The Giant Gutter Abduction

Sorry for the delay loyal followers, as you might have heard via CNN, the Philippines is experiencing extreme flooding due to Typhoon Gener and the torrential monsoon rains, all of our training site barangays have been seriously devastated, and over half of PC volunteers had to be evacuated to higher ground. Please keep our host families in your prayers for their many losses. In some areas the water is too deep even for the trucks bringing relief goods. I am doing okay, there were only 4 from my group of 10 who had to be evacuated. My house lost electricity and water for 2 days and only flooded a couple of inches inside, so we were lucky, even though right outside the door the road had turned into a raging river. It is very close to being all dissipated now, so everyone is in clean up mode and trying to get back to their daily lives, even though schools and most everything will be closed for a few recovery days. This might be my hippy self talking, but I can’t express the compassion and sadness I felt for the hundreds of scared and stranded stray animals during the flood, some of the saddest sites that I have seen yet. All of the street children I saw were having more fun than their normal troubles, floating and playing, and they are resourceful enough to find a dry place to sleep, but sadly, there have also been a number of drownings and my heart goes out to the families affected. If you want all the final statistics and more of the sadness, click here. There is also the CNN article on Manila here. Now enough of the depressing stuff! Below is the novel of a blog that I wrote a while ago but never posted! Enjoy.

As most of you have already heard…I fell into the gutter a few days ago. It all happened so fast! The drainage gutter deceivingly appears as the exact image of the sidewalk when full of filthy water. So to start from the beginning…we are living in the middle of Typhoon Gener right now and the downpour, wind, and flooding is quite frightening on a daily basis. However, not frightening enough to fend off my weekly mango craving or desire for an adventure. So, I dragged my kasama, Dan, to the palenke to satisfy both of these wishes. The journey was pleasant in spite of folding umbrellas, begging children, and the eventual incident. Good golly did it all starting going downhill on our way home. I had the bright idea of walking instead of cramming into a trike again, and turns out the only way back was through a very high flooded street. I was content with my sturdy rain boots on, but I felt so guilty for poor Dan, who had to take off his work loafers and roll up his work pants. We are trudging along, enjoying some good under umbrella convo despite the downpour, I am in front, when out of nowhere…I walk straight down into the drainage system on the side of the road in deep dirty water up to above my waist. The only thing badly hurt was my pride, since many people on the other side of the road saw everything including me struggling/almost crying/out of control cracking up with laughter, and dumping out my boots in the aftermath. Word of this incident got around the village so fast that my Nanay mom was waiting outside for me to get home to clean me up (everyone is a text maniac here since it is so cheap, and I think for the most part people look out for us silly Americans). Surprisingly, my phone and camera dried out and still work like charms! I will probably never live it down, but as long as it gives people a laugh I don’t have a problem with that! My saint of a host mother washed all of my clothes and bag while I showered off all the Philippines yucky street souvenirs. Of course the next Peace Corps medical session was on common worms and water parasites that enter through skin. Wish me luck with that, but also, I in all actuality, I haven’t slept for a couple of nights because I have an intense ear infection in both ears from who knows what, even before the gutter swimming. It hurts to chew food because my ear and jaw are so sore and swollen on the left side. I wake up every couple of hours with extreme head pounding pain, no fun at all. Luckily my PC friend, Hillary, loaded me up with Advil PM today and I plan to sleep until school on Monday. Peace Corps also put me back on more antibiotics, I have never been so pumped full of pills in my life!

Loveliness

My Adorable Neighbors

On the other hand, school is going along splendidly. I have my routine down now, teaching my English class every day from 8 AM to 9AM.  Ages range from 13 to 16 (8^th grade.) My students are amazing and so engaged and energetic. I was quite nervous after observing the chaos of a few classes, but I think the initial excitement of having a young American teacher is still keeping them interested, but we will see how long that lasts! I was quite tickled the other days because one of my girls told Hillary that I was the best teacher she has ever had. So cute! They also keep trying to buy me snacks, give me presents, get my phone number, and friend me on Facebook, but the teacher boundaries are up! My partner teacher told me the first time she observed my class, that she had never ever before seen 100% class participation (even from the rebel/hoodlum boys in the back) until my lesson and activity. Keep in mind, we are in a typhoon now, so school basically has half of normal attendance, so my class of 62 was mostly in the 30s this week, but it was still really nice and encouraging to hear. We also had a dance party get to know you welcoming shin dig with the Subic teachers the other day where “Call Me Maybe” played on repeat 12 times. Dancing and singing are a daily activity for everyone here in the Philippines (along with hearing random American songs in Jeepneys and by people just strolling and singing). Sadly, the teachers left their classes alone to attend the party, things like that happen all the time. Of course, there are a few criticisms of the teachers at Subic High and definitely the Filipino Education System, but that is why we were asked here to try to work together to make the system better. More specifics coming soon, but I definitely see the students as what will keep me going here.

