Ohh haiii!! Finally! The much-delayed, much-anticipated (right?) blog post!! So, about two weeks ago all of the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) left Center Based Training and split up between three cities - Subic, Morong, and Dinalupihan. My group - 12 education volunteers and about 20 CYF volunteers - braved the 6 hour bus ride through flooded streets to get to Subic. We were all split between four different neighborhoods - or barangays - and my group was the third stop, so we were all super nervous and excited by the time we got there. Luckily there was a short break in the torrential downpour so we had time to get our bags from the bus into the covered basketball court (also the barangay hall) where our families were waiting. To find out families, we were all given a puzzle piece and had to find the family with the matching half. Before this, a member of our group gave a little speech thanking the families for hosting us followed by a short welcome speech from our barangay captain. The barangay where we are living is called Mangan-Vaca (translates to Eat Cow) and is where Subic National High School is, the school where we are working. So a barangay means village and each barangay has an elected leader, the barangay captain (named because barangay comes from an old word for boat, so the leader is the captain). Anyway, this is only remotely relevant because after his welcome speech we matched up with our host family and the barangay captain is my dad! So we had a brief (awkward) lunch with our host families.. we were eating while the families were laughing and pointing at all of us.. before heading back to our respective houses and meeting the rest of our families.
So! Pamilya ko (my family)! My house is in one kind of complex with four separate houses - in my house, I live with my mom, my dad, and my little brother (16). The two houses the are just off of mine belong to my Ate (older sister) Annie and Ate Abigail. They each have two kids - a boy and a girl - from 2 to 11 years old. And I can confidently say that they are absolutely the cutest kids I've ever met. Pictures to come soon! Then the last house that is right next to mine is my mom's brothers house - he lives with his wife and kids and my new cousin Carl, who I mentioned before. It's really nice having him right next door! So my dad used to be a heavy machinery operator when the U.S. Naval Base was still in Subic but lost his job when the Navy left. Since then, he has been working as the barangay captain. My Uncle, Carl's dad, is a trike driver (trike is a motorcycle with a sidecar attached that are EVERYWHERE here.. if a Filipino has to walk more than about 8 minutes, they opt to take a trike). But its nice having a trike driver in the family because he gives us rides on super rainy days.
So life with my house family has been awesome so far. They speak some English and mixed with my Tagalog we can have actual conversations most of the time. In the Philippines, when they forget a word they call it a "nosebleed", so most of our conversations are intermixed with a lot of laughing and miming of nose bleeding. My mom is hilarious and constantly laughing and making jokes. My dad is also really, really funny. Last night I was scratching a mosquito bite on my leg and he asks, "Where did you get that mosquito bite?" I told him I wasn't sure, probably walking from school and he gets this super serious look on his face and goes, "If I find that mosquito... I swear I will kill him, inch by inch!!". After dinner, my family and I usually sit in the living room and watch the news (floods, floods, floods) or, more often, watch Filipino soap operas (my favourite is Luna Blanca.. about twin girls, but one of them is painted fully black because her dad is this creepy smoke monster thing and the non-painted one lives on a trash heap but dates a famous pop star.. or something.. I'm trying to put it together..) We also play cards most nights.. my mom and I went out and bought some candy so we can gamble while we play hahah. We always play this game called Tong-It (I think).. Its really fun, so I'll be sure to teach everyone I meet. I've also started eating with my hands (some things) and hand washed my clothes with my mom on Sunday! My life is sort of in a constant state of dampness - from rain or from sweat, and nothing can ever truly dry here.
One of the bonding moments I had with my family was when I had balut. Balut is a Filipino food - its a fertilized duck egg that has been developing for about 18 days. So.. its essentially a fetus. My family lovingly calls it a "chicken abortion". So Carl and my friend Allie (who is living with a woman who is my mom's friend - I get great "chika chika" (gossip) from my mom about Allie, for example "Allie went to the market today and bought a green mango!". Filipinos love to chika chika) came over to enjoy some bird fetus! And honestly... it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. They are slightly cooked so you crack open the egg and kind of suck out the juice (I know I know I know so gross) then keep peeling it and taking bites. Some of it is kind of cooked like a soft boiled egg - and tastes just like it - theeeen you get to the bird. Carl was very gung-ho about trying it and got there first... then made sure to show me the bird's eyes before taking a bite. So we all succeeded in eating all of it.. but I definitely don't want it again any time soon. Now my dad is really excited that Allie and I are willing to try different foods.. up next? Fruit bat and snake. Nom nom nom.
