Not just a cultural difference...

"Unlike the rain in America, the rain here will give you a head cold if it's gets on your head. That's why we always carry umbrellas, and the Amerians always roam around letting the rain get on their heads!"

This is one of the explanations I was recently given after being scolded for being in the (barely sprinkling!) rain without an umbrella.

library club and great quote

The library club is going okay. I thought I had a good counterpart for that, Mrs. Abong asked if she could help because she loves the library and would love to be part of the library club. Great! She decided we should have library club meetings on Fridays after school, and I couldn’t convince her to change the day. But she never comes to the meetings! Last week’s meeting I had to start on my own and conducted it by myself for about 20 minutes. It was fine, but probably would have gone smoother with someone there who speaks Ilonggo better than me. Well by the time my other counterpart showed up, everything was going great, and I had the kids split into three groups making posters of the rules to put up in the library. The teacher comes in and starts yelling at the kids (this is not unusual. The teachers yell a lot.) and tells them that for next week’s meeting, they need to bring in labels for the shelves, and telling them to hurry up with the posters, etc. After she left, the kids asked me what they were supposed to bring to label the shelves, and of course I had no idea, and no intention of labeling shelves yet. So I told them not to worry about it.

Also, this quote is posted on the wall of one the classrooms: “Don’t let the school stand on the day of your education.” Something tells me the teacher misread and clearly didn’t understand the original quote.

Here are two pictures of two little boys who came in and enjoyed the library, and actually were using it to look at books instead of at me.

Hair

Here is Ryan, my older host brother. He said to call him 'Kuya' which means older brother. He calls me 'sis'. But I just call him Ryan. He shaved his haid the next day after I took this picture, he said his mom and his aunt ganged up on him and made him cut it. HMM sound like anyone we know?

Tuesday, in the park, and it was the 4th of July

As chance would have it, July 4th was Cadiz City Charter Day, which meant big holiday with no school, and lots of activities. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as fun as our Independence Day and probably a lot hotter.

First thing, at 8am, me and my co-teachers, along with most of the local civic groups met in the park for an outdoor mass and the unveiling of the new Rizal statue. Rizal is the national hero of the Philippines. They set off firecrackers and released some doves at the unveiling, so I pretended they were big fireworks. They smelled like it! After that, we went across the street to hear the dedication of the new school building for Cadiz East II elementary. They are very creative in naming their schools here. The new building is super nice, I wish we had one. Finally about 10:30, we went home.

The worst part of the day was the afternoon parade. Parades here are, in my opinion, masochistic and pointless. I have now walked in two of them. Ours was held at 1:30pm, and it was even hotter than usual, with the barometer falling. It was oppressive. I don't know why anyone bothers to watch these parades. The only things worth seeing in ours was the high school marching band and the white girl walking with the teachers. Everything else in the parade is just different groups walking togeter, carrying their banners. No floats, buskers, bands, anything like that. We walked forever, and then the teachers decided to take a shortcut back to the park, so we didn't actually do the whole parade route, which was fine by me.

After the parade, we went to a fellow teacher's house for her daughter's birthday, which just happened to be that day. All I will say about the party is that it was not fun and the delicious looking cake was not eaten, it was just displayed then put away. I can tell you about Filipino birthday parties some other time.

Finally we went home. But the day wasn't over. About 9pm I went with my host brother, Elvin, and his friends to the 'disco'. They are also big on discos here, but I really don't get them. Usually discos are a big sound system and a DJ set up on a basketball court and it generally resembles a middle school dance. This time was much bigger, since it was the whole city, and they actually had a live band, which was cool. But we just stood there in the city gym (outdoors...but with a roof) and watched the band play covers of American pop music and popular Pinoy (Filipino) songs. When the second band came out, Elvin's friends ran into another friend, who took us 'backstage'. Remember this is the city gym. We slipped through a gap in the fence surrounding the stage, and then we were about 10 feet from the band. We had an okay time listening to the music and dancing a little. I went home way too late, and had to teach a class at 8am. But i didn't mind. They say making friends is the most important thing a PCV in the Philippines can do.

Uniforms

Charter Day here in Cadiz saw everyone get decked out in their uniforms. And everyone seems to have a uniform.

We have my host father, who is somebody important in the Knights of Columbus organization. I'm not sure what that is, but I think it's some kind of civic service group.

Then there's my principal, Sir Boy, in his Boy Scout Uniform. He's a pack leader or something.
We have a group of girl scouts in matching uniforms, and the high school marching band.

And last is my co-teachers. They have different uniforms for every day of the week. Almost all teachers and government employees have uniforms. They offered to get me some, but I said no thanks.

