School!

Well- We're two days down in the school year! I was really nervous for the first day, but I over-planned my days, so I felt better once I got into the classroom. I have 19 third-graders, and their English skills are very limited. This makes it hard to teach math and science and things, just because you have to teach the vocabulary first, before you can teach the skills. Reading is also a difiicult class for me to teach, because we really don't have books or even a textbook for the class.

These are pictures of my classroom. I got it pretty well set up before school started. There is of course not as much 'stuff' available here as in the States, but there's a lot more stuff and better quality stuff available then in the Philippines. All the kids have their own textbooks (not for every class....but for any class we have books for, we have a brand-new book for each student).

There's a picture here of little Liam and Emma helping me decorate my room. They are the kids of Brian and Lindsey, who are teaching at Minerva too. The kids are in kindergarten and 1st grade, and they're very cute. They were a great help, of course. : )

I teach math, reading, phonics, writing, English, spelling, science, and art. It seems like it should all be more integrated, the reading and writing and English, but they are divided into seperate blocks. The kids also have social studies and spanish and a few other specials classes. The schedule changes everyday. Some days I have off periods in the middle of the day, but everyday I have the last period off, because that's when they have Spanish. It's a nice time to do planning.

My kids are kind of unruly, a lot more like the behavior of kids in the states, more than the quiet super-respect of kids in the philippines. Julie gave us all a classroom management system with green, red, and yellow dots, and each kids name on a clothespin. If they keep doing what they're not supposed to be doing, they move to yellow, etc. All the lower grades use this, and it seems to be working okay so far. It's hard to expect them to be quiet all day, because they are constantly having to work extra hard to understand English, and they naturally shut off sometimes. But overall, they're pretty good kids. Here is a picture of Santiago, who is the brother of our coordinator, Sandra; and Jonathan, who is my new host brother. Santiago is very smart and well behaved, and Jonathan is a pretty good kid too, though he doesn't understand as much English.

It's interesting living with one of my students, because every night I have instant feedback on how the classes were, what homework is too hard, and what he gets and doesn't get. Tonight he brought me his math book and said he didn't understand anything he was supposed to do. So I helped him with his whole homework assignment, but I don't expect any of the other kids will have any idea how to do it. It's a challenge.

Honduras: The Good, the Bad, and the Adorable

Wow, I haven't even been here a full week, and I have a lot to talk about. There are 12 Minerva school teachers here, and they are all mostly great. We've been getting to know each other, and going to the school everyday to get ready for students. We have been doing lesson plans and decorating our classrooms, and getting used to life in Honduras. I am teaching 3rd grade, and Julie and Lindsey are teaching 1st and 2nd, and our three classrooms are brand-new. In other words, still being built. So we have been doing more lesson planning and no classroom decorating. Julie is an experienced teacher, and has so far been invaluable to helping us know how to lesson plan.

The students arrive at the end of next week. We kick off school with some kind of orientation day, then a school-wide camping trip. Then the following monday classes start. Yes, I am nervous about having my own class. I also will have the director's son in my class, so the pressure is on!

Gracias is a pretty nice little town. It's very compact, everything is close together. This is convenient, but it makes the streets pretty dusty and crowded during the day. It's hot here, but truly not as hot as Cadiz, also the nights are much cooler.

I've had to wait on getting my host family, all week I've been living in the main room of one the houses full of teachers. It's fun there, and we are all together, but it's a little crowded, so I left a lot of my stuff out on the covered, locked porch. This was fine, we thought, but one night, someone broke into the porch and stole my entire duffle bag and everything in it. I'm still really upset about it, I know I shouldn't have left it out there, but it was locked. In the bag was some clothes, some small school supplies like markers, pens, and pencils, all my medicine, and all my underwear! I wish they had left my underwear. They also stole my sneakers which were sitting next to the bag. I know it could have been a lot worse. All my valuable stuff I had inside the house, and my other suitcase was untouched, which was full of expensive books and school supplies, and fortunately, some clothes. I'm so angry and upset.

But that's the only bad thing that's happened. It's really been mostly all good. We've been exploring new restraunts and places to shop. There's a lovely hotel that I'm at right now, that is up on the hillside and looks out on the mountains and the town, and has free wi-fi. I really like most of my other teachers and am excited about school starting. Stuff is just stuff, right?

