Life in Sagay

This update goes out to my Aunt Amy, who was the first to tell me to "update your damn blog" - so here is a huge update!

I've officially been at site for two months and some days - and its flown by. A PCV told us during training that in the Peace Corps the days will inch by while the months fly by, and its proven true so far.  My days here are a weird mix of routine and novelty. I'm still in the observation stage at school, so there are stretches of my days when I don't have anything to do and they can be painfully boring. I usually follow a teacher for a day and sit in on the classes, but some days I end up spending the entire day sitting at my desk.  I have to constantly remind myself that I should still be observing and planning - some days I just get sucked into the internet all day.  And school days here are long - I get up at 6:00 every morning to bucket shower, eat breakfast, and get to school by 7:30 for the flag ceremony. Then I'm in school until 5:00. Like I said, I observe a few classes but am mostly at my desk. My desk in the faculty room with the English and Science teachers and they are all really great.  I have only actually taught a handful of classes - I taught a week of film classes with the Arts students and have been helping them with their final project, including going on a field trip with them to a nearby barangay. Things will pick up at school once I've picked a counterpart (co-teacher to share classes with) and have a set schedule, which will actually be in the next week or so.  While some days at school can be ridiculously boring, others are really fun. I love the students and am working on getting to know them better.  The second week I was here we had a program for Teachers Appreciation Day and I danced Gangnam Style in front of the whole school, so I usually can't walk past students without a request for another sample of gangnam. I'm still a little overwhelmed by the size of my school and am very slowly starting to get to know all of the teachers and the students, but I think when I have my set schedule with my classes the school will start to feel a lot smaller.

Gangnam Style dance troupe for Teachers Day

Bright moon over Sagay on my walk home from school

And while trying to feel more at home at school, I'm also getting to know Sagay better.  I love my walk to and from school because I now have a pretty regular cast of characters to say hi to and chat with.  In my barangay, Sagay proper, there is a 'market mall' - a covered area with little stands selling food and household stuff, plus a few coffee stands and places to get food, and an ukay-ukay area (like a thrift store). We also have a few restaurants around town - one kind of fast food place, and a few others that have local meals to choose from.  But Sagay is a little too small for any chain places.. the closest ones are in our neighboring bigger city, Cadiz.  We also have a public plaza that is actually really fun at night - they set up tables with umbrellas and have barbeque and other street food (buuut you have to be really careful with street food...). There are always people there at night and during the weekends, kids stay out late and run around the plaza. It's a really nice place to just hang out with some friends and a beer. We also have a beach - but.. I haven't been yet, sadly. Most people here don't really go to spend the day at the beach so it's been hard to get an exact answer for where the beach is and the best way to go spend the day there - but! my sitemate Ashley recently went with her work, so we're going to hang out there a lot more!

Carbin Reef

Then there is Carbin Reef. Ahhh Carbin Reef! It's like.. paradise.  I first went with Ashley and Dave, and three other volunteers from nearby towns, on the second or third week we were in Sagay then again this weekend for my birthday! Dave has a hookup through work so we can get a free boat ride from a nearby barangay, Old Sagay, to the reef.  It takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on the water, and it is just a small island of bright white sand. It's actually just a sand bar and gets down to a pretty small sliver during high tide.  It is in the Sagay Marine Reserve, a huge and relatively well funded protected marine area.  On the beach there are a few bamboo shelters and a big watch tower.  The water is about a thousand perfect shades of clear turquoise. You can snorkel all around the sand bar and it is amazing - bright blue and green coral, sea cucumbers, schools of big and small fish, adorable clown fish poking around their anemone, huge star fish, jellyfish, and giant clams! So we go and snorkel for a little while then spend the rest of the day sitting on the beach and eating and drinking rum and talking - it's amazing.

Watch tower on Carbin Reef

Boating back home - right into a rain storm

I've had a handful of other really good weekends..

In October, I went to Bacolod (the capital of my province, about a 2 hour bus ride away) for their annual mask-themed festival, MassKara (many faces). It was the first time a big group of us got together since going to site, so I got to see a few of my good friends from the south of my island. The festival was really fun - stands selling masks, music playing in the streets, people dancing, big floats going by in the parade and met a handful of really cool volunteers in my area who aren't in my batch.

