Holidays 2006

I know that I’ve been a poor correspondant lately. I’ve been busy, even though there doesn’t seem to be that much going on. Over the last 6 weeks or so I’ve been in and out of my site, I get my mail and internet access sporadically.
In the end of November, following a not-so-busy time at my site, I left town to go to my language camp. It’s a voluntary training of additional language help, or the opportunity to start learning a new language, approximately 6 months after we got to our respective sites. Since the language situation is a bit difficult at my site, I decided to switch languages and start learning Tagalog (the national language). Where I live, everyone speaks Tagalog but not everyone speaks Bicol, the local dialect. The Tagalog language camp lasted for 6 days and took place near Manila. Since I was going in that general direction and didn’t have a whole lot to do, I decided to visit my friend, and fellow volunteer, Caty at her site north of Manila. Between the weekend and the holiday (Bonifacio Day) I got to spend about 2 1/2 days in Zambales just hanging out. Caty works at an orphanage that houses rescued street children from Manila, it seems like a really fantastic organization. The kids there were so friendly, when I’d go to the orphanage with Caty they’d all run up and suddenly you’d be in the middle of a 7 child hug. I know that they haven’t always been this outgoing and that they’ve been warming up to strangers since Caty’s been there, but it was a really nice change to have such friendly kids around. The kids at our schools are much more shy, they don’t want to talk or interact so much as they like to stand around and gawk at me (something that I really dislike).

After a few days of weathering the edges of Typoon Reming in central Luzon, we headed to Manila and then on to language camp. Language camp went pretty well, my language instructor Alma was fabulous. There were five of us who were beginning Tagalog as a new language, and we had lessons for approximately 6 hours a day. We mostly wanted to focus on grammar, and lucky for me the structure is very similar to Bicol. Most of the differences lie in the vocabulary, so now I just need to start making flashcards. During our week at language camp, there was plenty of time to rest and enjoy being around volunteers who aren’t in my region and that I don’t see very frequently. I missed being with my friends in my area and felt bad that I wasn’t with them, though. Our regional group had their language camp in Legaspi City which was very badly hit in the typhoon. They split their days between language and helping to do relief work. Needless to say, I felt weird sitting comfortably in Metro Manila while they were living in a disaster area and working to help the people in our community get their lives back together again.
After language camp was finished, a few of us had to stay in Manila for a couple extra days to attend a debriefing for the typhoon. At this point, I still hadn’t been home and didn’t know what condition my house was in. All I’d heard from my coworkers was that the roof on the office at the school was damaged and that everyone was ok. Our Admin Officer was kind enough to bring in homemade peanutbutter oatmeal cookies with hershey’s kisses in them. I think that those were the tastiest cookies I’ve had in well over 9 months.

Upon returning to my apartment at site, I found that only my kitchen and spare bedroom had any damage. Mainly, the problem was that water was blown in the side opening of the roof and it leaked through the ceiling in those two rooms, leaving puddles of dirty water that had dried by the time I arrived home. My only loss was my matress cover, everything else just needed a good cleaning and things were fine. When I arrived home, school had been suspended because of the typhoon, so there wasn’t much going on. The teachers had their official “Teacher’s Day” and Christmas party and then things were done until after the holidays.

