern indonesia. so i was glad to meet them and just laugh and hang out with them.

well i have more pictures, but i don't want to overload you all, so i'll stop here and fill you in more later.