The more I keep putting off this update the more daunting it
becomes. I just did some yoga and
meditation to calm myself down and pump myself up. I'm going to break this
terrifyingly huge update into smaller, manageable sections. Enjoy, loyal
readers.
So.. back to this morning. I wake up at 6:15 and spend a good 5-8 minutes cuddling with my new kitten, Lucille (Lucy/Lucifer/Luce/Lulu/YADHDHEgetoutfromundermyfeet!) She purred her way into my life when my site mate Ashley and our visiting friend Sam found her crying in a puddle in our city's public garden. They picked her up, wrapped her in Ashley's scarf, and brought her straight to me. She looked pretty gross, I'll be honest. First thing we did was try to dry her off and get her to stop shivering. After that, we had our first true love connection - I offered her some canned tuna and she ate it faster than I would have. I finally found someone who shares my love of canned tuna! After her little belly pudged out with tuna and her fur dried enough to fluff out everywhere, she laid down in bed with me (lazy Saturday watching Friends in front of the electric fan) and just purred and purred and purred and cuddled and purred and cuddled and purred. She has Olympic purr powers and can, and will, squeeze herself into the smallest space to curl up and sleep. Her favorite is sleeping between my neck and the pillow so I have been falling asleep lately to the sound of her purring right up against my ear. A little like a lawn mower, but still comforting. By the time I wake up she has inevitably moved to some other awkwardly squished space (between my bent knees, in my elbow, INSIDE the pillow case up against my face, on my chest, under my chin, etc.) and I have to cuddle her for a few minutes before getting up.
First thing I do is brush my teeth and wash my face (not a full bucket bath, but still not fun) and put some water in my ancient electric kettle. This electric kettle came with my apartment, a loaner from my landlord, and is basically a metal cylinder with a lid, a little handle, and a chord that you can pull out. The chord actually doesn't go all the way in, so I have to find the perfect balance to make the little red light pop on (more like an ominous red glow that comes from inside of the cylinder). So this little guy is definitely low-tech, but gets the job done. But... the situation turned deadly last week. The handle just popped off somehow so now it's just a hot metal cylinder of boiling water with no safe contact point. Luckily, I splurged on some pot holders during my last trip to the capital and I can use both of those to hold the sides and pour the hot water. But... its deadly potential was realized when I was trying to adjust the chord to get that red light to pop on when I put my hand on the top of the metal and a GIANT shock went through my body. So now I have to boil water in an ungraspable, electrocuting metal death cylinder. These are the kind of daily struggles I have.
So while my water is boiling I get dressed. I recently finally built myself some shelves! The apartment I'm in now (again, more later) is supposed to be temporary so I don't want to spend any (annny) money on furnishing it. So, from December - last week I was sort of just living out of my suitcase. Well.. there was a giant pile of clothes and my suitcase was somewhere underneath that pile. But I decided that its time I get real and get some shelves (this decision was actually motivated not by any sort of personal growth but by the fact that my Peace Corps managers were coming to visit my apartment). So, being the resourceful PCV that I have been trained to be, I went into my front yard (which is a junk yard...later..) and evaluated my resources. I found lots of empty litro bottles (big beer bottles) and some not-tooooo-shabby wood! So I built myself some shelves - two layers! - using bottles as sort of legs and these wooden boards as the shelves! Obviously I cleaned everything really well before putting my clothes on it. So since today was Valentine's Day, I wore some red pants, a white t-shirt, and a black cardigan to cover the holes in the back of my white t-shirt (because of rough soap and hand washing, all of my clothes have holes in them - but it's still extremely sloppy to show up to school with holes in my clothes). And some bright pink and orange rubber sandals that my mom sent me - because the pink was festive and because it was raining this morning. The rubber is great because when they get muddy on my walk to school, I can just dump some water over them once I get to school. Something that constantly blows my mind is that fact that Filipinos live in not-so-clean conditions - mud, heat, dust, rain, etc. - but they always look impeccable, especially teachers. Then I come lumbering in, a foot and a half too tall for this country, covered in mud and sweat by 7:30 AM and celebrating the small victory that is my rubber shoes.
By the time I'm dressed with a thick layer of deodorant and run a brush through my hair, my water is boiling. Usually for breakfast I just have coffee and oatmeal - cheap and easy. Sometimes I'll go through the effort of making some eggs or I'll have bread with some peanutbutter. But I didn't go to the market this week and all I have in my house is coffee and oatmeal (and I finished the oatmeal this morning.. tomorrow is gonna suck). Also, I do get a morning dose of protein: ants. Ants are just omnipresent here. They are absolutely everywhere. Small, medium, large, extra-small, extra-large - my apartments got the entire line. Now - I don't really like tomatoes. And back in the States, I would always pick tomatoes out of my salads and off of my sandwiches. I would go through serious effort to get those little red bastards out of there. But.. here... I don't even bother picking the ants out of my sugar bowl. It's just.. a losing battle. If I'm particularly awake, I will make an effort to scoop the sugar around the ants but that's mostly impossible anyways. They are small, tasteless, harmless, and extra protein so - I allow them.
I usually finish breakfast by 7:00 or 7:05, giving me about 10 minutes to get my stuff together, maybe throw on some makeup, and get out of the door by 7:15. I walk to school every morning which takes a little under 15 minutes. From my apartment, I have to go down three dirt roads and are more often than not just mud rivers. It actually should probably only take 8 minutes to get to school, but navigating these mud roads are always a little interesting. Once I get to the paved road, it's just a straight shot to the side gate of my school. The highlight of leaving my apartment and coming home are the kids who living in the neighbouring houses. Whenever I walk down the street they run out of their house to say hi to me and give me a high five. They are super cute. And! They have puppies! Fat little puppies – sho cute.
Today actually I was a little late for school. I had to make a visual aid for an activity in my class today and was too tired last night. Then none of my markers were working this morning for some reason. After my struggle with some giant paper and dried out markers, I made it to school right as my class started at 7:45 (usually I make it by flag ceremony - at 7:30 - so I have a few minutes to put some of my things at my desk before going to my classroom) and went straight to my classroom.
