Masskara 07

So it's Masskara again. The big festival in Bacolod. Like last year, some other volunteers came over and we enjoyed the street parties, cool costumes, and good food in Bacolod. One night we got a private videoke room and had a good time singing. The plaza, the new mall, and the main street through the city were all shut down and filled with vendors, street dancers, food, shopping, and live music. One night we got an up close table to a drumbeat competition, which was pretty neat to see. We mostly enjoyed ourselves, and I was happy to see some volunteers I rarely get to see.

I'm teaching

Here it is: proof that i sometimes teach! This is the warm-up part of a reading lesson about a blind man. (perhaps you know the story? it's the one in the bible where Jesus heals the blind man. It's in chapter 7 of the Grade 4 reading textbook) So I'm making a couple of the kids 'blind' so they can see what it might be like to be a blind person. I made the first kid cross the room to meet me, which he successfully did. But he wasn't able to give me a high five, and on the way back he walked straight into the blackboard - none of his classmates yelled out for him to stop!

Then I gave some kids different things to try and guess what they were. A sponge, a shell, and here is Kenneth, about to guess the silly putty. (He guessed clay, which I thought was pretty good. These kids have never even seen silly putty.)

This was part of my team teaching with Mrs. Sarabia.

Happenings Around West II Elementary

I've been keeping busy at West II elementary with various projects lately. I don't have pictures of the co-teaching, but I think it's going pretty well. (When it goes.) A couple times a week I teach fourth grade English to two classes. The students seem to enjoy my part of the lessons, and I try to make it fun so maybe they will learn something. It isn't easy.

Last month was Filipino month, so we had a big program at the end of the month, celebrating Filipino culture. Here is one girl in the 'Traditional Costume' competition, Angelina. And three fifth grade students, Michael, Pearl Ann, and Ervino, doing a kind of dramatic reading about a lawyer, a judge, and a farmer. The lawyer and farmer are in some kind of dispute. I actually didn't know what was going on most of the time, because the program was in Filipino, not Ilonggo. But I wasn't alone, many of the kids, especially younger ones, don't understand Filipino. The MC asked everyone to stand for the National Anthem, and then she had to repeat it in Ilonggo for the large majority of us who just sat there.

The world map is going along great! We are almost done! I have a handful of fifth graders who come in everyday to help paint, and we are about to start labeling countries. This is Elaine and Noredel, standing in front of their work. Isn't it beautiful!?

And finally, I've been giving a computer lesson to a teacher everyday after school. This is a picture of me and Mrs. Cada (my host mom.) She is learning how to use the mouse. It can be hard to teach this, because using a mouse is just second nature for me! But she has a good sense of humor about it, and laughs most of the time when she can't get the mouse to go where she wants it to. I think next week we'll start basic Word. Some of the other teachers are a little more advanced, so we've been working on how to use Excel (which I barely know how to use myself) and little things like keeping folders organized.

So my work is going well, which always makes me feel good about my time here.

Floody Season

I love the rainy season. The air is cooler, the sun is blocked by the clouds, things sometimes smell nicer. But this year, the first massive rainstorm made my house flood. And every small rainstorm thereafter. It comes in from the bottom of the walls. Here are some pictures of it flooding, bit by bit. The one picture is looking out of my door at the deep water outside. When they built my house they built (or more likely, after the first rainy season, they added), a tall door frame. So the water outside doesn't come in the house. But you can see it's progression as it floods from a hole in the wall across my living room. Slowly at first, then covering most of the floor. The laundry basket was accidentaly left outside at the begining of the rainstorm (fortunately with dirty laundry in it) so It's already soaking wet. Everything else I was trying to move to the other side of the room so it wouldn't get wet.