The Chrismas party was pretty funny, there were lots of organized games- many of which created a bizarre and, to me, inappropriate amount of sexual tension. For example, one game was very similar to musical chairs. There are two groups of participants; the inner ring is a group of men (and there are only a handful of male teachers in the entire school district) and the outer group is female has one more person than the male group. Each man is given an empty 12 oz glass soda bottle which he holds in between his legs, and in most cases quite close to his crotch. As the music plays the men stay in a circle with their bottles while the women walk around them. When the music stops, instead of rushing to a chair, the women rush to a man and have to stick one finger in the open neck of the soda bottle. (There’s a simlar game played with eggplants, and apparently you just have to grab the eggplant- not try and stick your finger in it.) Needless to say, there was a lot of giggling going on, both among the players and the audience. There was also a big deal about bringing food to share with everyone else. In the past, people are always very hesitant and/or refuse to try anything that I’ve cooked (but I’m expected to love everything put before me) so I decided to buy some brownies at a local bakery. At the end of the affair, I was the only one who touched them and my supervisor tried to send them home with me. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed…it’s not like I’m trying to poison everyone.
Before the holidays, when I wasn’t in school, I tried to help out with the relief efforts in Camarines Sur through an organization called World Vision. I spent some time with them helping to pack relief bags of food. I was supposed to help out in what they call “Child Friendly Spaces”, a place for kids to go and be kids even in the aftermath of a disaster; unfortunately, it was discovered that the location of the CFS in our area was not safe for us as foreigners. So my time before the holidays, was mostly spent at home, without power, reading and cleaning up the mess from the storm. Almost exactly 2 weeks after the storm hit, power resumed in my neighborhood. It was a pleasant surprise, after the previous typhoon my power was out for 3 weeks.
For Christmas, I decided to go back to Manila and just enjoy being lazy in the city. There was a film festival going on in the city, so all of the movies playing were in Tagalog. With one that option for entertainment ruled out, I spent most of my time sitting around, eating or sleeping. It was a very enjoyable lazy holiday, the only thing I really didn’t like was the copious amount of very loud fireworks that the neighborhood kids were setting off at all hours of the day. Some of them had an illegal thing that looks like a grenade lanucher, but it launches and amplifies fireworks…and the booms were setting off car alarms. There was a Christmas party at my hostel in Manila and I had beef tenderloin for the first time in probably 10 months, it was mighty tasty and very much appreciated. Getting home from Manila after the holiday was a wee bit more difficult and stressful than it was during my stay. I, foolishly, did not book a ticket when I arrived. When I went to the bus companies everyone was booked until the new year, so instead of leaving December 26th I didn’t leave until the 28th. I managed to get a seat on an aircon bus at the last minute, otherwise I probably would have been ringing in the new year in the capital.

As for our New Year’s celebration, a group of us volunteers spent our holiday in Naga City. A co-worker of one of the other volunteers had a party at her house in the city. There was a lot of food, we bought a bunch of fireworks and broke out the magic mic videoke machine. It’s bizarre, but the kids aren’t afriad of lighting loud, dangerous fireworks but sparklers scare them. We had a fun game of lighting the sprinklers, which would make the kids scatter- so I’d chase them around the street a bit while they shrieked with laughter. Don’t think I was being mean, they loved it- as soon as I’d turn around and head the other way, they’d start chasing me…until I turned around and went back their way. It was pretty funny. The whole neighborhood was a hive of activity and fireworks until midnight. Everyone seemed to set of a bunch of fireworks in the 15 minutes leading up to midnight, and then it almostly completely stopped and the neighborhood went quiet.

Since the holidays, school has resumed and I’ve been spending most of my time at my site. We’re working to develop the library at the rural barangay school where I’ve been working the last few months. The provincial school administration recently launched a Library Hub project, and my school is a pilot for its implementation. The idea is that there will be a center in the province where sets of books will be available for the teachers to check out and use in their classrooms. Unfortunately, the building where the books were to be housed was destroyed in the typhoon so the plan changed. Until the new building is repaired and the storage facilities furnished, the books are in circulation from school to school. Each school has a collection of 100+ book titles, each title having about 15-30 copies per group. The schools have the books for 1 month, and then they are to pass them along to the next school. The idea is interesting, but I’m not sure how much of an opportunity the teachers will have to make use of the resources- they’ve got the books for 3 more weeks. Most of the books are really great, there are many bilingual books written by local authors as well as books that will be useful in classroom lessons. However, not all the books are appropriate. In our shipment of books, we received 9 full copies of the unabridged, unillustrated Lord of The Rings trilogy. I don’t know too many adult Filipinos who could read the series, much less elementary school students and in 1 month. The books were accompanied with some picture-laden books about the movie and its making. I’m sure someone donated these books thinking that it would be great, since the movies are popular here, but it’s just humorous to me because they’re SO inappropriate.

In addition to working on our library, we’re hoping to complete the World Map Project at our school in February and my counterpart and I are preparing to go to a Project Design and Management seminar next week. My mom is coming to visit me in March, suddenly it seems like things are getting very busy. Regardless, the last few days have been pretty slow…nobody seems to let me know about plans in advance, so I end up sitting around a lot.

And that’s pretty much been it for the last 6 weeks or so. I have some new pictures up from this time period, they’re in the New Pictures folder in my gallery. Enjoy! And enjoy the snow, it’s “cold” here…and by cold, I mean no cooler than 65 or 70 degrees. That’s COLD when you don’t have a hot shower or blankets…