With my schedule right now, I teach a few first year (7th grade) classes in the mornings and have afternoons off to work on my other projects. My classes have very mixed levels with an average of 50 kids. I'm working with a counterpart who is the sweetest lady - really supportive and complimentary of my teaching, but sort of uninvolved in the lesson planning. It's hard to work out a good working balance - part of the reason I am working with her classes is because she has such a huge class load, but that means that she is rarely to never around to lesson plan with me, which is what we are supposed to do. But she does come to my classes and then basically teaches my lessons, a day later. Soooo.. I'm sort of doing the lesson planning for her, which isn't ideal, but she is definitely learning from the different activities I'm doing (just more interactive than most Filipino teachers are used to) and using those in her other classes, so I think that is an achievement (hopefully sustainable!)! We just finished a big project about essay structure yesterday (I explained how the structure of an essay is like the structure of a house and had them build their own Essay Houses - a really fun project, but I can't do anything like it again soon because I had to buy supplies for them myself and I just don't have the money for that) so I basically just planned a couple of activities for Valentine's today. (Or, as they call it here, Hearts Day). We started off with a little ice breaker/energizer - I had them get in groups of 3 or 4 and see how many words they could make using the letters in HAPPY VALENTINES DAY. And I was really impressed! They are usually really motivated by competition and even the kids in the back who don't always participate had their heads together and were coming up with words. I think the winning team had 42 or 45.. not bad! After that, we did a listening exercise (with my terrible visual aid.. you could barely see the marker.. but it worked). I had them listen to a love song (My Endless Love a la Diana Ross & Lionel Richie... soooogooood) and fill in the missing lyrics. This is something I've done in language classes a few times and they love it here - this country is super musical. Their favorite part is checking the answers when I replay the song and let them sing along, as loud as they like. The hard part is that I have so few resources here and don't have the money to provide them myself - so something that is so simple and common in the States as a handout is something they don't have here. Sometimes teachers will use them and the students will all give 1 peso to one student who goes and makes the copies, but it's complicated and not everyone gets one.. and it's generally just unreliable. Also there are no projectors for Powerpoints or those clear sheets that you put on that big white/grey thing with the light and the arm kind of thing and the magnifying glass and it shows it up on the wall but upside down - what is that? Is that called a projector too? Do you know what I'm talking about? Anyways - we don't have that. So what all the teachers do is use manila paper - big paper that is a little better quality than tissue paper and they just write everything - lecture notes, tests, quizzes, assignments, activities - on these papers and hang them up on the board. There are chalk boards but most of them have big holes in them and there usually isn't enough time to write everything up during a class. This is super frustrating for me because cheating is widely accepted here and there is little you can do considering kids don’t have their own papers and there are so many students squeezed into a classroom, sitting basically on top of each other, and there is constant noise coming from outside. After the listening activity, I asked them to write a love letter - giannntt groan goes through the class - to their favorite object, not to a person! - groan turns to confused laughter?. So basically they can write a love letter to anything, just not a person. So my counterpart and I were giving some examples - Dear Fried Chicken, you are my endless love. Or Dear Spaghetti, thank you for being there for all of my birthdays and keeping my life long. (In the Philippines, you're supposed to eat long spaghetti noodles for you birthday so you'll have a long life). After we gave some examples the kids got really into it and wrote until the end of class! I gave them till Monday to finish the letter so I'm hoping for some amusing responses. Homework is really never given here, but some of the more eager kids will do work outside of the class. If I give them a few days to do something it means that the eager students will hand in something totally complete and extra decorated on fancy paper but the less-than-eager students will just turn in whatever they happened to finish during class.
After my fist class I actually had the rest of the day free - students only have English class 4 times a week and a free period instead on one of the days. So Thursdays are their free periods. So, like I always do when I have no class, I returned to my desk to lesson plan/Facebook/project plan. Lesson planning usually comes first so I can get it out of the way. My principal has asked all of the first year teachers to focus on remedial reading so every Friday they take a break from their usual lessons to do reading comprehension classes, so that's what I was planning today. I'm kind of excited for my lesson. I found a bunch of Valentine's Day traditions from other countries so I'm having them get in groups to read a short reading on their assigned country (I have England, Scotland, Korea, Romania, Brazil, Taiwan, a few more) then explain how their country is different from and the same as Filipino celebrations and explain whether or not they would like to go to their country to celebrate Valentine's Day.
That took the rest of my morning and finally it was noon! Lunch time! I have an hour for lunch, but since I have no classes in the afternoon but usually have class right before lunch (meaning I don't get out of school until 12:15) I sometimes take till 1:30 so I can go home and make lunch. Lunch is usually left overs from dinner or tuna salad or something basic. Today I actually went to meet my site-mate Dave for lunch, since we both didn’t have much going on at work. We met at our usual spot in town – a “pizza” place called Area 51. It’s a small little corner of a restaurant that is pretty much fully supported financially by our business. It has hamburgers and pizza and beer and soda and other Filipino foods. The hamburgers and pizza are decent.. only decent.. by Filipino standards. So by American standards, pretttty awful. But we’ll take what we can get! And we’ve gotten to know the owners and employees, so it’s always fun to stop by. So Dave and I had lunch together and talked about some crazy German man Dave met the other day.
At 5:00, I packed up my laptop and coffee thermos and set out for home. I'm usually wiped by the end of the day. Waking up at 6:15 then being at school until 5:00 just kills me. So when I get home by 5:15 I try to work out and meditate for a little bit (difficult with so much noise and dirt and distractions in my apartment, but relatively necessary for my mental health haha).
And all of the teachers are shocked by the fact that I cook my own dinner and do my own housework – because with a schedule like that, all the teachers (the vast majority of who have kids and a husband/wife) have house helpers who stay home during the day to go to the market, clean the house, and have dinner ready for them when they come home. But I do have to cook for myself, which is usually the last thing I want to do in the evening. So my dinners here are pretty simple. I generally only have time to go to the market on Sundays, so I’ll buy a weeks worth of fruit, vegetables, and fish. I’m almost completely vegetarian (pescetarian?) here because I don’t really trust myself to buy meat here and preparing/cleaning it is new to me. Fish is way easier to prepare and cook. I will eat meat sometimes if I’m eating out or at someone else’s house. But it’s just too stressful to walk through the market with meat hanging everywhere and no idea how long it’s been out there, how to prepare it, etc. So for dinner I usually have fish and vegetables, sometimes some pasta, and some fruit. (I eat like 11 mangos a day). All I have here is a two-burner gas stove and my death kettle to cook with – no oven, no microwave.
After dinner, if I’m not dead, I’ll finish any visual aids I need for the next day, take my bucket bath (BRR!), and get in bed! Usually I’ll read for a little bit or watch something on my laptop and try to fall asleep by about 10pm.
Then the next day my alarm goes off at 6:15 am and I do it all again!
Other than teaching, I am planning my secondary projects - which are basically any projects that will help my school/teachers/students/community. The one I'm working on the most right now, and one that I'm really excited about, is going to be a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp. It's a girls empowerment and leadership camp that will take place at my school in May. Other female PCVs, all my really good friends, are all helping with the planning and facilitating of the camp and we're working with teachers at my school. I also have a few things in the works for next year - a peer tutoring program, a high school 101 program for first years (sort of intro to high school life, study tips, anti-bullying, anti-drugs, so.. anti-fun! Am I right?!), and an English film and conversation club! Just to name a few. So when I'm at school but have no class my time is spent making proposals and budgets and schedules and collecting resources for all of these projects. I'm also pumped because Ashley, Dave and I came up with the idea of visiting the island barangays around Sagay and doing weekend workshops on Environmental Leadership. We're at the very, very beginning of the planning stages but we're going to coordinate with the schools and barangay captains on the islands and see what we can do! Everything is in the planning stages but I'm really excited about all of the projects - though I know to be realistic about the probability of some failed projects.