Here's what the pictures are in this post:

Me in front of the Minerva school sign thingy. I'll have more pictures of the school in future posts, but it's a pretty good building.

A shot from a bench in Central Park (and I think, the only park), of the 'famous' church and the mountains in the background. The park is really quite nice, it is under construction so there is only a few places available for sitting.

Most of us teachers at lunch yesterday. The girls are, from left to right, Serissa; Nikki Jayne, who is from New Zealand; Bertha, who is from Holland; and Rae, from North Carolina. Rae is married to Matt, who didn't make it into this shot. The other picture has Julie, the great teacher from Texas; Tony, who is Bertha's husband; and Liam, who is from Canada.

Other teachers not in the picture are Bobby, who is on medical leave from the military; and Lindsey and Brian, who are married, and here with their two little kids, Liam, who is about 4, and Emma is 6. That's right, out of 14 people, we have 2 Liams.

Oh yea, and yesterday was big Liam's birthday, so we went in on a cake and had a little party at our house. It was pleasant, although we only have 4 chairs, so we also sat on my bed, which is in the living room.

As for adorable, we've met a couple of our students randomly at various times, and they are adorable. We can't wait to meet our classes, they are sure to be too cute for words.

Post-Peace Corps Adventure

Hello again. In the year since I last posted, I've had some more adventures. I will briefly tell about my big one, the post-Peace Corps Trans-Siberian Railroad Adventure that Anna and I embarked on in July of 2008.

We met in Japan, where her parents live, and spent a few days there, checking out Tokyo and surrounding areas. Japan was great. Everything was clean, efficient, and delightful. We saw Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. We went to museums and walked through the streets. We had a good time.

Next we flew to Beijing. We did all kinds of touristy things there. We walked on the Great Wall, and went to the Forbidden City. We saw the buildings and things they were preparing for the Olympics. We were impressed with how clean Beijing was, but people told us it was just to get ready for the Olympics. One of our favorite things in Beijing was the astronomy museum, which is a funky little old museum, but it had some very cool old astronomical instruments.

From Beijing, we got on the Trans-Siberian railroad bound for Mongolia. It was a fun train ride. We met an American girl studying in Ulan Bataar, and a Mongolian guy studying in Beijing, and the four of us hung out during the long ride. On the border, they have to change the bogeys, or the wheels, of the train, because the tracks are different. That meant we had to spend a few hours out on the platform at about 1 am. But that was a fun time.

Mongolia was beautiful. We only stayed in the capital, Ulan Bataar, long enough to shower and rest up, then we went out to a national park, and stayed in a ger (yurt) at a family's camp there. There were other foriegn tourists there, mostly Swedish, and we all got along great. Anna and I went for a 2 day horse back ride, staying in other gers, and seeing the scenery and a monastary on the way. We also saw a huge, silver, Genghis Khan statue out in the middle of nowhere, that the Mongolian guides were pretty proud of.

After Mongolia, we got on the train for Russia. Our first stop was Irkutsk, by Lake Baikal. We stayed in a hostel, and went to the lake, we also went to a neat wooden architecture museum.

On the train again, we next stopped at Yekaterinburg. This was mostly just a convient way to break up the trip, but it was a nice city. We saw some museums and memorials and walked around in the rain. We stayed at the Museum of Geology Hotel, which sounds a neater than it actually turned out to be.

Our last stop was in Moscow. Moscow felt very European. Everyone was dressed classy, and things were expensive. We saw St. Basil's cathedral, and the Kremlin, we went to the Russian Circus, and we rode lots of subways, which have a lot of art and history themselves.

It was a super cool trip!

Cinco De Mayo!

Our last fun thing in the Philippines, was getting invited to the US embassy club for a Cinco De Mayo celebration. Erin and Scott Farver, Caty Harris, and I went and enjoyed nachos and margaritas and hearing people speak English to each other. The pictures make it look like a wild time, but we behaved ourselves.

