It’s been a while since I’ve posted much and that’s because I’ve been gone. The past week has been mostly without power and communications other than smoke signal and messenger pigeons. Before that, however, I was away from my town for about 2 weeks.
The break started with a pretty exciting event, I went to Legaspi City to attend a Bamboo concert with two other volunteers (one PCV, one Japanese volunteer) at the Albay Astrodome. “Astromdome” seems to be code for really-freaking-hot indoor concrete basketball court covered with plastic chairs and flanked with bleachers. The bathrooms were surprisingly empty and relatively clean- something which I’ve learned to really appreciate over the years (to date, the grossest bathroom I’ve ever been in was at a hostel I stayed at in Amsterdam in 2001). There were four(!!!) opening acts before Bamboo came out, and each was better than the one before. The final act was a local group that won the “Rock like Bamboo” competition at the mall that afternoon and they rocked it hard. The kid who was the lead singer had so much stage presence, it was unbelievable! The concert itself was great, but very short. The band went off and I thought they were going for a set break. I guess that they don’t do that here, ’cause it was the end of the show. I guess it wasn’t much longer than when I saw them play at the Kaogma Festival in Pili, but we were a whole lot farther back. And some kid with creepy ET fingers kept waving them around in front of my camera.
After the concert I finally went and got a haircut, it’s only been 6 months or so and I’d gotten my hair rebonded, so it was a little damaged. But post-haircut, I was feeling like a million pesos (~$20,000) and got on a night bus to Manila with Jarod and Mariah. We had an uneventful ride filled with midnight snacks in roadside food stands and watching Big Fish on the bus TV. I arrived in Manila sometime around 4 am and after walking 5 blocks to the Pension that PC uses, I checked in and got a few hours of sleep. There were some other volunteers there, we were all heading to Cavite (about 2 hour’s bus ride from Manila) for our technical training. My main goal before going to Cavite was to get a chai latte at Starbucks, but I was bummed to discover that Starbucks Philippines doesn’t carry chai. I did, however, find peaches and plums at the grocery in the mall (and stupidly didn’t buy one- the fruit here is great, but I miss berries and peaches and plums and berries and peaches…).
A few hours later, we all arrived in Silang, Cavite for 6 days of sector specific training with the other education volunteers as well as the CYF (cildren/youth/family) PCVs in my batch. In past years this training has been over the span of 2 weeks, but last year’s group apparently thought that 2 weeks was too long to be gone and we got one jam-packed week as the result. Every day we had sessions and meetings from 8am until 7pm, whereupon we were free to go to the mall and eat Wendy’s and Burger King or sit around and watch movies and play games in the rec room. The sessions weren’t all terribly interesting, but across the board the volunteer led sessions were superior to those that weren’t. One guy was particularly bad, he was giving a session about how to hold a successful workshop and he was NOT teacing by example. Despite some of the less than stellar sessions, there were some really great sessions and the opportunity to talk and compare notes with our batch-mates and people in our sectors who’ve been here for a year already. Unfortunately, a lot of people were less than thrilled about the way the training was going and were openly rude about it- skipping multiple sessions, wandering in late, falling asleep and talking with neighbors, all the while complaining. Not that I didn’t think that some things were less than stellar, but I at least made the effort to be present in every session (only late once, because of schedule confusion) and to at least present the appearance of attentiveness and interest. It was irritating to see many people act like this was an imposition on them to be there, rather than something that was intended to help.
At the end of our training, we went out into the neighboring schools and did small teaching workshops. My group, Primary Education, has only five people in our batch countrywide and we worked together to team teach a 2 hour mini-workshop. We drove for more than an hour to get to a school, which had an exemplary SPED program (we were grouped with the four SPED volunteers, who were going to observe the classes), and were greeted by a group of teachers and students who put on an opening program that lasted the better part of an hour.
