Leaving our host families

It’s time to say goodbye to my host family, as well as the hub staff here and all the other trainees. My host mother, Mommy Ann, took me and the girls (Sam and Bam) and their mom out to dinner on Thursday. We went to Afrique’s, which is an Italian restaurant, Filipino style. It is in a really cool old Spanish house in Iloilo. It was delicious. If anyone ever comes visit me, we will go there. It was a really cool place. Mommy Ann told the girls the house might be haunted, so they made me come to the bathroom with them and stand outside the door in case there were any ghosts. It was pretty cute, and whichever one was in the bathroom, the other one stood outside the door making spooky noises.

After dinner we went shopping, and the girls and I had a fun time looking at stuff, and buying ice cream and candy.

I left Lambuyao on Saturday morning with all my stuff. Everyone else is coming back after swearing in to get their stuff, but I will be going directly to Cadiz City, and had to haul it all with me now. My family, Erin’s family, Allan’s family, and Anna’s family rented a jeepney to take us and our junk to SEAFDEC, where we had a thank you party for the host families. We played games and ate a good lunch, and gave appreciation speeches. I gave my family two framed pictures of us, and some Denver souvenirs I still had. They gave me some cool beaded flip-flops, which I need because the rocky dirt road in Lambuyao has torn up my other pair. Probably the 2km community cleanup helped destroy them.

The host families left after lunch, and we made plans for me to come back the first weekend in August, which is my birthday and Sam’s birthday. It was nice living with them, they were a good host family. I’m worried about my new host family, because they seem a lot more formal and also they don’t have little kids to hang out with.

In the evening we had our own going away party at the hub site. We gave gifts to our staff, had a slide show, played some games, and did awards. I got the award ‘most acclimated.’ I got it as a joke, because nobody complains as much as I do about the heat, and about going swimming in the ocean. Most of the awards were funny. We did an activity where we put a piece of paper on everyone’s backs and went around writing nice things about them so that later, when you’re feeling depressed, you can read happy things from your friends. I was still in a bad mood about my final evaluation, so I read mine right away.

Our Community Activity

Wednesday the 24^th was our community activity. I wasn’t too confident about this working out. Nobody from the community helped us organize people to help paint the mural or gave us much support. At the last minute we added a community cleanup to the agenda, and the Barangay Captain liked that and got about 30 youth to commit to cleaning. Our little Peace Corps group thought we would clean the area around the livelihood center, where we would be painting the mural. However, 7:30 Wednesday morning, the Captain told us he wants us to lead the kids on a trash pick-up the entire length of the barangay road. It’s about 2.5 kilometers, which I don’t know how far it is in miles, but maybe about 1½ miles. Well, we had to stay positive and act excited, so we split in to groups and started picking up trash. The kids were doing alright, I wouldn’t say they were having fun, but they weren’t miserable. Of course it was hot, and by about 9 they were hungry and tired and so was I. We had bought snacks and I decided to turn our group around and get snack and start back where we left off after snack. But once we turned around the Captain told us to turn back and keep going, and he would bring snack to a place way up the road. Lots of grumbles from the kids, but here, you do what the Captain says you do. So we kept going. It was great when we finally got our snack. From that point we were only 100 yards or so from the end of the road, so after snack we quickly finished the trash clean up, and all the kids went home for a break about 10:00.
Everyone met back at the livelihood center at 1pm to work on the mural. That’s when our Community Development Coordinator, Che, showed up to see how our project was going. It took until 2 o’clock to get the outline drawn on the wall and start painting. We wanted the kids to participate in the painting, but the captain wanted only older kids to work on it, so it would look nice when it was done. We started painting, had snack, and kept painting. The mural turned out really nicely, and we were done by about 4pm. We were all exhausted, and I went home and took a nap!

Pictures and Stories

Okay. Here are some long overdue pictures and the stories to go with them. First we have me and my host sister, Sam. Someone came up with the 'sign' for Western Visayas, look carefully, it's a WV. So I taught it to Sam, and this is us being hardcore throwing down the WV sign.