About a 5 minute walk from my house is Subic National High School where we teach every morning. I'm teaching year 2 English (equivalent to 8th grade) with about 60 kids in my class. I've only been at school for a week and its already a huge learning experience. With the Peace Corps, education volunteers don't teach their own class for two years but instead are paired with a local co-teacher for their classes. The purpose of that is to build the skills of the co-teacher and fellow faculty while teaching. I'm working with a co-teacher with another trainee (Jennifer) and she is really sweet!! Very cute and very nice, but more than willing to just throw us in the classroom hahah. Jen and I have been going to each others classes and sort of co-teaching with each other while our co-teacher monitors the students and observes us. So far so good! I really do like being in the classroom and teaching. My favorite I think is coming up with the activities and making visuals.. a good time to be creative. But seriously.. teaching is so hard. We've obviously been talking more about the plight of Filipino teachers.. one thing that my group has observed is the fact that the Department of Education (DepEd) gives teachers really unrealistic goals and content with very little time.. teachers have no choice but to rush through lessons full of rote learning and move on the next day, whether the students absorbed anything or not. And teachers have days full of classes with 60 kids per class so they are constantly working. So it will be exciting to figure out the little ways that we can adjust lessons to be more student-centered and creative. The big thing I've noticed in my class is that the kids are more than happy to recite sentences or when they read something they can identify what it is (we've been doing literary devices this week) but if you ask them to come up with their own sentence, let alone a simile or personification, they freeze up and don't know what to do. Most of their education is rote learning, so moving from that to a more creative lesson is really challenging. So that's one thing I'm really excited to work on!
I'm adjusting pretty well to living here.. minus some stomach issues and strange face rashes! Our schedule is pretty grueling.. we are all up at 6 (to take our bucket showers - no showers here!), then get to school for classes from 8-12, followed by Tagalog classes 1-5. We're all pretty dead by the end of the day but this week we've managed to get together one evening (at my house for some Red Horse) and we have some fun things planned this weekend! It will be nice to get out of the barangay.. we're hoping to get to this "sports bar" in the more touristy part of town (about 25 minutes away on jeepney) to watch some Olympics and get a drink.. two things we are definitely missing here.
We've also been adjusting to the weather.. we're getting a lot of heavy rain from a typhoon that's going through the north of the country.. luckily nothing too destructive and we've had two days of classes cancelled for flood days! yay!!
I love hearing from everyone!! I have internet at school so I usually have some time in the morning (evening for most of you) to get on.. so try to catch me on Facebook or Skype from like 8:00 - 9:00!
I love and miss you all! I'm going to start naming my bug bites after everyone I miss to fight off homesickness.
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others" -Gandhi
So! Pamilya ko (my family)! My house is in one kind of complex with four separate houses - in my house, I live with my mom, my dad, and my little brother (16). The two houses the are just off of mine belong to my Ate (older sister) Annie and Ate Abigail. They each have two kids - a boy and a girl - from 2 to 11 years old. And I can confidently say that they are absolutely the cutest kids I've ever met. Pictures to come soon! Then the last house that is right next to mine is my mom's brothers house - he lives with his wife and kids and my new cousin Carl, who I mentioned before. It's really nice having him right next door! So my dad used to be a heavy machinery operator when the U.S. Naval Base was still in Subic but lost his job when the Navy left. Since then, he has been working as the barangay captain. My Uncle, Carl's dad, is a trike driver (trike is a motorcycle with a sidecar attached that are EVERYWHERE here.. if a Filipino has to walk more than about 8 minutes, they opt to take a trike). But its nice having a trike driver in the family because he gives us rides on super rainy days.
So life with my house family has been awesome so far. They speak some English and mixed with my Tagalog we can have actual conversations most of the time. In the Philippines, when they forget a word they call it a "nosebleed", so most of our conversations are intermixed with a lot of laughing and miming of nose bleeding. My mom is hilarious and constantly laughing and making jokes. My dad is also really, really funny. Last night I was scratching a mosquito bite on my leg and he asks, "Where did you get that mosquito bite?" I told him I wasn't sure, probably walking from school and he gets this super serious look on his face and goes, "If I find that mosquito... I swear I will kill him, inch by inch!!". After dinner, my family and I usually sit in the living room and watch the news (floods, floods, floods) or, more often, watch Filipino soap operas (my favourite is Luna Blanca.. about twin girls, but one of them is painted fully black because her dad is this creepy smoke monster thing and the non-painted one lives on a trash heap but dates a famous pop star.. or something.. I'm trying to put it together..) We also play cards most nights.. my mom and I went out and bought some candy so we can gamble while we play hahah. We always play this game called Tong-It (I think).. Its really fun, so I'll be sure to teach everyone I meet. I've also started eating with my hands (some things) and hand washed my clothes with my mom on Sunday! My life is sort of in a constant state of dampness - from rain or from sweat, and nothing can ever truly dry here.