Also stay tuned because I might be bugging you guys for some donations or input on projects :)
It's not ideal, but its ideally temporary. The apartment is sort of on the other side of town from my host family but still only about 15 minutes from school, like I said. So after going down the dirt roads, my apartment is in the same building as 3 other apartments that share a gate. Once in the gate, there is kind of a big pile of junk.. like a junk yard. In the other apartments there are two little families who are very sweet and, in the apartment right next to mine, there were some younger girls working as sales girls for a publishing company. Those girls recently moved out and back to the capital, which is a shame, so we'll see who my new neighbours will be! The apartment is a one bedroom with a little living room/kitchen space and a bathroom. It really isn't that bad, relatively big for a one bedroom, but the only serious problem is the floors. They aren't finished so they are sort of like a dirty, clay floor that has red dust that gets on EVERRRYTHING. Plus with the junk yard in the front, I have issues with a little new mouse roommate and bugs. Actually yesterday I saw the rat KING climb out of the biggest pile of junk. He was the size of a regular house cat. It was terrifying. I'm hoping he is happy and healthy in the junk pile and never tries to move in to my place. The landlord let me borrow all the furniture so, like I said, I don't have to spend money on the temporary place, and it has gotten pretty homey.
After that we had Christmas, which was a strange affair, but not all-together unmerry. Christmas here actually starts around September, but the very beginning of December is when things go in full swing. I was pretty involved in all the city plans because, somehow, I was recruited to be the "mascot" for my school during the Christmas parade. I ended up having to dress up as an angel with GIANT angel wings and dance on stage in the plaza and walk around to take pictures. Everyone was fascinated by me and I realized what it felt like to be one of those characters walking around Disney. On my out of character nights, I usually went with Ashley and Dave and some of our local friends to the plaza to watch the program and lounge around with some mango smoothie, beer, and popcorn. Each night was hosted by a different group, including my high school, other schools, certain barangays, etc. and generally consisted of dance and song numbers and were usually hosted by one or two charismatic characters with a decent grasp of some rehearsed English lines. On the night of Ashley's work's program, those charismatic characters were us. Ashley, Dave and I were asked to host the program so we got all dolled up in Christmas-y clothes and had our makeup done while frantically memorizing some key Illonggo phrases and going over some potential banter we could have. It was definitely an experience. Now.. I've had the most stage experience out of the three of us but this was something totally different. Filipinos loove to watch shows and get really into stuff.. but they are the weirdest audience I've ever seen. They rarely clap, which is really unsettling, and often talk through presentations or programs - but they still love them. So the three of us had to get up between each act and introduce the next act and have a little banter - all to crickets. We talked about Christmas, about Manny Pacquiao, about Miss Universe coming down to USA and Philippines.. and it was just crickets. It was pretty awkward. But afterwards we were assured that we did really well! So as long as Ashley's work was happy, we were happy.
Christmas Day here isn't as big of a deal as Christmas Eve, or Buena Noche. For the 24th I went to a friend's house and had lots of food and drinks and talking (mostly me listening and smiling) late into the night. The next morning was really relaxed with most people recovering from the night before. It was nice to be around a family but I think the fact that it was so different from Christmas at home made it easier to deal with. I kept having to remind myself that it was Christmas even though I was sweating and eating sweet spaghetti. So overall it was an okay Christmas!
The next big event was New Years! So. Much. Fun! I had been making plans with a bunch of fellow volunteers and we ended up getting a group of 20 to all meet in Dumaguete, the capital in the south of my island, and go on a snorkel trip to two small neighbouring islands, Siquijor and Apo Island. We all met in Dumaguete for a few days and for New Years Eve. We stayed in a cool hostel there and spent the days exploring the city and going to the beach and the nights on the hostel's rooftop drinking and catching up, since most of us hadn't seen each other since September. On New Years Eve we were all together for a big party on the rooftop and celebrated at midnight with fireworks going off literally all around us in the city - like a constant stream of fireworks in every direction for 30 minutes. It was amazing. The next morning we rallied early, got our stuff together, and piled in a van to the beach to set out for our snorkel/dive trip! The hostel where we stayed, owned by a guy we're now friends with and cuts us sweet deals, was taking us out on their big boat where we would spend three days and two nights. We basically went around the two islands stopping at the good dive spots and it was unreal. These places are known as some of the best dive places in the world! We saw so many fish, star fish, coral, sea snakes, and - everyone's favorite - sea turtles!! It was a blast. At night, we just slept on the deck of the boat which was definitely an experience. You could see every single star and the moon was huge and felt like it was so close. I spent the night lying next to my friend Laura talking about the universe and existing in different dimensions... stereotypical star gazing discussions. The coolest part was being called over to the edge by Allie and Daniel to look at the phosphorescents, the glow-in-the-dark bacteria in the water. We had this amazing sky above us then these flickering little lights in the dark blue water.. I can't even describe the feeling. But... from there the night wasn't so magical. We were all super sun burnt from the day so sleeping on the deck was painful while the wind was really strong and ended up being surprisingly cold. We basically we are all sleeping in piles of whatever clothes/towels we could gather up but most of these were blown off every 30 minutes. So the sleep wasn't very good but the experience was totally worth it. The next night, we all stayed up late playing games and talking and singing and playing guitar with some rum. A few people had to get back to the airport early so we caught a few hours (maybe 2 tops) of uncomfortable, wet (we had a quick but torrential downpour followed by some heavy waves and absolutely, positively everything on the boat was soaked - only plus side was that Allie and I managed to stand on the deck of the boat with some soap and shampoo and get in our only shower of the trip - in the rain) sleep before leaving for the mainland at 5am. We all got up at the sound of the engine flipping on but hoped to sleep a little more since it would be an hour until we returned to Dumaguete... but the waves had returned. It was the saddest sight I have ever seen. We were all sitting on the boat huddled together under soaking blankets and sheets and towels just trying to keep the spray out of our eyes. The boat was slamming into every wave so we were all sunburnt, freezing, and trying to keep down all the rum from the night before. By the time we reached the shore we were all pretty grumpy and just thankful to be able to go back to the hostel for a shower and some fresh clothes. After that, we all said our goodbyes and went back to our respective sites!
