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.

An Extended Vacation

After I dropped my parents off at the airport, I spent a few days in Manila working on our volunteer newsletter, The Kwan, with my three other co-editors. One of them is Anna, my good friend who lives in Capiz, on the island of Panay. When we finished putting together the newsletter, I flew with her to her site, which is more rural than my site. We hung out in her native-style house, and walked through the mud to the small port, where we took a tiny, very tippy boat out to an even more rural barangay (neighborhood) to go to a community meeting for planting mangroves. But when we got there, a big storm hit and nobody came to the meeting. During my visit we also took a field trip to the next town over and went searching for a mummified woman Anna had heard about. We found her! She stays behind glass in somebody's house on a dirt road near the beach. It was a bit of an adventure. I also met her co-workers and neighborhood children and a snake that we found in her house.

My Parents Visit!

My parents came for a visit earlier this month, and we had a great time! We first spent some time in Bacolod, the big city near my site. They took me and some of my friends out to dinner. They might have been hoping for a nice Filipino meal, but we all wanted pizza...so we went to Mama Maria's and shared the country's largest pizza. After that we did videoke, a favorite pastime here. My dad and my friend Anna did a lovely duet of 'El Paso', a song I have never heard before. After Bacolod, we went to Sipalay, to an awesome beach resort called takatuka, and spent a couple days relaxing and swimming, and lying around in hammocks. After Sipalay, we visited my site, including my school. Unfortunately, that day there was a mini-typhoon, and we didn't get to see much. But they met the teachers i work with and saw the library briefly.

After Cadiz we went to Bohol and stayed at the amazing Bohol Bee Farm. We ate wonderful delicious organic food, and saw all the tourist sites, like the chocolate hills, tarsiers, and the Loboc river cruise. The bee farm was really cool, and they grown their own herbs for use in their dishes, many of which include, obviously, honey. All too soon it was time to head back to Manila and say goodbye. I had a great vacation!

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.