Tudlo 08

It's time for Tudlo Mindanao again this year. I did it last year, and agreed to do it again. Each year, some 100 teachers are chosen from areas in Mindanao, which is the large southern part of the Philippines, to participate in a 2-week language camp in Cebu city. Volunteers are not allowed to go to Mindanao, because of violence in the region, but it is one area that really needs help. So these teachers come to Cebu, and 7-10 volunteers come and we have English Language Camp for 2 weeks.

This year was quite the experience. Most of us volunteers will be finishing our service and leaving the country within a few weeks, so it was our last big thing. We were happy to be together, but a bit anxious to be going home.

The place we stayed was less than ideal. There was constant construction going on outside, which made it hard to conduct classes, or sleep. It was very hot, and there were lots of mosquitoes. But we enjoyed ourselves, and our participants had good things to say about the two weeks. They spend class times learning English in hands-on, participative ways. One picture here is when they were doing an activity where blindfolded people had to cross a minefield of plastic cups, and their teammates shouted directions at them. I was on one of the teams that was short a person, and I did worse than anyone else, I even earned a 30 second time penalty and had to go back to the start 3 times!

Some things that happened outside of class were a beauty pageant for participants, and a cultural night and graduation. At cultural night, participants from different regions perform native dances or songs. Everyone enjoys the cultural night. The pageant had costumes made from classroom materials, and a talent portion. They also had three scenes from Les Mis that some of the participants had been rehearsing, and they performed during intermissions of the pageant.

The volunteers also decided to have a 'geek day' where we would dress nerdy. I know, how is that different from how I normally dress? Not much different, really.

COS

Our Close of Service (COS) conference took place for a few days around the 13th of April. Our entire group got together at Island Cove, the same resort we went to our first days in the Philippines. We had a great time. In the mornings we had sessions on health and paperwork and things like adjusting back to life in the States. But most of the afternoons we were free to enjoy ourselves and say our goodbyes to each other. The resort also had a waterslide park, a bowling alley, pool tables, videoke, and in our rooms, air conditioning and cable tv. We had lots of ways to spend our free time. It was a really nice way for us to bring closure to our two years. Most of the people at the conference we weren't going to see again before leaving the country.

Going Postal

The people at the post office know me quite well. They know my name, where I live, what I'm doing here, and what my mom sends me in the mail. They are very friendly, and this makes all the difference.

Last week I decided it was time to send home a box of stuff I didn't want to have to haul around in my suitcase. I got the box together, and took it to the post office to find out how much it weighed and how much it would cost to send. It weighed 10.7 kg. The package man told me I could make it heavier, and still be under the limit for sending it via 'air parcel' - the limit is 20kg. So I took the box home, and added stuff to it. Yesterday I brought it back to the post office, and it felt like it weighed a ton!! I can't imagine how it got so heavy!

The package man put the box on the scale and it read 10.7kg. Uh-oh. We took the box off, and he pushed down on the scale, and it stopped at 10.7kg. so really, we have no idea how much my box weighs, or weighed the first time! Package man called over Delivery man, and told me that Delivery man would take me and the box in a trike to somewhere where they have a bigger scale. Apparently the post office only has the one scale. So we loaded up the trike, and then Delivery man left for a minute and came back and unloaded the trike saying we couldn't use the other scale after all. We took the heavy box back inside. There was only way to solve this. We unpacked most of the box until it weighed 10kg. Then we weighed all the stuff we took out of the box, and added it all together. We arrived at 20kg. More or less.

I told Package man that there were some heavy books I didn't have to send, I could keep them out and make the box lighter, and therefore, cheaper. He said just wait. He calculated how much it would cost to send, and it was expensive. Then he called the main office in Bacolod to ask how much the cheaper way would cost, and they told him. So then I said again about taking out the heavy books, but he said no, they allow a little extra weight for packing materials. what?? okay, well I didn't want to have to weigh everything minus the books again, recalculate the weight, and call bacolod again for a new price. anyway, package man is in charge of saying how much the box weighs, so whatever, I threw in the heavy books.

Time to seal the box. I brought my own clear packaging tape for the purpose, but first the package man used the post office tape on the box. I think he thought he was in a competition for the 'hardest to open package' because no one will ever get that box open again. He started the tape across the top of the huge box and just wound it around and around and around, then he did it again lengthwise. then on the sides. Then around all the corners. Then he used my clear tape to seal it some more. It was ridiculous! Also it was really hot, sitting there while he taped the heck out of my box.

