Snazzy Subic

Whew! It has been busy busy out here! I have been in my new home for 2 days now and there is so much to tell. First of all, the RAIN….it literally rains like a light switch here… out of nowhere it starts pouring so hard you think you will blow/float away, I am talking intense hurricane sideways rain, then all of the sudden it stops. This happens probably every single hour here in the rainy season of the Philippines (Rainy season is May to September so don’t come visit me then!) This is most definitely something I need to get used to, especially since my house has a tin roof and the rain keeps me up all night (along with the roosters and dogs making their respective noises throughout the night. BUT it is all worth it since I ended up with such a sweet host mama. Her name is Alma, and she is the same age as my real mama. Her husband and two oldest children are studying/working/living a few hours away in the capital, Manila. So it is just Nanay (mom) Alma, her youngest 14-year-old Joshua, and I in the house (the shyest boy ever, he will never come out of his room when I am around! Addicted to Internet games!) She calls me her daughter, and the kids all call me Ati Allie (big sister) quite adorable. Subic is a lovely little town with colorful Spanish architecture and lots of Banka boats on the bay. There is a somewhat touristy part, but the majority are cement houses and slums. The roads are swarmed by people, street food vendors, colorful jeepneys, and trikes. A trike is basically a motorcycle with a colorful sidecar attached. Those are what I take most places, since women do not walk around alone here. I am the tallest female in town, so that grabs peoples’ attention, but even more so when I am with my PC friend Dan, who is 6’3. We are quite intimidating. Our host families are mostly the only ones who speak English, so opportunities abound to practice our Tagalog (we have also begun our 4 hours of language class a day).

My House and Filipino Sister, Chloe

Chloe and Nanay (Momma) Alma

Living Room, My Bedroom is 2nd Curtain

My Kitchen

Family Bathroom: No flush toilet and "Tabo" bucket bath

Quaint Dining Area

When we arrived in Subic, after 7 hours on the bus because of the intense rain, our host families were all standing there cutely waiting for us with half of a paper puzzle piece. Each of us had the other half of their puzzle piece, so we had to run around until we found our match, very fun and there Nanay Alma was! She was delighted to get me and gave me a big high 5. Her house is part of a 5 house compound where everyone is related, big family, so it is so fun because people/kids/animals are coming over constantly, and I get to feel like a celebrity at all times. It is almost a little much, my grandma Flor says she wants to take a picture of me every day and post them all to Facebook (I am here for 2 ½ months). They love their facebooks!!! I completely lucked out and have Wi-Fi in my house!!! No one else in my group does, so I don’t know how that happened.  We all have very very different home situations, which I would love to elaborate on, but no time for all that. No running water, mirrors, or roof for me, but I got da Wi-Fi! The house is very dainty and cute and made of cement. Each of the 5 houses in the compound have their own guard dog, not really a pet sadly, but there are cats running all over and a couple of bunnies, chickens, and roosters. My new little 5-year-old niece, Chloe had taken to being attached at my hip, she speaks the best English in the whole compound due to watching so much Disney. We get to be goofy together.

Silly unrelated story coming up now. We talk a lot about poop here in the Peace Corps, for many reasons, but that is a whole blog post alone. Story is, my friend, I won’t name any names, had to poop on the way to Subic, so he got off the bus at a rest stop. He speedily ran in there, closed the door, sat down, right about business time, he looks up and sees the biggest iguana ever encountered on the back of the door right in front of him. He is easily startled, so screamed, ran out pulling up his pants and could not poop for the rest of the day. Oh, good times in the Pines…

Back to important stuff…My Nanay and family make delicious food! I have forgotten all of the ulat names, but I will be getting a lot more. Lots of chicken, pork, soup, veggies, fruits, and rice rice rice. For my first breakfast, I woke up to a magandang umaga (good morning) of a whole fried fish, face/eyes included. It was Bangus, the Philippines National fish and it was scrumptious, but a little difficult to avoid all the bones, I will get the hang of it! Also, all of the CYF and Education volunteers got to meet the Mayor of Subic today at the Flag Ceremony. It was nice getting together all again so soon, even if we had to wait 3 hours for the Mayor, he delivered a nice speech and was very appreciative of our work. It really does mean a lot that all of the Filipinos we have met have been extremely out of their way welcoming and genuinely happy to have us. This is not always the case with Peace Corps, even though each country’s government requests us. I get giddier every day that out of all of the countries, I was assigned the gorgeous, wonderful, complicated history, somewhat corrupt, extremely Roman Catholic, and overpopulated land of the Philippines. I have so much more to learn about it. Tomorrow only the education volunteers are travelling 2 hours squished in a jeepney to meet with the Department of Education in the Philippines. It is another big deal, dun dun dunnnnn. After we hopefully make a good impression, we will finally have a regular schedule of 4 hours of Tagalog language class, hour lunch break home with the family, then a couple of hours of technical training combined with hours at Subic National High School co-teaching with a counterpart. I look forward to meeting my students for the next 2-½ months! Giddy up!

Can you spot me???