Masskara!

This weekend was Bacolod's big festival, Masskara. It happens every year, and involves lots of festival-type things like booths selling cheap crap, food vendors, bands, drinking, and lots of trash. The main events are dance competitions between local groups. All of them have elaborate masks (masskara...) and cool costumes. I went to masskara with 12 other Peace Corps Volunteers, which caused quite a spectacle at times. Ian is 7 feet tall. But we had a lot of fun and did lots of stuff. We watched the street dance competition on Saturday. There were a lot of interesting dances and costumes, but it's hot, and every team dances to the same song, so after about 40 minutes, you've seen enough.

We went to a local bar one night, and there was local artist doing free sketches, so anna sat for one. That was really cool. We also went out for pizza, (just 6 of us) and ordered a giant pizza. You can see it is huge. We almost finished it, too.

There were lots of carnival games we tried out. Here's Erin playing some kind of game where you bet on a color. I think she's more excited than the kids. Me, Anna, and Erin all tried the shooting gallery. I was proud when i shot a plastic indian and got a piece of candy until Erin shot nine plastic indians and got nine pieces of candy. That's a stupid game anyway.

We also did videoke and went shopping and ate good food. It was a very fun weekend, and it was great to see my Peace Corps friends that I don't get to see very often.

United Nations Week

Well, we have a school program every couple of weeks here at Cadiz West II Elementary. It's excessive. But some schools have a program every week. Every week has a theme, set by the national Department of Education, and some weeks, the different grades put on dances and songs to honor the theme. This week was UN week. It was a pretty cute program. Here we have the 2nd graders doing 'New York, New York', and the 6th grade boys doing a Chinese Dragon Dance. There was also representatives from Australia, India, Philippines, and Brazil. Seeing a cute little Filipina dressed up in Red, White, and Blue and waving an American flag was just too cute.

Life at Cadiz West II Elementary

We had our District Competetion last week, which is like a field day competetion among 11 schools, with cultural events too. My favorite is the native game Sipaktakraw (not sure of the spelling). Here's some pics of that. It's basically a bamboo ball, there are three kids on each side, and they try to volley back and forth using their heads and the inside of their feet, like hacky sack. Apparently it is really exciting to watch when the players are good at it. My students were lucky to get it over the net twice in succession. It was still cool to see a brand new game like that.

They also had foot races, soccer, and native dance. It was a good day.

Another thing our school is doing is being in a school-beautification competetion. This is getting silly. The kids spend hours every day, doing things like painting the rocks and trash cans, and sweeping the dirt. Many many new things have been put in the school yard. Here are some pictures of the Math Garden. There are cement fractions, and a cement slice of pizza to represent fractions. Cement math symbols, too. I don't understand it all, really. We've also gotten about 10 new murals painted, and they are absolutely beautiful. They're doing a big solid waste management program as well, which is pretty beneficial and important. But painting rocks? I just don't get it.