A Little Bit of August

So far, my August has been pretty good. I went to Manila for a week long training on co-teaching, with my counterpart, Mrs. Sarabia. It was a pretty good training, I think we both got something out of it. Here is a picture of us working together, just like we will soon be doing in real life at West II Elementary. : )



My birthday happened while I was there, which for me was great. Friends of mine also at the conference chipped on a birthday cake for me, and it was also the birthday of a girl in the new batch, Annie. So we got cake, they sang to us, and we wore some birthday crowns. Later that day a select few of us (about 12 of us) got to go to the American Embassy and have cocktails and appetizers on the Ambassador's private office balcony, with a view over the lush embassy grounds and Manila Bay. The ambassador is a really cool lady, I always like hearing her talk, and getting to chat with her was really cool. We also met some other foriegn service people, and guys working for USAID, another government development agency, only with money. We got some neat ideas for future careers, although that was not the intention. It was a super sweet birthday thing, though, and the ambassador even ended up walking around with a tray of chocolate cheesecake, with about 3 Filipino embassy staff following her around trying to take the tray from her.



Later that night we same few went out and did videoke, which is always fun, and since I was with an entirely different crowd than I'm usually with, we got to hear some different songs. This picture is me and Kelly singing together. This was our second try. During our first song, a cockroach landed on her, and she screamed and brushed it off onto me, and so I screamed and brushed it off, and we were screaming and jumping around instead of singing.



Back at site now, it is Rambutan season, everyone's favorite crazy fruit. Here's a picture of 1/2 kilo of rambutans. You bust open that crazy skin and there is a smallish juicy fruit inside. very juicy.

Sarah's visit!

My friend Sarah came to visit me earlier this month. We used to work together at the Children's Museum of Denver. Here's a brief account of what we did:

So when she got here, we went to my site, Cadiz, and it was our town fiesta. We walked around the fiesta for awhile with my neighbor kids. The fiesta is kind of like a state fair or arts festival, except everything for sale is junk. There are carnival rides, and games, and some food, and lots of junk for sale. at night there was a concert, but Sarah was exhausted, so we didn't go. We spent a couple days at my site, going to my school and hanging out. She got to see how classes are run, and helped out in the library.

Next we went to Iloilo. Ross, another volunteer, was being visited by his family, so a whole bunch of volunteers came into iloilo to go out to dinner with them. (ie: on their tab....) Sarah got to meet lots of the other volunteers that i am closest to. We did videoke, too, which is basically a national pastime.

After Iloilo we went to Guimaras, the small island between Negros and Panay. We went to a beach resort there for a few days and played in the ocean. The resorts here aren't always like you picture in mexico or anything. It's not posh, it's very basic. But we didn't need much, and they had food, which is important. We got sunburned, and played cards.

After Guimaras we went back to my site to regroup. I went in to work a few days, and we rested and watched movies. We had a nice dinner at my host family's house, so Sarah got to try some good authentic Filipino food. We also spent some time in Bacolod, seeing the sights. I bought a painting done by a local artist that's of a little girl in Negros.

Next it was off to Manila. We visited Intramuros, the old fort of Manila. It was really nice, wandering around, learning about history, and buying neat souveniers. Anna, one of my best friends here, joined us the next day, with her two friends who are also visiting from home. The 5 of us went to the National musuem, and Rizal park, and went out to dinner. We saw the new Harry Potter movie, too.

Mango Float!

The most delicious frozen desert in the Philippines, and perhaps the world, is Mango Float. I got gutsy and made my own the other day. Here is how to make it:

Assemble ingredients. Mango, Cream, Evaporated Milk, Graham Crackers.

Slice up mangos into small slices. Be careful. mangoes are slippery and difficult to slice.

Next you mash up the grahams into crumbs. This is optional, some people just use them whole. Then you mix equal parts cream and evaporated milk.

Next you get a tupperware type container. Line the bottom with graham. Lay mango slices on top. Pour the creamy milky mixture over until the mangoes are covered. repeat! another layer of graham, another layer of mango, more milkcream. Do it again until the tupperware is topped out.

Then put it in the freezer until it is mostly or all frozen. When it's really really frozen it's hard to eat, and not very tasty, so it's better when it's kind of mushy frozen.

Last, grab a neighbor kid and give him mango float while you take his picture. Delicious!!

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.

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!