One of the bonding moments I had with my family was when I had balut. Balut is a Filipino food - its a fertilized duck egg that has been developing for about 18 days. So.. its essentially a fetus. My family lovingly calls it a "chicken abortion". So Carl and my friend Allie (who is living with a woman who is my mom's friend - I get great "chika chika" (gossip) from my mom about Allie, for example "Allie went to the market today and bought a green mango!". Filipinos love to chika chika) came over to enjoy some bird fetus! And honestly... it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. They are slightly cooked so you crack open the egg and kind of suck out the juice (I know I know I know so gross) then keep peeling it and taking bites. Some of it is kind of cooked like a soft boiled egg - and tastes just like it - theeeen you get to the bird. Carl was very gung-ho about trying it and got there first... then made sure to show me the bird's eyes before taking a bite. So we all succeeded in eating all of it.. but I definitely don't want it again any time soon. Now my dad is really excited that Allie and I are willing to try different foods.. up next? Fruit bat and snake. Nom nom nom.
About a 5 minute walk from my house is Subic National High School where we teach every morning. I'm teaching year 2 English (equivalent to 8th grade) with about 60 kids in my class. I've only been at school for a week and its already a huge learning experience. With the Peace Corps, education volunteers don't teach their own class for two years but instead are paired with a local co-teacher for their classes. The purpose of that is to build the skills of the co-teacher and fellow faculty while teaching. I'm working with a co-teacher with another trainee (Jennifer) and she is really sweet!! Very cute and very nice, but more than willing to just throw us in the classroom hahah. Jen and I have been going to each others classes and sort of co-teaching with each other while our co-teacher monitors the students and observes us. So far so good! I really do like being in the classroom and teaching. My favorite I think is coming up with the activities and making visuals.. a good time to be creative. But seriously.. teaching is so hard. We've obviously been talking more about the plight of Filipino teachers.. one thing that my group has observed is the fact that the Department of Education (DepEd) gives teachers really unrealistic goals and content with very little time.. teachers have no choice but to rush through lessons full of rote learning and move on the next day, whether the students absorbed anything or not. And teachers have days full of classes with 60 kids per class so they are constantly working. So it will be exciting to figure out the little ways that we can adjust lessons to be more student-centered and creative. The big thing I've noticed in my class is that the kids are more than happy to recite sentences or when they read something they can identify what it is (we've been doing literary devices this week) but if you ask them to come up with their own sentence, let alone a simile or personification, they freeze up and don't know what to do. Most of their education is rote learning, so moving from that to a more creative lesson is really challenging. So that's one thing I'm really excited to work on!
I'm adjusting pretty well to living here.. minus some stomach issues and strange face rashes! Our schedule is pretty grueling.. we are all up at 6 (to take our bucket showers - no showers here!), then get to school for classes from 8-12, followed by Tagalog classes 1-5. We're all pretty dead by the end of the day but this week we've managed to get together one evening (at my house for some Red Horse) and we have some fun things planned this weekend! It will be nice to get out of the barangay.. we're hoping to get to this "sports bar" in the more touristy part of town (about 25 minutes away on jeepney) to watch some Olympics and get a drink.. two things we are definitely missing here.
We've also been adjusting to the weather.. we're getting a lot of heavy rain from a typhoon that's going through the north of the country.. luckily nothing too destructive and we've had two days of classes cancelled for flood days! yay!!
I love hearing from everyone!! I have internet at school so I usually have some time in the morning (evening for most of you) to get on.. so try to catch me on Facebook or Skype from like 8:00 - 9:00!
I love and miss you all! I'm going to start naming my bug bites after everyone I miss to fight off homesickness.
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others" -Gandhi
chicken fetus! omg!
ReplyDeletesounds like you're having a great time :)
so excited for you, love!
your family sounds so fun and cute!
good luck with teaching and the other new food you'll be trying...
ps. i google mapped your city! eek!