Festival

Okay my city has been gearing up for our charter day festival for almost a month. Here are some of the things that have sprung up around town. Along my street, people came and set up booths filled with crap to buy. Most of the crap is really crap, like stuff you'd buy at the dollar store. A lot of it is clothing. Here is my host mother bargaining down the price of a pair of pants for me.

Another type of booth set up is called ukay-ukay, and this is found all over the Philippines. It is second hand clothing that sells for really cheap. The problem is, I've heard, that the clothing comes from the U.S., Japan, and other places as relief goods for very poor people. But somehow it ends up in the hands of vendors. It's still really cheap, but I guess it's supposed to be free for some people. Well, here is a pile of ukay-ukay clothes, 10 pesos for any item. (about 19 cents).

There was a Ferris Wheel, which I went on. It was fun, but a little scary. No, I'm not scared of heights, but I am scared of rickety, acient ferris wheels in the Philippines. But I am still alive, and it didn't fall off it's axle.

The most incredible thing that came to town was the portable McDonalds. Two trucks pull up and park, and there you have a McDonalds. They only had about 5 menu items, but it was a big deal in town. I got an ice cream there one day.

Buhok = Hair in Ilonggo

This is a picture of one of the girls in first grade.

I got my first haircut in a Filipino salon! All through training I was fortunate to have a former hairstylist in my group, so I got free haircuts. The salon I went to yesterday was fine, and I never really care much about how my hair is cut as long as it's shorter. Which it is now. And the haircut cost less than $1!

Animal News

Well, some great news. The rooster is gone! I'm sure it's not gone forever, I think cock-fighting season is starting up, and maybe it's gone somewhere for training. But it doesn't wake me up at 5am anymore!

Also, I found an animal I like. Baby goats! They are so cute and so friendly. This one wanted to nuzzle the camera so much i couldn't really get a picture. Man, they are cute, maybe I'll get one someday. The problem is what to do with it when it grows up, because I don't particularly love adult goats.

Address Again

Okay, for all of you who are going to send me stuff (mom), here is, I think, the final word on how to mail me things.

If you're sending me a letter or card, send it to the PC headquarters in Manila:
PCV Laura Eley
PNB Financial Building, 6th floor bayside
Diosdado Macapagal Avenue
Pasay City, Philippines

To send me a package, send it right to my site:

Laura Eley
c/o Sir Boy Oberez
Cadiz West II Elementary School
Cabahug St.
Cadiz City, Negros Occidental
Philippines, 6121

Oh, that silly American

Here's something I'm glad no one saw me do. But I will share the story with you guys. Every morning when I get up for school, everyone else has either already left the house or is still sleeping. So I prepare my own breakfast. Yesterday I made myself oatmeal. There are two canisters on the sideboard, one i knew had sugar in it. But I opened it up, and there was no more sugar. The other canister had red sugar in it. Red sugar is pretty good, I think I like it better than white sugar. So I thought I would put red sugar on my oatmeal. I didn't put too much, because I'm always thinking about cavities, and how sugary all the food is here. Well, the oatmeal did not taste right. It tasted kind of sweet, but mostly wierd. I thought "what did I just put on my oatmeal?" I opened the canister and tried the red sugar. And found out it was iced tea. yum, iced tea oatmeal.



Okay, and here are some pictures of some kids at my school crossing the 'bridge' from one classroom to another, after heavy rains last night.

You Will Go To The Moon!

I found a book in the library today that is written for elementary school students that isn’t a textbook! It’s called “You Will Go To The Moon” copyrighted 1959. Cool, huh? If you click on the pictures they will zoom in.

More Pictures

Hey everyone. I'm almost finished with my second week as a volunteer. So far, it hasn't been too bad. It's different, being the only American here, and a little boring, especially at night. But I'm managing to stay busy and hopefully soon my big projects will start to happen. Here's some pictures of my first couple weeks. I know the pictures never line up quite right, and too bad, I don't know how to fix it. You can figure out what the pictures are of.

First, we have a bus ON a boat. I took the bus from Cebu city, onto a bus at Toledo, across to San Carlos, then up to Cadiz City. I got off the bus while it was on the boat, and sat in the boat cabin. It was a pretty cool thing.

Here is the sign they made for me for my welcome program. I had to give a speech in Ilonggo, which was terrifying, but at least I didn't really know how badly i was butchering the words. My host mom and brother 'helped' me write it. (okay, they wrote it for me.) Some of the kids did dance routines and stuff.







Here is my library. Some bookshelves with outdated encyclopedias and 30 year old basal readers. And my desk. It's quite a nice place to work, actually.