So now it's an hour since I arrived. I bet you've never waited quite that long in line at the post office. I forked over 5 months rent (no joke) to mail the box. In the states, no matter how much a package costs to ship, it gets a little label in the corner. Not here. It gets stamps. 7peso stamps. I paid 9,550 pesos to mail the box. Can you figure out how many stamps that is? Well, I can't, but it was hilarious to watch. The stamps covered three sides of the enormous box. Here are some pictures of Delivery man applying the stamps to the box. Wow, so finally the stamps were done. I was waiting for my receipt when delivery man had to go through and cancel all the stamps with his rubber stamp. I really couldn't stop laughing. He got a workout that day, between carrying my box all over the place, and applying stamps and canceling the stamps....he should thank me for all that bicep work.

I got my reciept, and then package man took my clear tape again and started covering the stamps so none would come off. (like anyone would know! Who on earth would count that many stamps!) But he quickly ran out of tape, which i felt could have been avoided by not using so much earlier. The box was already sturdy and the sides were staple-gunned together; this was no second-rate box. But he wanted to do his job as well as he could for me. They do like me there at the post office.

An hour and a half later I left the post office, but it was a pretty enjoyable afternoon.

The Boat Christening

Here's my latest cultural adventure!

My counterpart, Mrs. Sarabia invited me to the christening of their new boat, which will be a ferry between Victorias, the next town south of us, to Estancia, on the island of Panay. We left right after school and took a trike to the boatyard where it was. The boat was nice, shiny and new. I climbed around in it with Mrs. Sarabia’s kids. The main area has rows of benches like pews. Upstairs are some more benches in a covered area, and a large outside deck for cargo. We played around in the pilothouse which had a real ship’s wheel like you would expect to see on a pirate ship, and a GPS and a radio, a compass, and one green button and one blue button. That was it. We sat around for a long time.

Eventually we saw a lechon being brought onboard, (see the next post down for more about lechon) and people gathering downstairs in the main cabin. We went down and got seats and waited some more. The christening ceremony finally began after some Mormon hymnals were passed out. Someone led a prayer, and then we sang a hymn. While we were singing, they began butchering the lechon at the back of the boat. There’s nothing like singing a hymn while a steady thwack sound is coming from behind you. After the hymn, Mrs. Sarabia’s husband said some things about the boat, and the people who helped build it. Then we had another prayer, another hymn, another prayer, and another hymn.

Then we ate! We had lechon and other party food. I ate so much I was still full 2 days later. I had no idea a boat christening was basically a church service plus pig. But now I know.

Lechon Baboy

Lechon Baboy: The ultimate Filipino party food. When there is a celebration of any kind here, you get a lechon. Lechon Baboy is the roasted pig; Baboy means pig. So this lechon we had one day at lunch at school. You can see our amazing world map in the background. The teachers got their yearly bonuses, and to celebrate, got a big lechon and we had lunch in the library. Mr. Gabayeron is chopping up the pig.

Christmas and New Years

Christmas this year was spent with my fellow PCV, Erin Dowe, at our training host families in Iloilo. Christmas in the Philippines was a pretty big letdown. The lead up is great, lots of Christmas carols and parties and decorations, but the actual day, not much happens. However, it happened to be my host brothers 6th birthday, so we had a big party with lots of food on Christmas Day after all. At children's parties here, one of the traditional games is one where a lattice of bamboo has prizes and candy tied to it, and is lowered and raised above the children's heads. They jump and try to grab the prizes.

After Christmas, Erin and I went to her site, Roxas city, and met up with our friends Eva and Page. The four of us celebrated Eva's birthday by having a seafood feast on the beach.

Then we all headed to Boracay, the most popular beach spot in the Philippines. It is a total tourist area, tons of foreigners, and lots of good food and beach activities. Around 30 volunteers came to New Years on Boracay, which is a huge group to have together at one time. We had a lot of fun, and at midnight they shot fireworks off from all along the beach. It was great to see so many of our friends and we had lots of fun. We also played some our favorite group games. Here is Page and I playing the adverb game, in which we had to act out 'aggresively sailing a ship.'