My Teacher Helper, Jo, and 1/5th of my English Class

My Stomping Ground... Subic National High School, 2000+ Students

If you noticed from pictures, I got my haircut! It was just getting way too long, heavy, sweaty, and sun-bleached blonde on the ends, so I wanted to chop it off. My Tita Evelyn took me to a salon (8 out of the 10 employees were transvestites – including my flamboyant stylist) So, I told her in Tagalog to do her thing but make it short. She washed, cut and straightened it for only 50 Pesos (a little more than 1 US dollar) Not too shabby! I also hand washed all my clothes today, Tita Flor took 36 pictures of this one event and put them all on Facebook…pretty sure I de-tagged myself down to 4. Sorry Tita, just too many! This has become an often occurrence of needing to de-tag half of the fb pictures of me doing normal daily activities. My Nanay’s friend came to our house today to do our nails, and we got a lovely mani and pedi with designs each for a total of 280 Pesos (about 7 dollars). I can get used to this cheapo pampering, especially when my ears feel like they will explode any moment.

MORE RANDOM FUN FILIPINO FACTS: ~ Bathroom is called CR everywhere, short for “Comfort Room”, even though the comfort aspect is essentially lacking since there is no toilet paper or flush, the key is to pour water continually down until it clears out. ~ We have several “Brown Outs” here every day. This is when the power in the whole Barangay goes out from anywhere between 2 minutes and a few hours due to weather or a multitude of other factors of a developing country. I had some awesome family bonding the other night by candlelight. ~ Gossip here is called “Chika Chika” and it rules all of our PC lives. If a male and female are seen together by themselves it is automatically assumed that they are a couple. Us PC kids actually do not have a problem with this because it makes the women safer and keeps the masses of Filipina green card seekers off the boys. We also get so giddy whenever we get good Chika Chika from the other PC sites concerning actually PC peeps drama, fights, hook ups, drop outs, tears, couples, funny poop/host fam stories, and much more. All of this and more comes with throwing 70 mostly like-minded, outgoing, opinionated/obnoxious, and extremely different people together 24-7. It keeps us entertained and somewhat feeling like we are in the same world as back home. I hope we can all stay in touch this much once we get shipped off to all of our separate individual sites where loneliness is guaranteed. ~ I have also seen the funniest television shows of my life here. There are game shows galore and singing/dancing extravaganzas on all the time. The Philippines spits out so many talented people! More on this in the videoke section down a bit. There are also Telanovelas or Tagalog Soap Operas on each night. I don’t watch much due to daily shear exhaustion, but I have seen “Luna Blanca” a few times and talked it up with the other PCVs. I wish I could explain how wonderfully strange these shows are. In Luna Blanca, the main character is the child of a smoke demon sort, and she is in straight up Black face inappropriate makeup throughout. So much weird racist nuances around here. Also, I cannot find soap here that does not have some sort of whitening agent in it…Filipinos think pale and fat is perfect. I could write a whole book on Filipino TV, there are also a confusingly high number of midgets in children’s TV shows. My 5-year-old host sister, Chloe, says it is because they are the same size as her…so many other just plain weird characteristics, but as you can imagine, I can’t get enough of it! Also, the term “sexy” here is used all the time as just meaning looking good or well put together, 5-year old Chloe gets called it by the fam all the time and she also calls me it often…kinda funny.

VIDEOKE: Videoke cannot be adaquetly explained in words, but I will give it a try. It is so fantastic and mind blowing. It is the most common pastime for Filipinos, whether it is at a celebration of some sort or an average day to fend off boredom. The more well off families own their own machine; sometimes even with colorful lasers and disco ball accessories. Videoke is karaoke as you would imagine, but just with close friends, and completely random videos playing behind the most often incorrect lyrics of all sorts of songs. The videos to accompany the songs that I have witnessed so far have contained naked body painting, American Girl dolls commercial, National Geographic like animals killing one another, old NBA highlights, motocross, races, sea cucumbers just floating about, and so much more. If you are not laughing or confused already you should be. It cracks me up every time and I absolutely enjoy not having a clue as to “why!?!” All of us PC women got together the other night for a videoke sesh, and just to give one amusing example, I was singing Ricky Martin’s “Livin La Vida Loca” of course, and the lyrics actually told me to say “woke up in a sheep motel” while African safari images flashed on screen. I could barely hold it together and almost peed my pants. Hilarious things like this most definitely make the terrible times here worth it. The thing is though, videoke is not funny to Filipinos at all, it is just something fun to do! Also that night, we found out that Jo, the 76-year old volunteer (amazing woman cyclist who used to work at NASA sending apes to space…seriously), secretly has the voice of an angel. Her rendition of “I’ll Be Seeing You” almost brought me to tears. I am missing my loved ones back home so much, but it is nice being with new best friends here who are in the same boat. Literally…some people have to take boats to school because of the flooding, ha.

To end this one, I have never experienced the phenomenon of emotional goose bumps so much before living in the Philippines, in sheer happiness and in utter sadness. I count my blessings each day to be placed in such a captivating country where I am learning more about the world and myself than I could have imagined. Until next time…Ingat (Take Care)!