Diane, me, and Allie at MassKara

I also went to the capital of the southern province of my region for a weekend a few weeks ago, which was also so so much fun. A few of my good friends live there, including Allie from training.  So I took a bus earlllllllly Friday morning all the way to the south. Buses here are.. varied. You can get in an air conditioned bus that has a TV and shows movies and usually only makes a few stops, making your trip super short.  And there are a variety of air con busses,  from nice and roomy to a little cramped, but still air con. Then there are non-aircon, which is usually super cramped with bumpy, ripped seats and windows thrown open that makes a stop every couple of minutes - usually speeding up between stops then slamming on the breaks to pick up people along the road.  There is a bus terminal right across the street from my school which is convenient, but when you can't make it to a terminal, you can literally flag down any bus going in your direction and just jump on. For this trip, I took the first bus from the terminal which happened to not be an aircon. The first 45 minutes was miserable - I had to stand in the aisle with my backpack and a big purse and try to not bump and squish all the Filipinos around me. Then some people got off and I managed to get a seat by the window - on the bench seat, meant for three but usually seating four or five, with my knees jammed up against the seat in front of me. But after I scooched all over trying to find the least-bone crushing position for my legs, it was quite pleasant. My iPod froze on song 2 so I listened to the jabber of the other passengers and the conductor tapping the metal rails to tell the driver when to stop to drop or pick someone up then tapping again when everyone was on or off - or as close to on or off as they could before the bus sped off.  The whole time I just hung out the window (which was not fun when another buses came by kicked up dirt or we drove past burning trash piles or sugar cane fields) but the scenery here is beautiful - all the bright green sugar cane fields and palm trees run right up to the bright blue water.  There are some small mountains that go right into the water and you can see the mountains of Cebu, the island next door to Negros, in the distance. It was magnificent... but after 7 hours, my legs were cramped as hell as my butt had lost all feeling, so I was happy to make it to Dumaguete.  Dumaguete is mostly a college town - home to Silliman University, one of the best in the Philippines - and has a really cool bars and restaurants. So we had dinner and drinks in Duma before Allie's host mom picked us up in the back of a little truck and we drove 20ish minutes to Dauin, Allie's site. We all cuddled up and spent the night in Allie's bamboo (nipa) hut and woke up the next day to go snorkeling! She has a really cool beach with amazing snorkeling about 10 minute walk from her house. 

Beach in Dauin

We snorkeled and hung out all morning, had lunch with her host family, then went back to Duma for the night. Another volunteer was having a going away party hosted by this guy, Harold, who is really cool and friends with all the Peace Corps volunteers in the area and owns a hostel in the city. So we went to check into the hostel - which is so nice, with a super cool rooftop hangout area with pool tables and speakers and hammocks - then went out for the best. dinner. I've. ever. had. (at least in the past 5 months).  We had three cheese macaroni (CHEESE! THREE KINDS! note: there is no cheese in the Philippines.. considering that, it is an impressive feat that happiness exists here..) followed by a bacon cheese burger with truffle oil.. .like.. WUT. and nooo rice at all. I was actually delirious while eating. 

Hamburger sent from the gods

After we were stuffed, we went to going away party. We met some other volunteers in the area as well as local friends of Harold's. Mostly just drank and videoked then went out to a disco afterwards. So much fun! It was so good to have an actual night out. The next morning we got up and had Mexican food for breakfast.. because we could.  I then took another bus back to Sagay (aircon this time, less exciting - but more leg room) and was almost back in Sagay when I got a text from my "safety warden" (one volunteer who has to relay safety messages from Peace Corps to volunteers in their area) that we were having a safety drill - in Bacolod. So I had to get off my bus from Duma, meet with Ashley, Dave and Lizzie, and jump right back on a bus for the capital. We were all pretty annoyed that we had to drop everything just to come in for a drill, but it ended up being really nice - aircon rooms at a hotel and basically a free day off of work to hang out with other volunteers.  There are 13 volunteers from my batch in my area - and a strangely disproportionate amount of cool people - so I really lucked out with the volunteers in my area! (Not that there aren't other super cool really great volunteers in other areas.. obviously)

With my students in Vito - note the umbrellas.. more often used to block sun than rain

On weekends when I'm not traveling or doing something exciting, I have been going to another barangay in Sagay (20 minutes on a bus) called Vito. I went to Vito initially with the Arts students on a  field trip - they had to study the culture of the barangay (that has one of  the oldest churches in the Philippines) for a final project. To get there, my co-teacher had to rent a little bus thing (called a cebro - kind of like a small bus/big van hybrid that runs the national highway through my province) for the students and ended up befriending the family that owns the cebro company. She then introduced me to the family and I have been spending my weekends with them.  They have a big family with a bunch of kids and have a house right on the water. With the cebros, they own some pump boats and have a little fishing business so they are really well known in the barangay.   Vito is really cute and cooler than Sagay proper (where I live) with fresh air, being right next to the ocean.  I mostly just hang out there with my co-teacher, but it is a really nice break to get away for a night to somewhere so pretty.