Class Party and Miss Minewa

More Christmas events at school. Just before the Christmas break we had a class party with my fourth grade students. It was lots of fun. Everyone brought food, and there were games and prizes. One game, you can see the kids playing here, is called 'The ship is sinking'. the kids get in groups of 5, and each person is assigned a role, like President, VP, Secretary, etc. The MC calls out 'The ship is sinking! Save your President!' and the rest of the kids in the group have to get the president off the ground. The MC might call out any title, up to four people at a time, and the group has to figure out how to save them. It was very fun to watch and the kids could get pretty clever on how to save their classmates. I also took a jar of candy and had each kid make a guess on how many were in there. The closest guesser won the jar. The kids also had a gift exchange.









The next day there was an event at our school called the Miss Minew and Mr. Zerowas competition. This is a good thing in theory, it promotes environmental responsibility and solid waste management. Every class has been collecting trash all year and we sell it to junk dealers and earn money for the school. So the class that collected the most won the competition. But there was also a costume competition, where each grade made a costume out of recycled materials, and they were judged on creativity, most earth-friendly, etc. The ceremony lasted for hours and was a huge waste of time and money, as they gave everyone 2 trophies, and ribbons and awards. Here are the fourth graders in their costumes, which i thought were really cool. The teachers spent hours making them, out of beads made of rolled up pieces of magazine sewed to rice sacks.

Physical Fitness Day

If any of you saw the 'Thriller' video on Youtube featuring the inmates of a Philippine prison, you might understand that dancing is big here. Espcially choreographed dancing. The schools recently held their physical fitness days, which, as far as I could understand, was to demonstrate that the students are all physically fit. What that means is that each grade practices a dance routine for the 2 weeks leading up to the big day, and then the whole morning is spent watching all the final routines. Some classes even hire choreographers. It was pretty fun to watch (once), but since they practice all day outside the library, I knew the routines and songs pretty well by the time the final day came around. It isn't a contest, there are no prizes, just everyone dancing. I took this video on my digital still camera, and edited it on Windows Movie Maker, the worst editing program in the world, so the quality of this video is below my usual standards. But hey, I'm in the peace corps. The first three clips are during practice days, and the last clip is during the finals. Every class had matching outfits for the final day.

Tira-tira

Kids here play lots of games that require very little equipment. Rocks, flip-flops, rubber bands, and tin cans can be used in dozens of games. There's a game the kids at school have been playing lately called Tira-tira. I'm not sure of the finer points, but basically there are two teams of two. the throwers, and the not throwers. Each person chooses a rock. The not-throwers put their rocks on a line, and the throwers stand at a line about 6 feet away. The throwers try to throw their rocks at the not-throwers rocks, and knock them off

the line. If they knock them off, they get to keep throwing. If they miss, the not throwers take their rocks and become the throwers, and the throwers put their own rocks on the line and become the not-throwers. I think it is a game with no scoring and no end, but they like to play it. It's also kind of dangerous to walk through the school yard at recess cause rocks are flying all over the place. Here are some pictures of kids from my 4th grade class playing the game right in front of the library door.

UN DAY

It's UN day again here in the Philippines. At West II, there is a program held at the end of the month. Each grade represents a country (or alaska or hawaii...) in a native costume competition, and then a dance routine. This year, we started really late, so all the dances got cut out, otherwise we would have been at school way past dark. But they crowned the winner, Ms. and Mr. Australia. I also got to hand out the certificates of appreciation I made for the kids who did the world map project with me. (And it's finally finished!!) Here are some of the costumes at UN day. The regal looking girl with the gold gown is Australia. And the poor kid in a winter coat and rubber boots is Alaska. And yes, it was pretty hot that day.

Thanksgiving 2007!

Hooray for Thanksgiving! We had a big blow-out with about 25 Peace Corps Volunteers, other foreign volunteers, visitors from the states, and Filipino friends. We killed and roasted 4 turkeys, and had lots of other delicious food. Homemade mashed potatoes, lots of pies, macaroni and cheese, green beans, stuffing....yum! It was one of the best thanksgiving meals I've ever had. The house was on the beach, so people went swimming, and we played lots of games, including cranium and turkey trivia, and we sang lots of videoke. It was a great time.