Site Placement and End of Subic!

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So I got my big news!! 
SupsCon was really fun - when it wasn't painfully dull. It was so great to be back together with everyone and was SOO great to have air conditioned rooms with wifi.  Everyone was a bundle of nerves before the big announcement.  The bus ride was loong and everyone was grumpy after waking up at 4 AM.  
 We settled in to our rooms (I roomed with Allie and a CYF volunteer) and went to the big ballroom for our first session.  It. Was. Awful. We had to sit through an hour long talk on reporting allegations and Peace Corps liability talk while everyone was dying to get to the site placement part. Finally, the wheeled out this big map of the Philippines with different color pins stuck all over it. They had a painfully long introduction (which, in retrospect, was interesting - they described the way their chose our sites based on need) before the started reading off names.  We were also warned that people have burst out crying during the announcements, so we wouldn't be the first.. but we should still try to avoid that.  The way they placed us this year is different from previous years - they tried to put us all in "cross-sectoral clusters"... meaning they want to have volunteers from different sectors (education, children youth and family, coastal resource management) living relatively close to each other so we can collaborate on projects more often. So most of us are in these clusters and they started calling out the names of people who would  be living close to each other.  My heart was in my throat the entire time. I really, really convinced myself that I had no expectations going into the announcement but as I was sitting there waiting for them to call my name and politely clapping for others I started to think of all of the things I did or didn't want for my site.  When they finally called me name, I had no idea what they had said because I started to forget to listen to the sites. So I stood up and went to get my little picture to post on the map and when I got there I saw that my site is right on the coast and with three other volunteers! After posting my picture, they gave me a little packet of information on my site and asked me to wait until the end of the site annoucnements to go through it (hahahh yyyeah okay..). So i got back to my seat and immediately opened my packet
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So here are the details!

I'm going to be living in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, Western Visayas (,Philippines, Earth, Universe, etc.) and teaching at Sagay National High School. There are 3005 students at my school with an average of 50 students per class. There are 117 staff members, 105 are teachers.  There are a total of 14 English teachers and I'll be given time to shadow a few of them and decide who I want to officially co-teach with. The oldest teacher is early 50s, most are in early 30s.  Most are married and 80% are from Sagay. The PTA is active and give financial support for students to attend seminars or competitions.  Whoever did my site assessment (PC staff who goes to check out my site) listed the things available to do in my free time.. barbecue stall in the plaza at night time (yumyumyum! Barbecue is so good here.. but watch out for intestine!), lawn tennis, videoke (duh), billiards, badminton group (might have to be my new thing), outing of teachers per department, swimming in two resorts, and snorkeling at the sanctuary. The school has a faculty room for the English staff (and I get my own desk! big girl, right?). Fiesta (the city wide, week long celebration that each city has) is in March and I only have 14 days of school in December.  

For my host family! My host mom's name is Sally, 44 years old, and she is a Home Ec teacher at Sagay National HS.  Her husband, Winston, is a seafarer so is usually away on long trips.  They have two kids - Sailwin, 12 years old, and Hope, 5 years old. In my housing description they also listed Nece, sister of Sally, 35 years old and teacher - so maybe she lives with us as well? Its not really clear. But I'm excited to have kids again! I got a nice little picture of the family and when I showed the picture to my host family right now, my two oldest kids acted out the fist fight they would have with my new kids... they are a little possessive of me. I'm excited to live with another teacher so we can swap war stories and go to and from school together. Its weird actually know something about them before I go.  I'm really excited to meet them but I honestly just don't know how any family could be better than the family I have right now, but I guess we'll see! 

And as for the three other volunteers I'll be with - one is another education, one CYF, and one CRM. The other education volunteer is Lizzie, who I was roommates with back at 11RR! We get along really, really well and she is a lot of fun so I'm really excited.  Then the CYF volunteer is Ashley who was my roommate at staging in San Fran! Weird, right? Or planned out. Who knows. But Ashley has been in Subic for training (but in a different barangay) so I have seen a fair amount of her as well and I also really, really like her! She is working with youth a non-profit (I kind of forget the details..) but I'm sure there will be a lot of opportunity to collaborate with her! Then the final volunteer is Dave, who is in CRM, and is working at the sanctuary I mentioned before. So the beach is about 6 km from my school/house and there is this amazing reef (with five different species of giant clams!), crystal clear water, and white sand beaches. JEALOUS? I'm really excited to work with Dave and possibly have field trips to the reef for some environmental education event or something. Also I'm just excited to chill on the beach as often as possible.

After of the excitement of finding out and comparing sites with everyone, the next day was a day full of pretty boring sessions.  Then that evening we all got together and met our supervisors! My supervisor is my pincipal, Vilia. Annnnnnd she is awesome. We spent the next few days together in sessions and I really could not be happier/more excited to work with her.  She is really excited to have me there and we talked about some exciting and realistic ideas for projects throughout my two years. We have really similar interests and she is super open to any of my suggestions.  She was really excited that I want to get involved in theater and possibly start up something to do with film (watching, making, we'll see what materializes!). The school has been trying to start a remedial reading program for a while so I think I'm going to make that my number one priority when I get there. She is looking to start a girls soccer team (the school has a field! what! yeah! I'm so pumped!) and I definitely want to get involved in their school paper and "book lovers" club. 

