Toad Wrangler

So as usual, it's been unbearably hot here lately. Yesterday there was some cloud cover, and around 3pm, the storm broke. Hooray!! I like rainstorms, everything gets cooled down, and you feel safe inside your little concrete house while you watch the trees and bushes get whipped around in the wind outside. It was a pretty good storm. The power went out about 4pm. That doesn't mean it was really that intense of a storm, the power goes out over any little thing here. So I lit candles and got my flashlight and did some reading and crossword puzzles.

Night fell, and the power was still off. I heard a high pitched chirp from inside the room and I knew there was a rat inside. I had left my door open to get a breeze through, because it was still quite hot inside, even though it was a typhoon outside. But I have a screen door. Some of you might have seen pictures of the ineffective screen door, if not i think there is a picture on the website. Anyway, i shone the flashlight around to try and catch the rat, and sitting there in my living room was a BIG FAT TOAD. It was huge. I probably could only lift it with both hands, seriously. I was shining the light on it when i saw the rat dash out under the screen door, which must be how the big fat toad also got in. okay, at least the rat was out. Then that toad started hopping towards me. Then it hopped around in the kitchen awhile. Then it hopped back over towards the door. But the screen door was still closed, and I wasn't sure the toad was smart enough to get back out. I was just thinking about sneaking over there and opening the door for it, when I spotted another toad, wriggling its way into the house under the screen door. What! The two toads were now inside the house, and then i saw the rat sneak back in too. I think this is a different rat than the one that usually is in my house, he looked smaller. and he had a really pointy noise.

Anyway, the toads were hopping around, croaking, and couldn't figure out how to get out. I didn't want them hopping on me, so I climbed over all the furniture, and propped the door open for them. But the stupid toads were not hopping towards the door anymore. So I found a stick and herded them out from under the table and out the door. They respond pretty well to being poked in the side, but sometimes they hop in the direction you're poking them instead of away! Crazy toads. I pulled the outside door shut! No more toads in the house! But I knew that rat was still in there. He left eventually. Then came back. I tried to stuff the rat hole with plastic bags but he still got in.

Haircut!

I'm almost always complaining about the heat, and saying my hair is too long. So this time, since we had nothing else to do, I let Ben cut my hair. I think he may have a future in hair, just in case business school doesn't work out. What do you think?

Tudlo!

The past two weeks I have been at an intense English Language Camp. I was one of 6 Peace Corps facilitators teaching 4 classes a day of English activities. The program is called Tudlo Mindanao, which means Teach Mindanao. Mindanao is the southernmost area of the Philippines, and because of terrorist activity, volunteers aren't allowed there. So they bring us to Cebu, to meet with about 130 Mindanao teachers. We each had a counterpart teacher from Mindanao, too. My counterpart was Yvonne, and we had a great time. We taught sessions everyday on games, role plays, reading comprehension, and lots of speaking activities.

It was a good learning experience for me. It wasn't exactly tons of fun, mostly because we were working a lot harder than I have worked in a year. We also got bored because each session we had to teach 6 times.

In the middle of the two weeks, one of the participants went to the hospital, and a few hours later, passed away. This naturally caused numerous problems around the camp, including quite a bit of friction among the facilitators. It was a difficult week.

Some of the teachers were really fun. We had 'social time' after classes, and one lady was really into putting together this big jigsaw puzzle we had. The two of us worked on that for a few days, but she worked on it almost non-stop. Everytime I looked over, she was working on it.

We had a homeroom session everyday, and so Yvonne and I got to know some participants particularly well. Here's a picture of me with Aida and Albert, two of my homeroom people, who I really liked. In the background is our class flag and our 'Star Team' logo. Our room voted to be called Star Team.