It was really amazing, the students serenaded us with some songs on the lyre (it’s really a marching xylophone, they just call it a lyre) and a group of hearing impaired students signed the doxology and the national anthem (EVERYTHING here begins with a prayer and the national anthem, you can’t have a simple meeting without doing both of these things without risk offending everyone and upsetting order). After that, they had one of the visually impaired students come up and sing a song for us. This was followed by an interpretive dance by a student with Downes Syndrome, who is a Special Olympics Philippines gold medalist for this routine. Interjected between the performances, we all got up and introduced ourselves, and people from the school gave “messages” and “welcomes.” At my school there isn’t a SPED program this year, I don’t remember exactly why- something about a lack of a teacher or students (which I highly doubt). Apparently, at the other schools the SPED students are frequently requested to perform for ceremonies like this and people are very proud and honored to have them there. I was very pleased with the way that the students were treated by their teachers and peers alike. Too often here, people will say things that they think are funny or innocent but come off sounding ignorant or cruel in the way that they talk about or to others, and not just those with special needs. A couple of times it felt like a comment about a student was going in that direction, but it didn’t. It was a pleasant surprise, especially when it’s not uncommon to witness teachers (who are none too slender themselves) stand a chubby 8-year-old student up and point him out as an example of “an obese.”
Overall, our workshop went well. We worked with the teachers on various strategies to use in the classroom to improve reading ability and comprehension. Most of the ideas that we presented didn’t appear to be new information to the teachers, they knew the buzz words and terms but weren’t terribly familiar with strategies for implementing them in the classroom. We came to the conclusion that we were successful; the teachers were very eager to be there, and kept mentioning that they hoped we’d come back soon. We even got “orchids” on our feedback forms, whatever that means.
Following the close of our PST2 (pre-service training 2), I went to the nearby town of Tagaytay with 17 of my fellow volunteers. Once there, we arranged for a jeepney to take us down to a town on Lake Taal (say: ta-all) and a boat to take us across the lake to the Taal Volcano in the middle of the water. After a wet boat ride and hot and dusty 4k walk, with mint growing along the path, up to the crater (being followed by guys on horseback asking us if we wanted a ride yet, “only 300 pesos!”), we got a nice view down into the crater of the main volcano in a complex of more than 40 cones in the surrounding valley. In the center of the crater is a sulpheric lake, which has an island within it. All around the shore of the crater lake, you can see plumes of steam and volcanic gas escaping this still-active volcano. We hung around at the top of the crater before making the walk back down to shore and back across the lake and up to town in our rented boats and jeepney. We proceeded directly from Tagaytay back to get our luggage and head on to Manila, all being extremely sweaty, dirty, smelly and tired. It was a welcome treat to arrive in the hostel in Manila and get cleaned up.
The nice thing about Manila is that there are so many things there that make you forget that you’re in another country on the other side of the planet from home. They have American fast food, restaurants of every ethnicity, multiplex movie theaters playing movies that are at least semi-recent and people are a lot less likely to stare at you like you’re from another planet. On the other hand, these luxuries come at a hefty price- which never seems so bad at the time, but later leaves you wondering why your wallet’s empty. In addition to the monetary cost, there is also an emotional cost. In the city you see the absolute extremes of situation here, there are super-posh hotels and malls filled with beautiful people and there are families living on the street in front our hostel bathing in the gutter water and begging for food. It’s really shocking to see such a stark contrast in one place, almost forgetting where you are, feeling like you’re in a big city at home and suddenly being shocked back into the remembrance that you’re in a third world country.
The next few days in Manila were spent at the Peace Corps Office, doing research, finding out that I have a fabulous tropical SKIN FUNGUS (it’s harmless, just white spots on my arms on which I have to rub athlete’s foot anti-fungal creme) and getting acquainted with people and places in the office. Aside from that, there was a lot of running around doing things that are only possible in the really big cities and preparing to go back to site. I did manage to eat some really fabulous Middle Eastern food, but the supposed Taco Bell managed to elude me (or rather I never made it out to see if it was really there). I guess it just gives me something to look forward to on my next trip to Manila.
Yea Manila! Look foreward to seeing you there (hopefully).