Dauin? Don't Mind If I Do!

Bye Bye Subic Bay

Oh my goodness, where do I begin? I am sitting in the comfort of a mosquito net in a nipa hut all of my own in Dauin, Negros Oriental, Visayas at this very moment. A nipa hut is a little traditional Filipino house made completely of bamboo. It looks so nifty minus the multitude of insects and even a few fuzzy rodents… it is open at the top before the roof and also a bit on the sides, so I share my new home with many more of God’s wonderful creatures…but I have Wi-Fi thanks to the house next door! It really is amazing how much easier this experience is having Internet at home, not to mention the gorgeous beach and coral reef a 5-minute walk from my hut. Dauin is quite a magical place, if you Google it, you will see that it is “home of the gentle people.” It is a tiny rural village, however it has amazing dive spots that few tourists have discovered. Basically, I can grab my snorkel, walk out to the marine sanctuary, and swim around wherever I want to for free and see tons of colorful sea beasts and exotic fish, even my favorite, the wonderous seahorse. IT IS SO COOL! Seriously, I will probably do this every day. I will no doubt get scuba certified here, because it is so cheap and people get trained in this same spot right near me, supposedly there is a famous guy named Harold who gives huge discounts to PC volunteers. I am getting all sorts of juicy tips and chika chika from the volunteers who are scattered around Negros and have been here for a while. The most well-known and superb scuba spot is off Apo Island, which is a 30-minute boat ride from me. I am told that it is guaranteed to sea giant sea turtles feeding near the shore every early morning. All in all, this place has got it going on! I love that it is such a small village and I will get to know every single person here very well (almost everyone is part of the same giant family as my hosts…host mom has 11 siblings), but also the bigger city of Dumaguete is only 30-minutes away with many fun things to do and the airport when I want to escape being a fish in a fishbowl for a bit.

My Lovely Nipa Hut Home

My Personal Potty Room... Tabo Expert Now...

Cooking Area

I had my first couple of days at school already. Dauin National High School has a little over 1000 students and seems to have a great atmosphere. It is proud of being an “environmentally friendly” campus, with no trash receptacles because they have a Cebuano slogan that basically translates to “your trash your problem.” I found this awesome and hilarious. Shockingly, it works and kids take home their trash, it is really clean all around besides some of the ceilings are falling through and the desks are a broken clusterfuck…but that’s what I am here for! They are very proud of their male volleyball team who wins every tournament. They also want me to coach the boys’ basketball team! I am actually really looking forward to that since a few of them were already impressed by my celeb appearance when they were shooting around once. I am still figuring out my teaching schedule, but I will have two 7^th grade classes and three 12^th grade classes. There are a few students in my 12^th grade class who are older than me…a little awkward. There is also a 28 year old in my 7^th grade class; things work a little differently here if you haven’t figured that out yet...which is likely because I don’t think I quite have yet! The school had a big presentation and event for me on my first day, there was a big banner welcoming me. I was told I had to make a speech to the whole school, parents, and representatives from Dep Ed or Department of Education, aka the big wigs in an hour. Blah. Peace Corps has definitely made me get used to being put on the spot, so surprisingly, I did not struggle to much with this…because I spoke in English, haha. The funniest part was how I was introduced by one of the teachers, she was holding my resume in her hands from who knows where, and she listed off my so called skills and added my hobbies and all of the countries I have travelled to. It sounded a little like a dating advertisement and I chuckled. It was overwhelming meeting so many people with complicated names, every single person commenting on my looks, and being started at all alone by so many people all day, but that is something we have all gotten used to since arriving here from another planet. I really did think I would blend in? but it is my honker of a nose that they like so much because Filipinos have very flat noses. Chloe never let me forget that, oh how I miss my little shadow!

I am slowly but surely picking up Visayan/Cebuano, but it will definitely take time. I eat all my meals and hang out a lot at the main house across from my hut. There is my host mom(Joy) and dad(Allan), two host sisters ages 5(Mariz) and 7(Nicole), 23 year old brother(Adonis), grandmother(Lola), 1 dog, and 3 cats, no one speaks a lick of English except for Joy the science teacher, so that is great for my language immersion. I have had the best mangos of my life here, from the tree growing right outside my door. There are also tons of palm trees with coconuts and kalamungay, or Visayan horseradish trees, which everyone is so proud of here. Another thing about the Visayas that I was looking forward to is all of the spectacular seafood. For my first dinner I had some giant delish pink fish, and my sisters were fighting over who got to eat the eyes…Another random funny fact, I guess my Subic host mom found my Dauin host mom on Facebook and talked with her over chat for an hour about my favorite foods and what I am like. So cute.  If you haven’t seen, that whole Subic family has been blowing up my Facebook, I miss them so much already! Daniel, Hillary, and I promised that we would be back for Fiesta in January, so we need to start planning that excursion! Also, my school’s principal took me up to the beautiful mountain province of Valencia yesterday to see the Girls Scouts camp. Over 3500 girl scouts had been camping out there for the past 3 days and they had thousands of tents set up. Slightly smelly but so cool to look out at! There will be so much more to come on my adventures in Dauin, since I will be here for the next two years, so let me wrap up Subic and our Swearing-In Ceremony in Manila next.