My next trip was a much needed trip to visit my family! My family from training, that is. It was time for Subic's annual, week-long fiesta so Allie, Daniel, and I all met in Manila and made our way to Subic. It was perfect - time with Allie and Daniel, visiting everyone from training again, some fun fiesta activities, and, most of all, plenty of time with my family. It was so nice to be back with the kids and my big sisters. My one sister was about to burst with her third child - who was born a few days ago! So I now have a new niece that I have to get back to visit. It was so great to see my mom and my dad again and have some of my mom's delicious cooking. It wasn't a super eventful trip but was definitely one of my favorites so far.
Since Subic, I've stuck to my island but had a few little trips. I've made a few day trips to the capital with Dave and Ashley but those are usually just to spend the day in the mall stocking up on things we can't find in Sagay. I also had a really fun weekend in Cadiz, the biggest town next to us (only about a 20 minute bus ride), for their fiesta. Two of my good friends at assigned in Cadiz so they hosted a handful of us, including friends from the south of my island, Allie, Michelle, and Chris. Before going to Cadiz, those three spent a day in Sagay going island hopping - lots of fun snorkeling and boating and touring mangroves! In Cadiz, we spent Saturday night walking around and having some drinks, catching up, listening to the live band, but the highlight of the festival was on Sunday. On Sunday, the streets are filled with vendors selling little cups of paint for 5 pesos that strangers will use to cover each other in paint. Being white people, we were definitely targets during the whole thing. The streets were packed and hands would come out of nowhere to smear paint on my face, my arms, my legs, and more awkward places. We were all a little hesitant at first but soon were buying our own paint and giving back as good as we were getting it. After a while we all reconvened for some lunch and a cold beer - since baking under the hot sun with your body covered in questionably-non-toxic paint can be exhausting.
I have a few exciting things coming up - next week I'll be in the capital all week for Language Camp - five straight days of language training sponsored by Peace Corps. I've gotten a little comfortable in the limited Ilonggo I've learned. I have enough to get around so I've sort of lost of my drive to study, on top of all the other work I'm doing. But I'm hoping this week is the kick in the ass that I need to get back to site and really try to practice my language and find a tutor.
After language camp the mo0o0o0o0o0o0ossst exciting thing is happening - JACK IS COMING TO VISIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Jack - one of my best friends from McGill)!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is coming in on the 5th and staying for about 10 days. I can't travel much because of school but there is plenty to do in Sagay and nearby - I'm thinking we will go to that mountain resort and maybe all the way down to Dumaguete. We'll see!!!
I've also had some questions about care packages and my address - again, my address is posted in the other tab "Contact Information" if you just look at the top of my blog ^^ I'm also going to add a tab with care package requests if you ever want to check that out!
I'm sorry for the break in blogs and I hope this one was satisfying without being too overwhelming. Like ordering a Chipotle burrito bowl instead of a regular burrito. Mmmmmm I want Chipotle.
<3 Hillary
P.S. Sorry about the lack of pictures in this one, but my internet is particularly slow/patchy today. I might try to add some later or you can always find them on Facebook!
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. - John Wooden
My Day Today
Part of my inability to keep
all of my friends, family, and secret admirers updated on my life is because
sometimes I feel like I just don't have updates. It's a weird realization to
come to but I think I have reached a level of normalcy and routine in life
here. I have a set schedule at school
(though I may be picking up more classes soon) and do all of my own lesson
planning, so I rarely have surprises at school. With the exception of sporadic
weekend trips and get togethers (more on that later), my weekends are relatively
tame and consist mostly of relaxing with a book (just finished the last Game of
Thrones book, need book recommendations!), doing my laundry, or catching up on
sleep. Very domestic! So.. it is often
hard for me to give updates because everything seems pretty normal and routine
to me now. But I also realize that these normal days are still totally foreign
to you, you curious cats. So! Here is my day today, a relatively average day
for me.
I woke up at 6:15 this
morning. Until last week, I would always wake up at 6:00. That was before I realized the undeniable
benefits of taking my bucket baths at night instead of the morning. Not only do
I avoid the soul-crushing, nerve-numbing impact of that first bucket of
freezing cold water I pour over my head in the morning, but I get an extra 15
minutes to sleep. Instead, I almost
(allllllmost...) enjoy the cold-as-death shock to my system in the evening as
it washes off the dirt, grime, and sweat of my day. As my fellow volunteer friend observed in his
Facebook status this week, there is just NO getting used to a cold bucket bath.
Each time is like the first time all over again.
So.. back to this morning. I wake up at 6:15 and spend a good 5-8 minutes cuddling with my new kitten, Lucille (Lucy/Lucifer/Luce/Lulu/YADHDHEgetoutfromundermyfeet!) She purred her way into my life when my site mate Ashley and our visiting friend Sam found her crying in a puddle in our city's public garden. They picked her up, wrapped her in Ashley's scarf, and brought her straight to me. She looked pretty gross, I'll be honest. First thing we did was try to dry her off and get her to stop shivering. After that, we had our first true love connection - I offered her some canned tuna and she ate it faster than I would have. I finally found someone who shares my love of canned tuna! After her little belly pudged out with tuna and her fur dried enough to fluff out everywhere, she laid down in bed with me (lazy Saturday watching Friends in front of the electric fan) and just purred and purred and purred and cuddled and purred and cuddled and purred. She has Olympic purr powers and can, and will, squeeze herself into the smallest space to curl up and sleep. Her favorite is sleeping between my neck and the pillow so I have been falling asleep lately to the sound of her purring right up against my ear. A little like a lawn mower, but still comforting. By the time I wake up she has inevitably moved to some other awkwardly squished space (between my bent knees, in my elbow, INSIDE the pillow case up against my face, on my chest, under my chin, etc.) and I have to cuddle her for a few minutes before getting up.
First thing I do is brush my teeth and wash my face (not a full bucket bath, but still not fun) and put some water in my ancient electric kettle. This electric kettle came with my apartment, a loaner from my landlord, and is basically a metal cylinder with a lid, a little handle, and a chord that you can pull out. The chord actually doesn't go all the way in, so I have to find the perfect balance to make the little red light pop on (more like an ominous red glow that comes from inside of the cylinder). So this little guy is definitely low-tech, but gets the job done. But... the situation turned deadly last week. The handle just popped off somehow so now it's just a hot metal cylinder of boiling water with no safe contact point. Luckily, I splurged on some pot holders during my last trip to the capital and I can use both of those to hold the sides and pour the hot water. But... its deadly potential was realized when I was trying to adjust the chord to get that red light to pop on when I put my hand on the top of the metal and a GIANT shock went through my body. So now I have to boil water in an ungraspable, electrocuting metal death cylinder. These are the kind of daily struggles I have.