One thing that I've been warned (by whoever did my site assessment) will be a challenge is the fact that the school seems to have a lot of resources already.  My assessment says.. "the volunteer must be active in seeking out new and interesting opportunities for secondary projects, different from what may be happening with the rest of their former PST cluster mates" and that I "may feel a little lost or questioning why they're there...so the choice of volunteer for this placement is important." And.. I had mixed feelings when I saw this. At first, I felt a little cheated from being able to help a school that has the bare minimum, but the more I talked to my supervisor and thought about it, the more excited I am.  At a school with extremely limited resources, projects such as english clubs and libraries take first priority. My school has a fairly functional library and an established english club and, while I would have been more than happy to work on those projects, I'm realizing that I'll be able to do secondary projects that are more personal and passionate.  I'll be able to work more with the theatre group and do something with my interest in film.  I'm realizing that PC didn't place me here because they didn't think I could handle a school is worse condition, but they are trusting me to be creative and recognize the less obvious needs of the school and its students. But I know I am going to have to work hard to see opportunities for projects and remind myself of this because I'm definitely afraid of feeling like I'm not needed at the school.

Other than the offical shiz, we had alot of fun being back together again! We had a few chill Red Horse nights, a dance party, and lots of swimming in the hotel pool.  It was exciting to find out who was near each other and discuss future visit plans.  My group here has been kind of strangely split.. so most people are either going to Visayas (like me) or Bicol, which is an area in southern Luzon (the big island on the top). Most of my group (including Daniel) is going to be spread throughout Bicol. One girl I'm here with now will be about 30 minutes away from me in Negros Occi. Then Chris and Allie are about two hours away from each other in Negros Oriental (right below Negros Occi).  Its a bummer I'm not closer to them but there will definitely be visits. Daniel is the further in Bicol, but to get to Allie and Chris I only have to take a 6 hr bus ride. Not too bad! Sagay is about two hours from the capital of Occi (Bacolod) which is where I will fly out of whenever I travel. And Bacolod is only an hour flight from Manila. I'm obviously telling you all of this so that you can plan your visit.

So that was SupsCon! Overall, a success. Could not be happier with my placement! But, yeah know, I'm staying level headed so I won't be disappointed with anything when I get there.... in about 10 dayyys! Waah!