And these are two little boys that came in to the library to make faces at me and laugh one afternoon. Aren't they cute? Usually i have about 20 kids standing around staring at me after school, so lately I've started closing up early and going and chatting with other teachers instead of sitting there talking to kids in ilonggo and they don't answer me, they just stand there. Soon I'd like to start doing read-alouds after school, so they have a reason to come and stare at me and not say anything.

I hate roosters

I just wanted to remind all of you living in your cozy little urban houses in America, that roosters are stupid. I think I am starting to adjust to the one outside my window, because today at 5am, when it started crowing, instead of waking up, the noise turned into a German lady yelling at me in my dream. That's a step in the right direction. maybe.

But once again, this post is not about roosters. I think I can post some pictures now. This may not work, so if it doesn't, be patient, and maybe someday it will. This is the fun party cabin on the overnight ferry from Iloilo to Cebu for swearing in. The Farvers on the left, Anna, and Eli. Here is Erin, me, and Anna, all spiffied up for swearing in.
And this is Erin and Anna testing our makeshift 3-person bed to see if it will roll apart in the night if we thrash around a lot in our sleep. It moved a lot during their test, but when we actually slept on it, we didn't trash around nearly so much, and the beds pretty much stayed together. It was way more comfortable sleeping three across this bed than taking turns on the cot from the spanish inquisition each night.

Crazy School

Well, I'm all sworn-in as a volunteer, and I have the pictures to prove it. But it's true, I am now a real volunteer. I have moved into my new host family's house in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental and yesterday was the first day of school. Some crazy things about school here:

The first day, (and hopefully this will change) the parents of the first graders stood outside the classroom all day. Students would just get up and go outside to talk to mom or mom would come in and give them a snack. Nobody really seemed to mind.

People can walk around selling things. They even come in the classrooms while class is going on. I got offered quite a lot of pearl necklaces. The snack selling people are okay, they aren't too pushy, and I might actually want to buy a snack. But necklaces?

My principal told me he would set up an office for me and get me a desk, but it didn't sound like it would happen anytime soon. This morning I sat down at the communal table in the main office to do my work. That afternoon, one of the teachers told me they had a desk all set up for me in the library, with an electric fan even! That's great for me, because it gives me a lot of freedom to come and go.

I've been observing classes, mostly first grade for now. Mostly I'm learning how they teach, what the schedule is like, etc. But it is so depressing watching class. As I watch, I really WANT to go back to the states and teach. Everything is depressing. The way they teach, by writing something on the board and all the kids repeat it together, over and over. The supplies. There is nothing for the teacher to work with but the chalkboard. No worksheets, manipulatives, overhead, text books, classroom books, maps, nothing. Also it's so hot. And the kids sit at their desks all day, there is no activity that doesn't take place at the desk. It's just sad to watch, and I know it's not a problem I can help with. The most I can hope to do is introduce the teachers to some teaching methods that will get the kids out of their seats once in a while, and maybe encourage them to read on their own. Also the class sizes are around 35-40 kids.

So I've spent a lot of time working on problems in my head. How do we teach reading without books? How do we teach more effective ways of reading without any materials? And so on.

The schedule, when I saw it on paper, looked brutal. Classes from 7:30-12. An hour break, then class again from 1-4:30. WOW. well...it's not so tough. 11-12 is listed as 'remedial activities' and 'prep time' which means lunch break. so a 2 hour lunch. 9:30 is 'recess' which means morning snack and usually lasts a half hour or so. The afternoon classes generally end around 4, with of course another snack time around 2:30. And even much of the time not spent eating isn't always filled with learning. Time management was one of the things my principal asked me to help the teachers with. But that is so much a part of the culture, I'm not sure I even want to try and change it. And I mean, a 2 hour lunch? Who can argue with that?

One thing I'm not supposed to do is teach a class on my own. It's not sustainable. I can teach demo classes that the teachers watch, and I hope to do plenty of those. But already 3 teachers have asked me when I will come teach their class. It's hard to explain why I won't do that.

I've also been working in the library. I found two shelves, about 30 books or so, that aren't textbooks. They are mostly adult books, some self-help books, some novels, all pretty old. I started looking through them and found that about 20 of them came from the Denver Public Library!! I can't believe it! Someone at Cadiz West II elementary, Philippines, had a connection with DPL before I got here. What are the odds? Maybe DPL will be able to help me again, especially since I was once a volunteer for the read aloud program, not to mention the hundreds of dollars I've donated to them in library fines. We'll see.

That's the school update for now. Things settled down a little on the second day, and I think on Thursday there will be a staff meeting to formally introduce me to the teachers.

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.