Somewhere Over The Rainbow...: Fantastic Festival Frenzy

So, if you haven’t realized by now that this experience is an emotional rollercoaster, I will explain more of this evidence, and you can probably tell because this blog goes from sad to happy from different days when I wrote it, and I just want to get the sad out of the way. So, I am getting used to flies being all over me and my food at every meal, never feeling clean, being force fed rice 5 times a day, getting around by squashing like sweaty stranger sardines into jeeps, but something happened yesterday that will actually haunt me forever, no joking. I will just go right into it… my neighbor burned a puppy alive… The puppy had worms so bad that it could no longer move, as he was digging the hole, I felt sick and had to leave, but I could hear it happening while walking away. He saw it as the easiest solution to get rid of it without infecting other animals or causing much effort on his part. It definitely affected me. That is all I will say about that because it is way too sad, unfair, and depressing.

However, going upwards on the roller coaster of feelings, the next day was wonderful. There are “fiestas” that happen in each barangay once a year all over the pines. One night, there was one in the mountain province nearby called Valencia, so I hopped in the back of the truck with my entire new “barkada” group of friends, and we set off. As an American, I cannot and probably will not after 2 years understand the cultural phenomenon of fiesta. From my participation and observation, families visit other houses and eat eat eat eat and eat. There is also a lot of the “Mano” respect of anyone younger placing en elders hand on their own head for a blessing of wisdom. You have to stop by at least for a tiny morsel of food at every family member’s house, or they will get offended. We ended up going to 7 different houses and eating something from the gargantuan buffet at each one. My stomach was definitely stretched to its limit. There were also 5 total Lechon roasted pigs on spics throughout the night along with rambutan and lanzones fruits up to our faces. We also got poured on with typhoon rain as we were in the back of the truck driving home. At least our tummies were full, and it was more amusing than miserable. Again, it amazes me how much poverty and hungry children there are in this country, but extravagant events like this happen so often, making me feel like a terrible person for being a part of it.

PARAGRAPH OF RANDOM: I don’t know what it is about disciplining children in the Philippines, but it is pretty nonexistent. My youngest host sis, Mariz, actually drew with permanent marker on the kitchen wall with her mom watching and instructing, not yelling, her to stop, and the child was not even fazed, completely ignoring her mother. It is a little frustrating when certain kids are such brats, when most other Filipino kids of the population here are selling junk on the streets to make money to eat, or doing actual intense manual labor in the rice fields, working on roads, or chopping trees to help their families survive. Sadly, that is the way we all know the world to work. I hope this experience isn’t turning me insensitive. Another random tid bit, in my goals to blend in and look more Filipina, I am actually doing the opposite in getting more tan and freckly with blondish hairstreaks in front that the sun has snuck up on me. Last random wonder, we are in a week of teacher training at the moment, and we do these energizers before each long boring session. Listen to this, Rachel Sutton…The “energizers” are the exact dance game videos pirated off the Internet and projected on the wall. So all 50 of us teachers of all ages cramped in a tiny room, do dances to Party Rock Anthem, Take On Me, and more, together on a regular basis...makes me grin every time. Ok one more thing, I met up with my host family in Dumaguete for the opening of the Buglasan Festival last weekend. There were tons of booths with food and crafts, live bands, very crowded and sensory overload, but fun outing for a Saturday night. Our school’s Rondalla was also competing, and out of 2 schools, we won 1^st place! One of my favorite students plays the cello, fun to watch.

