Dave's Story: A Picture Tour of Where We Live

Our Home in Fransisca Village

Yesterday I took my camera and went out and took pictures of the different angles coming to our Compound and our Home here in Fransisca Village. The street that we use in directing people to your compound is called Happy Valley Street. The first photograph (right) is a view of the hill coming down to 6th street where you turn off from Happy Valley street onto 6th street.

6th street and 5th street are hooked together to form a horseshoe. You can turn on either 5th or 6th street. 6th street is not quite as bumpy as 5th street so we normally use 6th street. The right turn on to 6th street takes you to the street that we travel down to our compound.

As soon as you turn onto 6th street you will see a home that also has an eating place where warm meals are cooked and sold daily at noon. This is the first place on the right hand side of 6th street as you start down the street.

Continuing down 6th street you will come to a "Sori-Sori" store that sells many different necessary items like eggs, bottled water, soda, chips, toilet articles, candy and many more items that are used everyday. There are actually 2 stores next to each other in that area. The one you can't see too well also provides manicures and pedicures and haircuts also.

In addition in the evening, usually after 5:30PM this "Sori-Sori" store also sells BBQ. The BBQ here is usually either BBQ Baboy and BBQ Manok. Baboy is the Cebuano word for pig or pork and manok is the word for chicken. The BBQ we get and provide our own rice most of the time. It is a quick meal and is pretty reasonable in cost, One stick is around 6 pesos. The BBQ comes on a stick similar to the Shish-Kabobs we think of back in the US.

Our next turn comes as we continue down the street. We then come to a left turn that is identified with a sign that says "Fransisca Village". This is the entrance to our compound. As we approach the entrance we see the "Guard Station".

One thing I found very interesting was that armed guards are place, not only at Compound entrances, but in front of every business in the business areas. This give you a secure feeling, but sometimes made me wonder why.....but if you study the employment here in the Philippines you can understand why. It provided needed employment and is also a safty precausion, The photograph here on the left shows our guard at his post. The guards are very nice and accomidating usually.

As we continue into the Fransisca Village Compound and to our home we see the street we pass has many nice homes along on either side.(right) Our street is the first left turn as we continue into the compound. We had street signs placed at the street intersections not too long ago. We live on "Diamond" street.

As we turn on Diamond street we can see our green duplex on the right hand side of the street. Our landlord and landlady live right accross the street from our duplex and they also have a small Sori-Sori store where we get things like rice, coffee and soap when we need it. It is very convient and the couple are very nice to us.