Wedding

So this weekend I went to my first Filipino wedding. Even though it was in Cadiz, it was about 40 minutes away. Cadiz is a big area. It was pretty much like a wedding you would see in the states, except of course, hotter. And at catholic weddings here (I don't know about back home) the bride and groom have sponsors. Sometimes up to 60 sponsors. A lot, at any rate. It's kind of like being a godfather or godmother at a baptism. So one of my co-teachers, Mrs. Sarabia, was a sponsor, because the girl getting married was a former student of hers. Mrs. Sarabia isn't catholic, but i guess you can be a sponsor anyway. This girl had about 20 sponsors, 10 bridesmaids, and 10 jr. bridesmaids and flower girls. I learned two things in the church service, which was held in Ilonggo. Higugma means love. That's a funny word to say, higugma. And they said it a lot, obviously. Another thing i learned is that when you're texting, 143 is short hand for I love you. Because I is one letter, Love is 4, and You is 3. So if you're texting your sweetheart, you just put in 143 and they'll know what it means. So I learned two new things about how to say love. Yes, the priest talked about 143 in his sermon, texting is really a part of the culture here.

So after the ceremony, we all got on tiny scary boats and took a 20 minute ride to an island where the bride lived and had the reception. It was incredibly hot. We ate lunch, and then the couple had their first dance. At the first dance, the sponsors and guests pin money on the couple. Then they had their first drink of wine together, their first bite of cake together, etc. Then we left. Even though I had never been to a Filipino wedding, I have learned enough in the last year to know 2 things about events like this: Jeans are dress-up clothes, and we will leave the minute we can. There's no dancing among the guests or toats or anything. When it's over, it's over. So yep, I was wearing jeans and a tshirt, and fit right in, and the minute we could, we left. Besides me and Mrs. Sarabia, her daughter Divine was with us, and another teacher at our school, Liezel. So the four of us walked around the little island, which was where Mrs. Sarabia used to teach. She showed us her old school, which only has 5 teachers, and the teachers live in the classrooms. They go 20 feet to the beach and go swimming when they don't have class. But she said it wasn't as nice as when she had taught there. We also walked over to the beach resort, and sat in the shade and watched some foreigners sunbathing. Crazy foreigners. A Filipina would never choose to sit in the sun for no good reason. When we were done sitting there, we went back to the wedding site and caught a small scary boat back to the mainland, then a tricycle out to the highway, then a bus back into town.

Balay Alibangbang

On Saturday I took a field trip with Jonica’s kindergarten class to the Balay Alibangbang. Any guesses what that is? It’s the butterfly house! Alibangbang is ‘butterfly’ in Ilonggo, which I think is great. It’s pronounced like ‘long’ or ‘song’. So Balay Alibangbang isn’t anything like the Butterfly Pavilion in terms of education or exhibits or numbers of butterflies. But it was really pleasant, pretty, and still educational. And it was just ten minutes from my house, not far at all! I had no idea it was so close.

On the grounds they have a really nice playground area, a bigish butterfly dome with screening, a swimming pool, a lecture hall, picnic areas, gardens, and a big beautiful house that the owners live in and might be a hotel as well (I didn’t really get that part.) We had about 50 kindergartners (age 4-6) and each one had a parent. The kids played on the playground and the adults sat under the trees when we first got there. There was a nice breeze and it was cool and peaceful. Then a guy took us into the lecture hall to talk about butterflies. He turned on a video about butterflies and moth that was really nice (taped off TV) but I knew right away the kids would not last long. It was in English, and long, and I know what teaching 5 year olds can be like. But I was very impressed with the parents. In most situations like this, the parents would sit at the back and talk among themselves, leaving the children up front. But these parents watched the video, and when the guy stopped it, they asked questions about butterflies and everything! Go parents! The lecturer guy spoke half in English, half in Ilonggo (they call it Ilongish…seriously.) Then the kids got to go in the butterfly dome. Parents had to pay an extra 30pesos to go in, so none did.

After the learning, the kids went swimming, and we had picnic lunch, and then relaxed under the trees for awhile. Then we went home. It was really nice. The kids in the picture of me with the butterfly are Jonica in the middle, and her friend Bony, on the left. Also on the tire swing, Jonica on top, Bony on the bottom.