So while my water is boiling I get dressed. I recently finally built myself some shelves! The apartment I'm in now (again, more later) is supposed to be temporary so I don't want to spend any (annny) money on furnishing it. So, from December - last week I was sort of just living out of my suitcase. Well.. there was a giant pile of clothes and my suitcase was somewhere underneath that pile. But I decided that its time I get real and get some shelves (this decision was actually motivated not by any sort of personal growth but by the fact that my Peace Corps managers were coming to visit my apartment). So, being the resourceful PCV that I have been trained to be, I went into my front yard (which is a junk yard...later..) and evaluated my resources. I found lots of empty litro bottles (big beer bottles) and some not-tooooo-shabby wood! So I built myself some shelves - two layers! - using bottles as sort of legs and these wooden boards as the shelves! Obviously I cleaned everything really well before putting my clothes on it. So since today was Valentine's Day, I wore some red pants, a white t-shirt, and a black cardigan to cover the holes in the back of my white t-shirt (because of rough soap and hand washing, all of my clothes have holes in them - but it's still extremely sloppy to show up to school with holes in my clothes). And some bright pink and orange rubber sandals that my mom sent me - because the pink was festive and because it was raining this morning. The rubber is great because when they get muddy on my walk to school, I can just dump some water over them once I get to school. Something that constantly blows my mind is that fact that Filipinos live in not-so-clean conditions - mud, heat, dust, rain, etc. - but they always look impeccable, especially teachers. Then I come lumbering in, a foot and a half too tall for this country, covered in mud and sweat by 7:30 AM and celebrating the small victory that is my rubber shoes.
By the time I'm dressed with a thick layer of deodorant and run a brush through my hair, my water is boiling. Usually for breakfast I just have coffee and oatmeal - cheap and easy. Sometimes I'll go through the effort of making some eggs or I'll have bread with some peanutbutter. But I didn't go to the market this week and all I have in my house is coffee and oatmeal (and I finished the oatmeal this morning.. tomorrow is gonna suck). Also, I do get a morning dose of protein: ants. Ants are just omnipresent here. They are absolutely everywhere. Small, medium, large, extra-small, extra-large - my apartments got the entire line. Now - I don't really like tomatoes. And back in the States, I would always pick tomatoes out of my salads and off of my sandwiches. I would go through serious effort to get those little red bastards out of there. But.. here... I don't even bother picking the ants out of my sugar bowl. It's just.. a losing battle. If I'm particularly awake, I will make an effort to scoop the sugar around the ants but that's mostly impossible anyways. They are small, tasteless, harmless, and extra protein so - I allow them.
I usually finish breakfast by 7:00 or 7:05, giving me about 10 minutes to get my stuff together, maybe throw on some makeup, and get out of the door by 7:15. I walk to school every morning which takes a little under 15 minutes. From my apartment, I have to go down three dirt roads and are more often than not just mud rivers. It actually should probably only take 8 minutes to get to school, but navigating these mud roads are always a little interesting. Once I get to the paved road, it's just a straight shot to the side gate of my school. The highlight of leaving my apartment and coming home are the kids who living in the neighbouring houses. Whenever I walk down the street they run out of their house to say hi to me and give me a high five. They are super cute. And! They have puppies! Fat little puppies – sho cute.
Today actually I was a little late for school. I had to make a visual aid for an activity in my class today and was too tired last night. Then none of my markers were working this morning for some reason. After my struggle with some giant paper and dried out markers, I made it to school right as my class started at 7:45 (usually I make it by flag ceremony - at 7:30 - so I have a few minutes to put some of my things at my desk before going to my classroom) and went straight to my classroom.
With my schedule right now, I teach a few first year (7th grade) classes in the mornings and have afternoons off to work on my other projects. My classes have very mixed levels with an average of 50 kids. I'm working with a counterpart who is the sweetest lady - really supportive and complimentary of my teaching, but sort of uninvolved in the lesson planning. It's hard to work out a good working balance - part of the reason I am working with her classes is because she has such a huge class load, but that means that she is rarely to never around to lesson plan with me, which is what we are supposed to do. But she does come to my classes and then basically teaches my lessons, a day later. Soooo.. I'm sort of doing the lesson planning for her, which isn't ideal, but she is definitely learning from the different activities I'm doing (just more interactive than most Filipino teachers are used to) and using those in her other classes, so I think that is an achievement (hopefully sustainable!)! We just finished a big project about essay structure yesterday (I explained how the structure of an essay is like the structure of a house and had them build their own Essay Houses - a really fun project, but I can't do anything like it again soon because I had to buy supplies for them myself and I just don't have the money for that) so I basically just planned a couple of activities for Valentine's today. (Or, as they call it here, Hearts Day). We started off with a little ice breaker/energizer - I had them get in groups of 3 or 4 and see how many words they could make using the letters in HAPPY VALENTINES DAY. And I was really impressed! They are usually really motivated by competition and even the kids in the back who don't always participate had their heads together and were coming up with words. I think the winning team had 42 or 45.. not bad! After that, we did a listening exercise (with my terrible visual aid.. you could barely see the marker.. but it worked). I had them listen to a love song (My Endless Love a la Diana Ross & Lionel Richie... soooogooood) and fill in the missing lyrics. This is something I've done in language classes a few times and they love it here - this country is super musical. Their favorite part is checking the answers when I replay the song and let them sing along, as loud as they like. The hard part is that I have so few resources here and don't have the money to provide them myself - so something that is so simple and common in the States as a handout is something they don't have here. Sometimes teachers will use them and the students will all give 1 peso to one student who goes and makes the copies, but it's complicated and not everyone gets one.. and it's generally just unreliable. Also there are no projectors for Powerpoints or those clear sheets that you put on that big white/grey thing with the light and the arm kind of thing and the magnifying glass and it shows it up on the wall but upside down - what is that? Is that called a projector too? Do you know what I'm talking about? Anyways - we don't have that. So what all the teachers do is use manila paper - big paper that is a little better quality than tissue paper and they just write everything - lecture notes, tests, quizzes, assignments, activities - on these papers and hang them up on the board. There are chalk boards but most of them have big holes in them and there usually isn't enough time to write everything up during a class. This is super frustrating for me because cheating is widely accepted here and there is little you can do considering kids don’t have their own papers and there are so many students squeezed into a classroom, sitting basically on top of each other, and there is constant noise coming from outside. After the listening activity, I asked them to write a love letter - giannntt groan goes through the class - to their favorite object, not to a person! - groan turns to confused laughter?. So basically they can write a love letter to anything, just not a person. So my counterpart and I were giving some examples - Dear Fried Chicken, you are my endless love. Or Dear Spaghetti, thank you for being there for all of my birthdays and keeping my life long. (In the Philippines, you're supposed to eat long spaghetti noodles for you birthday so you'll have a long life). After we gave some examples the kids got really into it and wrote until the end of class! I gave them till Monday to finish the letter so I'm hoping for some amusing responses. Homework is really never given here, but some of the more eager kids will do work outside of the class. If I give them a few days to do something it means that the eager students will hand in something totally complete and extra decorated on fancy paper but the less-than-eager students will just turn in whatever they happened to finish during class.