After SupsCon, we spent about 48 hours in Manila for a field trip. We got to visit the Peace Corps office (where they have a really cool library including a big wall of books for exchanging between volunteers) then we went around Manila to see a few examples of the DepEds Alternative Learning System (ALS) which is basically accredited education programs outside of the formal school setting. We saw a school house that is only for ALS classes so students who can't attend daily school (maybe because of home life or working in fields) can show up to classes when they can make it. The most interesting was a visit to a prison ALS class. The prison was depressing and harsh but the class they had was so inspiring. Its likely that these men were on good behaviour for us, but it was awesome to see them working away at high school and elementary material. And really cool to chat with the teachers who give time from their already crazy schedules to teach these classes on Saturday.  There are an astounding number of out of school youths and adults without an elementary or high school education and mostly for reasons out of their hands.  I have to see what ALS programs are available at my site - if there are some, I definitely want to get involved and if not, I'm going to try to set one up! So it was cool to see a little (very little) bit of Manila and the ALS programs, but by the end of the two days everyone was exhausted and ready to get back home. On the bus ride back, I came I think the closest I've ever come in my short adult life to peeing my pants. While everyone else on the bus was fast asleep, I had to sit with my legs painfully crossed and console myself that people in the Peace Corps pee their pants all the time. I ended up texting my TCF from about 5 rows back and asking for a CR break. Luckily he got the message and asked the bus driver to pull over.. crisis averted
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Back in Subic its been work work work work work and then we might work more. We've been putting together our community project and, as usual, keep running into problems. But we're doing it! We are printing our tarpaulins right now and I know our teachers will be really excited to get those. The binders we are putting together are roughly 120 pages so now we just need to get them printed and bound.  We're also making a narrated powerpoint/video that Daniel has been working on tirelessly.  Then we need to plan out our two hour session with the teachers (on Friday) then.. were done! We had a youth camp on Saturday that also took up a lot of planning time last week.  We had to plan two 1 hr sessions for in and out of school youth, ages 14 - 19. We split our group into two shifts - morning and afternoon - and there was some miscommunication so the morning group ended up making our 1 hr sessions into 30 minutes sessions and using them both in the morning. So when we arrived in the afternoon, we had to quickly plan a 1 hr session.  It was stressful at first but we pulled it together and learned that Filipino kids think the game Telephone is hilarious
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We decided to do shifts because we wanted to take turns going to Subic National HS's intramural meet that was happening this Friday and Saturday (its kind of like Spirit Week at UA, but with a bunch of sports).  On Friday morning, we "accidentally" missed language class to go to the opening ceremonies and they were so fun! Well.. most of it was a beauty pageant between four 14 year old girls which was.. creepy. But the rest was awesome! There was a cheer competition that was SICK. Each year had a 10 minute cheer/dance thing with 20-25 students and all of them were awesome.  The dancing was really good and the routines were cool and original. We came to just chill in the back and observe but when the head teacher saw us she pulled us up on stage so we got front row seats of the show. On Saturday morning, I woke up early to watch my niece, whose in 6th grade, play basketball. It was hilarious. They only played half court and the whole game was just one giant beehive with a basketball occasionally popping up towards the general direction of the basket. The final school, after maybe 40 minutes of half court play, was like 12 - 16. But! My niece got 10 of those points!! She's awesome. Actually, my entire family is so good at basketball.  I play with them at night and my one nephew is maybe juuuust about twice the weight of the basketball and has to use all of his strength to heave the ball in the air, but he usually makes it! And my 16 year old brother is better than all of the other kids he plays with. Basically, my family runs this barangay
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Oh! I almost forgot.. we went on an awesome adventure! On Wednesday, for our technical session, we all got in a jeepney and went about 30 minutes up into the mountains with two little Filipina nuns as our guide and went to a remote Aeta school that is another example of DepEd's ALS program - because the Aeta children generally can't make it to a school every day and there is a big problem with discrimination between the Filipino and Aeta kids.  After our off road jeepney drive, we had about 20 minutes or so to hike - in the rain, across a giant, old hanging bridge. It was terrifying and awesome. At the school, the kids ranged from grades 1 - 6 (allll different ages). We split into three and played games with the kids for about an hour and half and they were so cute. I already picked out a few that I'm going to go back and steal.  After the first school, we hiked back down the mountain and went to a sister school more in town that had elementary and high school classes.  Most of the kids were from small villages all over the province so they boarded at the school. For our visit, they all dressed in their traditional outfits and preformed traditional songs and dances for us. It was definitely one of my favourite days
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So I'm here in Subic for less than a week!! I'm actually freaking out. I had the best day today with my family.  We all went to the beach with a big picnic.  The weather could not have been better and I spent the whole morning swimming with my kids and two of their friends.  After our big lunch, the rest of my family got in the water with us (mom, dad, my three siblings, two cousins, aunt and uncle) and we played a giant game of tag. It was hilarious - I ended up chasing my dad down the beach and we would all try to trick each other and outswim each other.  None of my kids know how to swim so they were hanging on me the whole time and loved it when I would spin them around or throw them up and catch them just as they hit the water. They keep asking me not to leave and to come back for Christmas and New Years and Fiesta in January. Today, after we got back from the beach, Zoe (my 3 year old niece) was taking a nap and called my name out in her sleep ("Ate Hillallee!").  I have already gotten choked up at the thought of leaving them.. its going to be really hard! But as of right now I'm going to plan on coming back in January for Fiesta.. hopefully I can pull it off! Also I have one of the worst sunburns I've ever had and my family finds it hilarrriouuuus
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So now we have another week of planning.  On Wednesday or Thursday, I have my language exam.  I have to be at a level of high intermediate - which I thiiiink I can pull off.  Having language 4 hours a day and living with a host family (although I speak more English at home than I should.. I mostly use my Tagalog with my younger kids) has been an awesome way to learn. So high intermediate, here I come. BUT THEN! I forgot to mention.. they don't speak Tagalog in my permanent site hahah. Soo I have to learn another, if not two more, languages! They most speak Cebuano in the Visayas but my city is on the border of the areas that speak Cebuano and an area that speaks Ilonggo.. so they speak both. And sometimes Tagalog. My supervisor told me they mostly speak Ilonggo so my plan is to find someone to tutor me in Ilonggo when I get to my site as well as someone to keep working with my on my Tagalog. I would hate to give up on Tagalog now and it will be extremely useful when I'm travelling but I'll definitely have to learn Ilonggo. Hopefully I can pull off studying two languages at once! Sorry, brain
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Another thing we have to plan this week is our goodbye party on Saturday for all of our host families.  We are all going to get together for a big lunch and to play some games (balloon toss, three legged race, etc) to say thank you for hosting us. I'm really looking forward to the party so this should be fun to plan for. We already decided were having lechon - which is the entire pig roasted on a spit. While we were discussing this, Chris leaned over and goes, "hey.. you know they put the pig on the spit while its still alive.." I shrieked and my face when totally white while everyone was cracking up. So.. they don't do that actually. But I did have some the other night with my family and my dad tried to make me eat the nipple. Food here is still sometimes a struggle for me.
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Alright, time to pass out! Frying in the Filipino sun all day really takes it out of you.

P.S.. I wrote this on Sunday and it is now Wednesday.. rapid update: our community project is almost over! after unbelievable stress this week we finally got the tarps made (they look so good!) and got our binders bound yesterday. I also had my language exam today! It was tougghhh but it went really well! At the end there is a role play and I learned that if you got a yellow card with your role play situation, it means its the more challenging one - so I definitely passed! We'll see what level of fluency they give me. Woowoo! Too bad I'll be speaking an entirely different language in about 10 days.. ohhh Pilipinas. Mahal kita.

“You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.”

 Azar Nafisi