Hot Times in Victoria

From last Sunday to Friday, Scott Farver and I went to Victoria, Laguna, about 2 hours from Manila, to help facilitate a teacher's workshop with Keith Solle, another education volunteer from our batch. For four days we did various sessions with the teachers from Keith's school district. I taught some sessions on grammar games, and student-centered learning, and other fascinating topics. It was really hot, but it is summer, after all. Here are some pictures from the week. Scott is the guy on the left in the blue shirt and Keith is on the right. The teachers call him Kuya Keith which means 'big brother keith'. We have a shot of Kuya Keith doing an energizer game with Filipina teachers who are all a foot shorter than him. There are some teachers working on grammar dominoes in my grammar games session. And then we have a picture of none other than Albert Einstein, 1905-1915, which is painted on the wall of the classroom we were teaching in. We knew he was a genius, but discovering the theory of relativity before he was 10 is truly amazing.

It was a really good experience for me, because I'm not a very confident teacher trainer, and this was good practice for me. I also got a lot of good materials from Keith and Scott and we had fun.

Holy Week in Sipalay

This weekend, for holy week, (Wednesday to Saturday) I went to Sipalay, a town about 6 hours south of me, with some friends. Tim and Ben are the other two volunteers in my province, and NC and Renee are two of our friends from Bacolod. We all rented a beach cabin on a white sand beach in a strip of beach resorts. We ate very well, we played in the ocean, we spent a lot of time napping and laying around reading. It was great fun. The only major down point was when we went snorkeling. We went out on the choppy ocean in a tiny boat and the boys went snorkeling. Renee and I stayed in the boat because the water was very strong. It was incredibly windy and then NC stepped on a sea urchin. We went back to our resort, but we couldn't do anything like take him to a doctor. He soaked it in vinegar and didn't complain too much about the pain. We finished our vacation, and when he got home he went to the doctor who just gave him some antibiotics. He's alright now. Besides reading and swimming, we played ping-pong, checkers, jenga, cards. We didn't get too sunburned, and we almost got enough sleep. It was a very relaxing holiday.

I went swimming

On Friday, I went swimming! In the ocean! It was okay. I tried Ben's snorkel and saw a blue fish, and a tree stump underwater and lots of algea, and a sea urchin. It was a really hot day, so swimming was nice. When we left, we saw three boys tumbling in a pile of coconut husks which was soft and springy. We stopped to play and watch them. They even did back flips off a 7 foot high tree stump!