After my fist class I actually had the rest of the day free - students only have English class 4 times a week and a free period instead on one of the days. So Thursdays are their free periods. So, like I always do when I have no class, I returned to my desk to lesson plan/Facebook/project plan. Lesson planning usually comes first so I can get it out of the way. My principal has asked all of the first year teachers to focus on remedial reading so every Friday they take a break from their usual lessons to do reading comprehension classes, so that's what I was planning today. I'm kind of excited for my lesson. I found a bunch of Valentine's Day traditions from other countries so I'm having them get in groups to read a short reading on their assigned country (I have England, Scotland, Korea, Romania, Brazil, Taiwan, a few more) then explain how their country is different from and the same as Filipino celebrations and explain whether or not they would like to go to their country to celebrate Valentine's Day.
That took the rest of my morning and finally it was noon! Lunch time! I have an hour for lunch, but since I have no classes in the afternoon but usually have class right before lunch (meaning I don't get out of school until 12:15) I sometimes take till 1:30 so I can go home and make lunch. Lunch is usually left overs from dinner or tuna salad or something basic. Today I actually went to meet my site-mate Dave for lunch, since we both didn’t have much going on at work. We met at our usual spot in town – a “pizza” place called Area 51. It’s a small little corner of a restaurant that is pretty much fully supported financially by our business. It has hamburgers and pizza and beer and soda and other Filipino foods. The hamburgers and pizza are decent.. only decent.. by Filipino standards. So by American standards, pretttty awful. But we’ll take what we can get! And we’ve gotten to know the owners and employees, so it’s always fun to stop by. So Dave and I had lunch together and talked about some crazy German man Dave met the other day.
After lunch, I went back to
school and did more Facebooking/work. I’ll give you more details on what I’ve
been working on in a minute!
At 5:00, I packed up my laptop and coffee thermos and set out for home. I'm usually wiped by the end of the day. Waking up at 6:15 then being at school until 5:00 just kills me. So when I get home by 5:15 I try to work out and meditate for a little bit (difficult with so much noise and dirt and distractions in my apartment, but relatively necessary for my mental health haha).
And all of the teachers are shocked by the fact that I cook my own dinner and do my own housework – because with a schedule like that, all the teachers (the vast majority of who have kids and a husband/wife) have house helpers who stay home during the day to go to the market, clean the house, and have dinner ready for them when they come home. But I do have to cook for myself, which is usually the last thing I want to do in the evening. So my dinners here are pretty simple. I generally only have time to go to the market on Sundays, so I’ll buy a weeks worth of fruit, vegetables, and fish. I’m almost completely vegetarian (pescetarian?) here because I don’t really trust myself to buy meat here and preparing/cleaning it is new to me. Fish is way easier to prepare and cook. I will eat meat sometimes if I’m eating out or at someone else’s house. But it’s just too stressful to walk through the market with meat hanging everywhere and no idea how long it’s been out there, how to prepare it, etc. So for dinner I usually have fish and vegetables, sometimes some pasta, and some fruit. (I eat like 11 mangos a day). All I have here is a two-burner gas stove and my death kettle to cook with – no oven, no microwave.
After dinner, if I’m not dead, I’ll finish any visual aids I need for the next day, take my bucket bath (BRR!), and get in bed! Usually I’ll read for a little bit or watch something on my laptop and try to fall asleep by about 10pm.
Then the next day my alarm goes off at 6:15 am and I do it all again!
Work!
The bulk of my weekly work is
obviously lesson planning and teaching my classes, which I talked about a
bit. I’m teaching the first year (most
are around 12-13 but some of my older students can be 16-17) which is actually
called the 7th grade this year, because the Philippines is switching
to a K-12 curriculum... Meaning my
students will be the first students to go through 6 years of high school
(basically like our jr. high and high school).
This is all intended to better prepare them for the work place and is
modelled after the American curriculum that is more student-centered and less
lecturing from the teacher (which sounds like a really good plan but is just SO
hard when you don’t have resources!).
Some of the big problems that schools are already starting to worry
about is classroom space and hiring more teachers. 4 years from now, when my 7th
grade students come back to school for their 5th year as 11th
graders, my school will have 5 grade levels at the school for the first
time. This means that, like schools
across the country, their super limited resources will be stretched even thinner
to accommodate so many extra students – there will be a shortage of class
space, desks, money, etc. And they also have to hire another grade-worth of
teachers, meaning less money. The
government has made promises to schools to help deal with the space and
resource issue but every principal I’ve talked to about this has been very
pessimistic on the government following through on any of these promises. So – you can see that the Department of
Education has a lot to figure out in the next few years. Buuuuut they are already screwing things up
pretty badly, even in the first year of the program. The K-12 is supposed to be an entirely new
curriculum but.... they haven’t published that curriculum. In the past, teachers have been given
explicit objectives for each lesson and even sample lesson plans but these
haven’t been published for the 3rd and 4th quarter of the
new 7th grade curriculum. So basically teachers have no idea what
they are supposed to be teaching. And the NAT (National Achievement Test – a
standardized test students take at the end of the school year) is supposed to
be based on this curriculum – and school rankings and how much money they
receive is based on the results of this test – but with no curriculum, teachers
don’t know what will be on the test. So
I started teaching my classes at the beginning of the 4th quarter
and all my counterpart teacher could tell me that this quarter will be spent
learning about essays. Just.. essays. I had no idea what experience they had
with essays, what exactly they were to learn, were they to write an essay? Read
essays? All of this? So basically I’ve just been planning lessons (as well as
all 7th grade teachers around the country) around the extremely
broad guideline of “essay”. I've heard
that the reason the curriculum isn't released is because DepEd ran into some
last minute copyright issues. So hopefully by next year the curriculum will be
out - but, looking at the old curriculum, it will still definitely need some
work.
Other than teaching, I am planning my secondary projects - which are basically any projects that will help my school/teachers/students/community. The one I'm working on the most right now, and one that I'm really excited about, is going to be a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp. It's a girls empowerment and leadership camp that will take place at my school in May. Other female PCVs, all my really good friends, are all helping with the planning and facilitating of the camp and we're working with teachers at my school. I also have a few things in the works for next year - a peer tutoring program, a high school 101 program for first years (sort of intro to high school life, study tips, anti-bullying, anti-drugs, so.. anti-fun! Am I right?!), and an English film and conversation club! Just to name a few. So when I'm at school but have no class my time is spent making proposals and budgets and schedules and collecting resources for all of these projects. I'm also pumped because Ashley, Dave and I came up with the idea of visiting the island barangays around Sagay and doing weekend workshops on Environmental Leadership. We're at the very, very beginning of the planning stages but we're going to coordinate with the schools and barangay captains on the islands and see what we can do! Everything is in the planning stages but I'm really excited about all of the projects - though I know to be realistic about the probability of some failed projects.
