Home Sweet Home

After being in Bataan for over a week, I was finally able to move into my own house on Saturday. I’m so glad I was able to move and start getting settled in over the weekend since yesterday was officially the first day of our “Culture & Language Acquisition” (CLA) program!

I had my first pieces of my furniture delivered yesterday, so now it is starting to look and feel a little more like a home. I spent a lot of time yesterday washing dishes, storage containers etc. now that I have a table to put them on (you may recall from a previous post that I have no kitchen cupboards at this point in time).  

I also got a sofa yesterday. It is in the room upstairs next to the balcony, and I SO wish I had pictures of how it got there! It went a little something like this…

Me (as delivery people are bringing sofa in the front door): Could you please help me get it up the stairs?

Delivery man #1: Those are small stairs… We go over the balcony?

Delivery man #2, delivery man #3 and delivery lady go outside. I’m thinking that they’re going to look at the balcony, figure out a plan, maybe reverse the truck into the driveway to help…

Delivery man #1 (pointing up the stairs): You show me?

I lead him up the stairs to the room where I want it. He’s still following me so I open the door and walk out onto the balcony. To my great surprise, I see my sofa sticking up in the air! Delivery man #1 promptly climbs over the railing and starts attempting to pull up the sofa by its plastic wrapping, a scenario that makes “ghetto extension ladder” (see previous post) seem pretty tame.

Wondering how in the world they got the sofa up there (remember, my friends, that Filipinos are not big people!) and how in the world this was ever going to work, I grab handfuls of the couch cushion and try to help delivery man #1 before he falls to his death!

Somehow we are able to get hold of the sofa legs – a much more promising prospect. (About this time, I start wishing I still had my phone in my pocket, rather than downstairs charging… but at the same time I realize that I really don’t have a free hand with which to take pictures anyhow.)

The next thing I know, delivery man #2 is beside us, adding his weight to the pulling effort. A few seconds later delivery man #3 shows up as well and the sofa lands on the balcony.  

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would never had believed it were possible. I’m still not entirely sure how they did it. It reminds of me of a line from Sahara (one of my favourite movies): “There’s no way that should have worked”!!