July 2005

In June 2005 I was offered a new job. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. So I quit my job of 9 years and moved to Peoria, IL. As part of my accepting my new job I told them that I wanted to take 2 weeks off in July to go see Luz. Not only did they say yes, they gave me 2 free weeks of vacation to do it with!! So I bought myself a ticket and on July 15 I left to go see Luz for the 4th time. Luz met me at the airport again and we took a van to her house in Olongapo. I spent two wonderful weeks with Luz and Robin. The first weekend there Luz had a little surprise for me. She had made reservations for us at the WhiteRock resort in Subic Bay.

Since July is the rainy season there we had the place almost to ourselves. Fortunately we did have good weather for the trip. We had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant at the hotel the first night. Since there were very few people there we got a lot of personal attention. There was a trio playing at the restaurant and they came over to play for us. They did their best to play one of Luz's favorite songs, "Till There Was You" They were not doing a very good job at the singing so I started singing to her while they played. Luz liked that I think. Later we went for a midnight swim in the pool. We had a very good time but about the time we started back to the room it started raining. By the time we got the the room it was pouring down!! The only problem was we had left the room from the patio door and the front door to the room was bolted. So I left Luz at the front door (it was covered so she wasn't getting rained on) and I ran through the rain to the patio to get in. We were freezing by the time we got into the room. But a hot shower soon warmed us up.

The next day Robin came over and we all went swimming at the hotel pool. It was great!

A few days later Luz had another surprise for me. We went to the market and bought just about every kind of seafood you can imagine. We had crab, shrimp, clams and oysters. Oh it was so good!!!

After two fabulous weeks it was time to go home again. We went to Manila and stayed at the Westin hotel for 2 days. While I was there we went to Novaliches to see her family again.

Later that night we did our favorite thing to do in Manila, we went out and had another Hot Pot dinner. We pigged out!!

The next day we went to the Manila Zoo. Again since it was the off season there we had the place to ourselves. Wherever we went we were followed around by people wanting to take our pictures and showing us the animals.

So ends my 4th trip to see Luz. It was a glorious time!!!