Also stay tuned because I might be bugging you guys for some donations or input on projects :)
Social Life?!
So, I have somewhat of a
social life here! As I've said before, I have been incredibly lucky to be
placed with two awesome, awesome site mates. Ashley, Dave and I hang out at
least once or twice a week. Now that we all
live in our own places we can hang out there or one of our favorite things is
going to the city plaza and having some beer and bbq or popcorn. It's super
chill and after a full week of work we need to unload and laugh until we're
slightly delirious - we usually have a beer or two lang (only), but always end
up a little hysterical and drunk on English conversation. I've also managed to make a few local
friends! They are great and sometime join Ashley, Dave and I for drinks or I'll
join them. It's great for language practice and integration. There is also a
really cool Japanese volunteer here who we hang out with from time to time! He
actually lives right across the way from me - across the field of fighting
cock. And that is a good introduction tooooo...
My apartment!
At the end of December, after
three months at site, I moved out of the host family nest and out on my own! It
was a little bit complicated when it all went down.. So for a few weeks I was
house hunting, which is very difficult here because everything is via word of
mouth and who I know on top of the fact that it is quite unusual for a single
female to live on her own, so most of the options were houses for family. With the amazing, immense help of my
co-teacher we walked around the barangay for hours, multiple nights, and
finally found something perfect! I found a small, one bedroom house that is
close to where my host family was - right next to the market mall and a 10
minute walk to school - that is fully furnished! The owners are an older couple
who now live in Canada and since they usually don't rent the house, the rent is
pretty low for such a nice place. I met
with the niece of the owners and was working through the details with her. Before making any moves, all PCVs have to
have their houses approved by a Peace Corps manager. The night before my lease
with my host family ended and the day my PC manager was coming to visit I went
to check in with the niece and confirm our visit the next day..... only to find
out.. that the owners of the house actually decided to spend the spring here in
Sagay and the house won't be available until April. So, after a solid month of
searching and finding the perfect place, I was left with nothing. Luckily, my PC manager is a champ and helped
me do a double check of the whole barangay and found an open apartment! So, as
it was my only real option, I took it!
It's not ideal, but its ideally temporary. The apartment is sort of on the other side of town from my host family but still only about 15 minutes from school, like I said. So after going down the dirt roads, my apartment is in the same building as 3 other apartments that share a gate. Once in the gate, there is kind of a big pile of junk.. like a junk yard. In the other apartments there are two little families who are very sweet and, in the apartment right next to mine, there were some younger girls working as sales girls for a publishing company. Those girls recently moved out and back to the capital, which is a shame, so we'll see who my new neighbours will be! The apartment is a one bedroom with a little living room/kitchen space and a bathroom. It really isn't that bad, relatively big for a one bedroom, but the only serious problem is the floors. They aren't finished so they are sort of like a dirty, clay floor that has red dust that gets on EVERRRYTHING. Plus with the junk yard in the front, I have issues with a little new mouse roommate and bugs. Actually yesterday I saw the rat KING climb out of the biggest pile of junk. He was the size of a regular house cat. It was terrifying. I'm hoping he is happy and healthy in the junk pile and never tries to move in to my place. The landlord let me borrow all the furniture so, like I said, I don't have to spend money on the temporary place, and it has gotten pretty homey.
The plan was to move to the
perfect place in April but I just found out that the owners are actually
staying until July and they have a few other stipulations that I might not be
able to work around - namely the fact that the house helper, who stays there while
they are abroad, would want to stay on working and living at the house. I'm hoping to maybe work out a deal with the
owners because this house is seriously perfect. If I can work it out, I might
might be able to stick it out in my current place or I could start looking for
another temporary place. It really is just so hard to house hunt here so I have
to think it through.
Vacayz & Holidayz
Now I know I've bored you with
all my monotony, but to break up the day to day tedium of the biggest adventure
of my life I do have a handful of excursions and white sand, blue water
exploits.
I'll try to work
chronologically..
All the way back at the end of
the November I went with a group of volunteers to a mountain resort about 45
minutes from the capital to celebrate our friend's birthday. The place is called Mambukal and is known for
hot springs, giant bats, and waterfall hikes.
We only spent two days and one night there but it was so cool! We
watched the giant bats, which look like eagles or something, fly around the
trees and hang upside down. Then we went
for a hike to the seven waterfalls - as you go higher, the hike gets a little
more treacherous and the waterfalls a little more badass. That took up the whole afternoon and was so
fun with the whole group. Afterwards, I jumped in the pool with a few of my
friends and we all took turn playing our favorite pool games from when we were
kids (mine was obviously handstand competitions). Then we had dinner and finished the night
sitting around in the hot springs and talking under the stars. It was perfect! The weekend was short but I
could definitely spend a lot more time there and I'm sure I'll be going back a
few times.
After that we had Christmas, which was a strange affair, but not all-together unmerry. Christmas here actually starts around September, but the very beginning of December is when things go in full swing. I was pretty involved in all the city plans because, somehow, I was recruited to be the "mascot" for my school during the Christmas parade. I ended up having to dress up as an angel with GIANT angel wings and dance on stage in the plaza and walk around to take pictures. Everyone was fascinated by me and I realized what it felt like to be one of those characters walking around Disney. On my out of character nights, I usually went with Ashley and Dave and some of our local friends to the plaza to watch the program and lounge around with some mango smoothie, beer, and popcorn. Each night was hosted by a different group, including my high school, other schools, certain barangays, etc. and generally consisted of dance and song numbers and were usually hosted by one or two charismatic characters with a decent grasp of some rehearsed English lines. On the night of Ashley's work's program, those charismatic characters were us. Ashley, Dave and I were asked to host the program so we got all dolled up in Christmas-y clothes and had our makeup done while frantically memorizing some key Illonggo phrases and going over some potential banter we could have. It was definitely an experience. Now.. I've had the most stage experience out of the three of us but this was something totally different. Filipinos loove to watch shows and get really into stuff.. but they are the weirdest audience I've ever seen. They rarely clap, which is really unsettling, and often talk through presentations or programs - but they still love them. So the three of us had to get up between each act and introduce the next act and have a little banter - all to crickets. We talked about Christmas, about Manny Pacquiao, about Miss Universe coming down to USA and Philippines.. and it was just crickets. It was pretty awkward. But afterwards we were assured that we did really well! So as long as Ashley's work was happy, we were happy.