Church in Vito

So, as you can see, I'm having plenty of fun and there are a lot of little escapes and highlights already. But, as I've told some of you, life here can be pretty stressful on a daily basis. It's just a lot of adjusting - for me and those around me - that I'm still going through. Little things that are fine and I can easily laugh at some days push me to the verge of tears the next day.  It's obviously really difficult to be so far from friends and family and connecting with people is harder here - mostly due to language barriers plus a lot of cultural differences. I love the people here and enjoy being with them, but have very few deep bonds yet and communication is extremely difficult, which can be lonely.  But it's a weird lonely, because I am constantly surrounded by people, which is another highlight and stressor. There is no such thing as alone time here. If I tell someone that I did something by myself - like go for a walk to the plaza or just watched a movie - they always wonder why and see doing things alone as being sad.  When I do just walk to the market mall to buy some new shampoo or go to the drug store for some more baby wipes (my new best friend here), everyone sees me and talks about what I'm wearing, what I'm buying, etc. On most days, I love this and I love saying hello to everyone and stopping to chat with people and, as most of my uni friends might know, I generally dislike alone time and doing things alone.  But on some days, I just want to feel like I can walk home from school without starting a commotion.  I'm still adjusting to the food here and have had almost every craving for different foods that I just can't get here. And the constant sweating and heat with a lack of genuine showers (I use a tabo - meaning I fill a bucket with water, then use a smaller bucket thing to dump the water over me) and toilets can wear on me. BUT! Obviously these problems are not the sum of my past two months and there are so many amazing things here.. this just gives you an idea of what life is like.  And my fellow volunteers constantly prove themselves as an amazing, amazing support system and can relate on all of these. It's widely known (and laughed about but consistently proven true) that whenever volunteers get together, we talk about three things: work, food, and poop. Sometimes we made a conscious effort to not let the conversation go there, but it inevitably does. Every time. You become very open about some things when you're in our conditions.

Last week we had an area athletic and cultural meet that was hosted by my school - so participants from two other cities came and stayed at my school for three days of competitions, so we had no classes Wed - Frid.  

Opening Ceremonies for Area Meet

Sagay won the most exciting part of the Cultural Meet - the Folk Dance competition! 

Then this weekend - my birthday! - I went to Vito and the family had a very traditional Filipino birthday party for me. The whole family came over - uncles, aunts, cousins - and we had a lechon, pig roasted on a spit, spaghetti, fresh crabs, "fruit" salad (fruit in massive amounts of sweet, condensed milk) and sat around eating and singing videoke. 

Choppin' some lechon

The next morning, I went to Carbin Reef with six other volunteers and had a blast. Snorkeling, rum, food, lots of laughs. It was definitely a successful 23rd!

23rd Birthday - success! 

Now I'm back at school and back to work! I'll hopefully be deciding on a counter-part this week and getting a final schedule for the rest of the year, as well as start discussing some potential project ideas with my supervisor. So lots of work for me!

Also, not to be presumptuous, but here is my address again in case anyone wants to send some holiday greetings/treats:

Hillary Dale
Peace Corps Volunteer
c/o Ms. Vilia Tupas
Principal III
Sagay National High School
Poblacion 2
Sagay City, Negros Occidental, Philippines

Also, if you are interested in including stuff/donations for my school, we always need more supplies - of anything. Markers, crayons, paper, books! (books! books! books!), anything! would be great - I can share with my co-teachers. Students here are extremely limited and rarely have creative projects to apply their lessons to because of lack of materials.

Happy late Thanksgiving - I am thankful for each and every one of you. I am.

Thanks for reading :)

Sa sunod - until next time. xxxxxx.

When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid. - The Secret Life of Bees