My Bamboo Roof from Inside

My Backyard with Apo Island

Wow was it sad on my last day in Subic. Started off with a palenke trip with Daniel, we were walking through the market and he sees roaches crawl right over my feet and I did not even notice a thing…nothing unusual at this point. Ha, and it went downhill from there. I had gotten so close with my host family, we all used the same soap for goodness sake! So, my last blog told all about my amazing surprise party that my host family threw with the giant tarp of my face, by the way, other volunteers were so amazed by this and I seem to be the only person out of all 66 of us who got anything like this! Proves another reason why my family is the best. Filipinos are very sentimental and emotional people, I can say that because every single one I have met thus far has been so. The saddest thing is, these people are not used to having new friends leave them. In the states, we are all accustomed to moving around and getting to know new places/people, however, here, families stay in the same houses where they are born their whole lives, then their children stay and so on and so on. So, they hardly ever get close with new people who leave…made it all very very sad and hard. Goodbyes are no fun at all. As I packed away my life once again, while “white trash party” by Eminem played on repeat outside my window 17 times, I thought more about what was ahead of me. I had gotten so much into the Peace Corps training Subic routine, I had my best friend, boyfriend, loving spectacular Filipino family, and now it was all going to be taken away! I was solemn for a brief moment, but then I remembered how I knew exactly what I was getting into when I signed up for this. I just had no idea I would meet the most amazing people I have ever known. Hillary and I gave our tear jerking speech at the end of the family farewell party, many a tears were shed and smooshy hugs a had. Daniel’s goof of a host father told everyone that our wedding is being planned for January Fiesta so to come back for it. My mother did little to discourage this, more like cackling laughter of encouragement. I am quite used to awkward moments like this since being in the Philippines, and we are always able to “joke-lang” and laugh it off. We also completed our 2-hour Subic teacher training, we ended up compiling 20 binders of "Innovative Teaching Methodologies" concerning Multiple Intelligences, Internet Resources, Phonology, and Learning Styles. Daniel made an awesome video explaining it all that we put on 10 flash drives to give to our partner teachers. I also pulled through getting the 14 giant Tarps made, doubles of 7 designs with grammar rules. The teachers were so appreciative and impressed. Oh, and also after the farewell party, besides the point, a giant bouquet of yellow flowers and sparkly things were waiting in my room for me, because my family knows my favorite color at the moment is yellow. Like I haven’t been showered with enough gifts and love already!

TARPS, wish I got a photo of all 7! 

Daniel Presenting our Community Project for the teachers of Subic High

Now on to Manila. Manila. Manila is definitely in a league of its own. It is unbelievably crowded mixed with ritzy glam, clubs, and hotels, right alongside extreme poverty. Everywhere you walk you see babies and mothers sleeping in filthy rags on cardboard, crumpled bodies of people curled up against one another for comfort, and the most street children anywhere in the world dodging between traffic while begging for money. I don’t think you ever get used to seeing all of this, but it is terrifying how easily it is to ignore them, myself included. As I talked about briefly before though, it is just feeding the cycle as well as putting yourself in danger if you try to do anything else. We stayed in a place right across from the U.S. Embassy where Swearing-In was taking place. It was such a treat to have a shower and AC for a few days, also always fun when we all get together, hence Hobbit Hole adventure. We had read about this place that had been established by a former Peace Corps volunteer and only employs people with dwarfism. We obviously got our hopes up too high because there were only a couple of midgets there, but everyone was so friendly and it was still really fun drinking “flaming frodos.” Each cluster of training sites had to prepare a short cultural presentation in advance to perform at the Embassy for Swearing-In. Our group revamped the Filipino story of the first man and woman, “Malakas at Maganda,” and added a bit of humor and PC volunteer ending with a twist. I was a lizard with a chase scene, fun stuff. Other groups sang songs and did dances, but ours was all in Tagalog and the best of course. For the big event, a huge portion of the fellas bought “Barongs” to wear, the traditional male formal wear in the Philippines that buttons all the way to the top. Daniel looked pretty snappy. After all of the festivities, it was time to say goodbyes again as we all departed for our permanent sites the next morning. No surprise, we are planning reunions already. One of the biggest festivals in the Philippines actually takes place on my island of Negros in October and is supposedly a giant Mardi Gras, which a big group of us are hoping to crash.

The Feared Foursome

Official PCVs at last

Well I suppose that is it for now! I can’t reiterate how much I love my site and that I can get everywhere important (school, beach, market, home, bus) within an 8-minute walk! Perfect small size, stunning mountains, crystal clear beach with coral reef, DIFFERENT COLORED SEA HORSES. Sea horses forever. I have a wonderful host family once again, brilliant mentor teacher at the high school (Kathy), sweet students who want me to start a GLEE club, great principal (Ma’am Alcala), scrumptious fruits, my own nipa hut, and so much more. It will be difficult starting from scratch with a whole new language, but the teachers at school are overly willing to help me. I am missing Daniel and all my PC friends like crazy already (missing family back home more than imaginable at this point!), but thank heavens for cheap texting here and skype working so well. COME VISIT ME!