Christmas Day here isn't as big of a deal as Christmas Eve, or Buena Noche. For the 24th I went to a friend's house and had lots of food and drinks and talking (mostly me listening and smiling) late into the night. The next morning was really relaxed with most people recovering from the night before. It was nice to be around a family but I think the fact that it was so different from Christmas at home made it easier to deal with. I kept having to remind myself that it was Christmas even though I was sweating and eating sweet spaghetti. So overall it was an okay Christmas!
The next big event was New Years! So. Much. Fun! I had been making plans with a bunch of fellow volunteers and we ended up getting a group of 20 to all meet in Dumaguete, the capital in the south of my island, and go on a snorkel trip to two small neighbouring islands, Siquijor and Apo Island. We all met in Dumaguete for a few days and for New Years Eve. We stayed in a cool hostel there and spent the days exploring the city and going to the beach and the nights on the hostel's rooftop drinking and catching up, since most of us hadn't seen each other since September. On New Years Eve we were all together for a big party on the rooftop and celebrated at midnight with fireworks going off literally all around us in the city - like a constant stream of fireworks in every direction for 30 minutes. It was amazing. The next morning we rallied early, got our stuff together, and piled in a van to the beach to set out for our snorkel/dive trip! The hostel where we stayed, owned by a guy we're now friends with and cuts us sweet deals, was taking us out on their big boat where we would spend three days and two nights. We basically went around the two islands stopping at the good dive spots and it was unreal. These places are known as some of the best dive places in the world! We saw so many fish, star fish, coral, sea snakes, and - everyone's favorite - sea turtles!! It was a blast. At night, we just slept on the deck of the boat which was definitely an experience. You could see every single star and the moon was huge and felt like it was so close. I spent the night lying next to my friend Laura talking about the universe and existing in different dimensions... stereotypical star gazing discussions. The coolest part was being called over to the edge by Allie and Daniel to look at the phosphorescents, the glow-in-the-dark bacteria in the water. We had this amazing sky above us then these flickering little lights in the dark blue water.. I can't even describe the feeling. But... from there the night wasn't so magical. We were all super sun burnt from the day so sleeping on the deck was painful while the wind was really strong and ended up being surprisingly cold. We basically we are all sleeping in piles of whatever clothes/towels we could gather up but most of these were blown off every 30 minutes. So the sleep wasn't very good but the experience was totally worth it. The next night, we all stayed up late playing games and talking and singing and playing guitar with some rum. A few people had to get back to the airport early so we caught a few hours (maybe 2 tops) of uncomfortable, wet (we had a quick but torrential downpour followed by some heavy waves and absolutely, positively everything on the boat was soaked - only plus side was that Allie and I managed to stand on the deck of the boat with some soap and shampoo and get in our only shower of the trip - in the rain) sleep before leaving for the mainland at 5am. We all got up at the sound of the engine flipping on but hoped to sleep a little more since it would be an hour until we returned to Dumaguete... but the waves had returned. It was the saddest sight I have ever seen. We were all sitting on the boat huddled together under soaking blankets and sheets and towels just trying to keep the spray out of our eyes. The boat was slamming into every wave so we were all sunburnt, freezing, and trying to keep down all the rum from the night before. By the time we reached the shore we were all pretty grumpy and just thankful to be able to go back to the hostel for a shower and some fresh clothes. After that, we all said our goodbyes and went back to our respective sites!
My next trip was a much needed trip to visit my family! My family from training, that is. It was time for Subic's annual, week-long fiesta so Allie, Daniel, and I all met in Manila and made our way to Subic. It was perfect - time with Allie and Daniel, visiting everyone from training again, some fun fiesta activities, and, most of all, plenty of time with my family. It was so nice to be back with the kids and my big sisters. My one sister was about to burst with her third child - who was born a few days ago! So I now have a new niece that I have to get back to visit. It was so great to see my mom and my dad again and have some of my mom's delicious cooking. It wasn't a super eventful trip but was definitely one of my favorites so far.
Since Subic, I've stuck to my island but had a few little trips. I've made a few day trips to the capital with Dave and Ashley but those are usually just to spend the day in the mall stocking up on things we can't find in Sagay. I also had a really fun weekend in Cadiz, the biggest town next to us (only about a 20 minute bus ride), for their fiesta. Two of my good friends at assigned in Cadiz so they hosted a handful of us, including friends from the south of my island, Allie, Michelle, and Chris. Before going to Cadiz, those three spent a day in Sagay going island hopping - lots of fun snorkeling and boating and touring mangroves! In Cadiz, we spent Saturday night walking around and having some drinks, catching up, listening to the live band, but the highlight of the festival was on Sunday. On Sunday, the streets are filled with vendors selling little cups of paint for 5 pesos that strangers will use to cover each other in paint. Being white people, we were definitely targets during the whole thing. The streets were packed and hands would come out of nowhere to smear paint on my face, my arms, my legs, and more awkward places. We were all a little hesitant at first but soon were buying our own paint and giving back as good as we were getting it. After a while we all reconvened for some lunch and a cold beer - since baking under the hot sun with your body covered in questionably-non-toxic paint can be exhausting.
I have a few exciting things coming up - next week I'll be in the capital all week for Language Camp - five straight days of language training sponsored by Peace Corps. I've gotten a little comfortable in the limited Ilonggo I've learned. I have enough to get around so I've sort of lost of my drive to study, on top of all the other work I'm doing. But I'm hoping this week is the kick in the ass that I need to get back to site and really try to practice my language and find a tutor.
After language camp the mo0o0o0o0o0o0ossst exciting thing is happening - JACK IS COMING TO VISIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Jack - one of my best friends from McGill)!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is coming in on the 5th and staying for about 10 days. I can't travel much because of school but there is plenty to do in Sagay and nearby - I'm thinking we will go to that mountain resort and maybe all the way down to Dumaguete. We'll see!!!
After that, I only have a few
more weeks of school until Holy Week and summer vacation.
For Holy Week I'm going with a group of friends to the north! To Baguio city, which is supposed to be very, very cool. I hear rumours of pine trees and cold temperatures - a whole different world!
For Holy Week I'm going with a group of friends to the north! To Baguio city, which is supposed to be very, very cool. I hear rumours of pine trees and cold temperatures - a whole different world!
I've also had some questions about care packages and my address - again, my address is posted in the other tab "Contact Information" if you just look at the top of my blog ^^ I'm also going to add a tab with care package requests if you ever want to check that out!
I'm sorry for the break in blogs and I hope this one was satisfying without being too overwhelming. Like ordering a Chipotle burrito bowl instead of a regular burrito. Mmmmmm I want Chipotle.
<3 Hillary
P.S. Sorry about the lack of pictures in this one, but my internet is particularly slow/patchy today. I might try to add some later or you can always find them on Facebook!
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. - John Wooden
