Sometimes it’s better to let people draw their own conclusions.

I have just returned to Naga from my week-long site visit and am quite glad to be back. I’m sure that I will grow to love my site, but right now I’m having a little trouble finding enthusiasm about the place. It seems that most of the volunteers in this region are close enough to the water that they can go swimming every day, that is not the case for me. I am near the San Miguel Bay, but it’s probably an 11k bike ride (each way) to the nearest spot for swimming and I’ve heard that it’s not really a good place to swim. I have yet to go to the bay, but I’m going to guess that it’s probably pretty gross since the Bicol River (which is disgustingly filthy) empties into it not far from my site. On the bright side, the landscape is quite hilly and it looks promising as far as decent biking. The trick will be not to get run over by the insane traffic that goes whipping along the main highway.

As far as my host agency is concerned, everyone seems very nice- but they’re very *touchy* which is a bit irritating. Pretty much all of the staff here is female and they all feel quite free to just grab onto my arm and lead me around by it, or grab me by the hand (quite tightly, I have bruises) and just hold onto me while they talk to other people or introduce me as “very young and single, she needs to be matched up with someone” to the entire teaching staff, much to my own discomfort. I consider myself to be a relatively affectionate person and not completely adverse to human contact, but this is way too much contact from people who are 1. work colleagues and 2. almost complete strangers. The difficult thing is how to mend this situation. I can’t just tell people not to touch me, because that would be considered rude. However, I can’t imagine sacrificing my own personal comfort for two years simply to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes. I’m still not sure what my plan will be, but I’m going to ask Eva (my language & culture instructor) what would be the best route to go for maximum comfort and minimal offense.

With my host family, things are going ok. They’re trying very hard to be accomodating, though this mostly comes through with food and not so much in other areas (like noise control). The son-in-law who lives in the house has a great love for soft-rock music and loves to blare it from the car stereo around 7 o’clock every morning. One morning it was the Abba Gold album (ok) another morning it was Michael Bolton (really not ok) rousing me from my sleep. “How am I supposed to live without you?” Don’t. Just don’t Michael Bolton. Also, there are at least three dogs that are always chained up outside of the house belonging to my host mother’s son (right next door in the compound) and they like to bark for hours on end in the middle of the night and nobody ever seems to make any effort to quiet them. As if that weren’t enough, there’s a cage full of lovebirds outside my window next to the very popular path to the backyard from the front of the house. Roosters are the least of my sleeping worries here.

My room is ok, a little musty, but ok. However, there’s a sort of jesus shrine on the bookcase above my bed. The shrine is complete with a creepy, big-eyed picture of jesus, a plate with another creepy picture of jesus and…wait for it…a glow in the dark crucifix and rosary. Imagine my surprise that first night when I turned off the light to go to bed and saw a glowing christ on a cross hovering over my bed. As one might guess from the bedroom decor, my host family is VERY religious and VERY Catholic. One of the first questions it seems that everyone asks here is, “what is your religion?” At home you could simply tell the person asking (who I’d consider quite nosy, if they were someone I’d just met) that you don’t like to discuss religion and be done with it. You can’t do that here though, it would be considered rude and that’s a major no-no. Instead of my usual american response, I’ve tried being more vauge in my answers. Here’s an approximation of a very uncomfortable conversation that I had with my host family a few nights ago:

What is your religion?

It’s complicated really. My family is half christian, half jewish.

So where does that put you?

Somewhere in the middle…(how that’s possible, I don’t know)
Do you go to mass?

No, I’m not catholic.

There’s a protestant church too- I’ll show you where it is.

I don’t go to church.

You don’t?!?

No. I’m not christian.

But you believe in god. If you believe in god, you’re a christian.
No, other religions believe in a god too- not just christians. (again, no mention of any personal beliefs…)
Oh. So what do jews believe? (at no point did I actually say “I’m jewish”)
Well…christians were once jews. Jews don’t believe that jesus is the messiah, they are still waiting. The jews believe in the old testament, but not the new. (gross oversimplification)

Oh. So do you read the bible?

No.

No?!?! Why not?

There are so many books to read…I think I’m going to go take a shower now. (quick exit, stage left)

Peace Corps advises us not to get into religious discussions, which I’m totally ok with- I generally avoid them anyway because religion is such a personal subject and many people cannot discuss it without feeling attacked of like they have to defend their beliefs. The problem is, people here ask a lot of personal questions and you can’t tell them that you don’t want to talk about it because…wait for it…that would be considered rude of you. It’s not rude of people to ask very personal questions, but it’s rude to say you don’t want to answer. I could just lie and tell them something that will satisfy them, but part of Peace Corps is cultural exchange- letting people know what americans are about (we’re not all WASPs!). Also, I don’t want to proverbially shoot myself in the foot…sometimes it’s just better to be vague and let people draw their own conclusions.