The other day, we got roped into helping do a papaya tree planting along our road. We were all very tired, because we stayed up too late the night before, but we had to go out and show the community we supported their project - so that they would support ours. Here is Erin and I in full papaya-planting glory. Pok is in the background, sticking out his tongue.


This is the Philipino trike I have mentioned before. This one only has 11 people on it, not including the driver. You can fit more if you try. There are two girls sitting behind the driver, 4 in the sidecar, 3 kids on the roof, and a couple people hanging off the far side. Don't worry, I'm not allowed on the roof or the side. But I do sit behind the driver sometimes.

Here is me after a short day of working not very hard at Alvin's farm in Mia-gao. Sleeping on a shelf in a nipa hut, while it is gently raining outside is a most wonderful experience. It's just awesome. And extremely comfortable, despite appearances.

And finally, we have the outside of my new school, Cadiz West II elementary. There are actually many building on the campus, but this is the one with the sign. I think it houses the nurses office and the guidance office.

Typhoon!

Well everyone, I made it through my first typhoon! At first it wasn't scary, just like a big thunderstorm. We still went to class, but walking to class in a typhoon makes you very wet. We had a brownout, and the power was out for about 28 hours. When we were at class, our hub manager Sheila showed up in the LandCruiser and said that our site, Lambuyao, was flooding and they were going to evacuate us to our hub site, SEAFDEC, for the night. We all went home and got our overnight stuff and they drove us to seafdec in the land cruiser.

the drive was kind of scary. The wind was blowing and the rain was pounding down, but mostly it was scary at how quickly everything was flooded. And the people everywhere whose homes were flooded out and had nowhere to go. Transportation was really difficult, you couldn't get anywhere without a private car.

The evacuation was fun, though. It was me and Erin and Allan, and our teacher Anna, along with Sheila, Lynn, and Kevin who stay at the hub site. Kevin is the current PCV who has been in charge of our hub sessions. We all had dinner in the cafeteria, and then went to the guest house. We watched The Terminal and played hearts and went to bed. The next morning, it was still raining, and we had breakfast and an hour of language class. Back at the guest house, we baked oatmeal raisin cookies with Sheila and watched Ice Age 2. It was the best evacuation ever.

They took us back to our houses about 3pm on saturday. The brownout was still going on, but the power came back on a few hours later. It continuted raining until about 10am on Sunday, and things are starting to dry out. The rain was really nice for me, because for 2 days, I didn't sweat! Hooray! I even got to wear my sweatshirt at night, although it wasn't really that cold. I don't think I would like it to rain all the time though, things need a chance to dry! It's also difficult because brownouts happen all the time when it rains, and transportation comes to a standstill. My first typhoon was pretty cool, and the kids all had a great time playing in the rain, just like we would at home when there's a big thunderstorm.

Wansapanataym

The title of this post is the title of a movie showing on Filipino TV next week. If it looks like a rediculously long word in a strange language, try saying it out loud. slowly. Did you get it? Yep, this country is silly.

When the Rooster Crows At the Break of Dawn...

You know you're in the Philippines. I now have a rooster living 10 feet from my window. They crow whenever they feel like it, really. But mine likes to start at 5am, and continue ever 20 seconds - 2 minutes until around 8. They tell me I'll learn to sleep through it, but right now, I just hate roosters. However, I still hate the heat more, and either way, these pictures have nothing to do with either of those things.

Our town, Oton, had a festival last week, and there were 6 different 'tribes' competing in dancing competitions. It's not as ethnic or traditional as it sounds, as you can see, they wear t-shirts and jeans, and the dances are choreographed drama/dance routines. Our Lambuyao group (Me, Erin, Allan, and our teacher Anna) attended the opening ceremonies to cheer against the Tagbac group (Tim, Ross, Anna, and teacher Alvin). The street dancing competetion is the only thing we were able to watch. These pictures are of our tribe doing their dance. Yep, that kid is upside down on two bamboo ladders above a street. It was part of the dance. They do things big here. Then there's the 8 of us in our shirts, just after the opening festivities.