Dauin National High School Rondalla

Turns out, around 20 volunteers from various islands are coming to my hood for New Years time, which is exciting, and makes sense since we have the best/most affordable diving! Another fun fact, I plan to be scuba certified by then because the famous Harold lives so close. (Harold is the 30-something owner of Harold’s Mansion Hostel in Dumaguete, also runs a dive shop and keeps his boat off the coast in Dauin, who has a long history with giving great discount for scuba for PC volunteers and has actually dated a fair number of them, he is a character.) He is also all for helping with projects and donations, and I have heard nothing but great things about him from older volunteers! He is planning a beach camping trip with scuba/snorkel at Apo Island for all of us on New Years Day and off to the mystical voodoo island of Siquijor after, with a NYE roof party the night before. Daniel and I are also shipping off to the island of Bohol for a few days before all of that to finally encounter the TARSIERS! These lovely little creatures have been what enticed me most about the Philippines from the start, hence this very blog main picture! I cannotttt wait for this trip, the Chocolate Hills will surely be hiked, and a night dinner boat trip to see the trees full of fireflies is also in the mix.

I just got back from an epic weekend of Warden Training and the Masskara Festival. They made us feel like it was a honor to be nominated as a Warden, and Country Director, Denny, might have mentioned to a few of us that we were his favorites… It was nice being in the big city once again and getting my favorite salty caramel starbucks coffee. What happened to my Starbucks boycott you ask? Too much Nescafé nauseating 3-in-one packets is what happened. Warden Training was a lot of disaster planning and going over our responsibilities of getting everyone we are in charge of to the consolidation points in case of emergency. Not too bad at all, and it was very fun to reunite with everyone and have a fun night out in Manila. I also finally went to the famous MOA or Mall Of Asia with the gang, this is the 4th largest mall in the world, and for peace corps volunteers who have been cooped up in tiny villages for the past month, it was more than we could handle, and were outta there pretty fast. One of the best parts of Manila of course was just having a shower and AC for a few days! Except for the AC leaking on my bed and freezing me in the night (I was just on a mattress on the floor with 2 other volunteers in the regular beds, but I will take what I can get!) The big wig Peace Corps Philippines Country Director, Denny, also invited us wardens to his house for dinner Friday night…kind of a big deal. His house was amazing with such trendy décor and fantastic artwork scattered around. He also has quite the set up for us in the backyard complete with candles and a mini waterfall, and hundreds of bats in the trees above, haha. Pizza and open bar too, what more could we want? Fabulous.

View of Manila from Warden Training Hotel

Daniel got major points this weekend for taking an 8-hour bus ride (the whole journey actually went from 10AM to 10PM for him that day) to meet me in Manila just to fly to Bacolod with me the next day and fly back to Manila the day after that for another 8-hour bus ride home. I also had mail waiting for me in Manila that happened to be a very sweet handwritten letter from you know who. I am lucky. Everything went smoothly with us flying to Bacolod the next day… oh wait…besides that our flight got delayed for 2 hours just sitting on the runway with no explanation…but it was actually fine, we found out we travel well together, and we met up with all the other PC kiddos just a little later than scheduled, who were cool enough to head to Masskara as well. I got my much-needed super Hillary hug! We had the sweetest taxi driver ever on the way to the airport, he said that I have very expressive and beautiful eyes and directed to Daniel, “when she smiles it’s different.” Don’t really know what he meant by that, but it made my day nonetheless. MASSKARA was exactly a Filipino Mardi Gras. Tons and tons of people filled the streets, lots of drinking and dancing, floats and costumes, tons of street food, basically everything but the boobs. It was nice for a change being able to see all of the floats and stages so easily over the little in stature Filipino crowd. Since I live 6 hours away and my co-workers told me not to take the long bus when it is dark out, I stayed in Bacolod until Monday morning, making me fly solo Sunday night. Curiosity still got the best of me, and I headed out to the festival once again, and it was even cooler than the night before! I was also so happy to have actually brought my camera out that night too, when it stayed in the previous night. There were hundreds of handmade giant marionette puppets that were part of some contest. A wonderous thing also happened, so my favorite necklace with the clay hand from the tiny beach man in Costa Rica broke a while before coming to the pines, but as fate would have it, I found a one-of-a-kind different necklace with an even more awesomely creepy hand with black and white stone from a vendor on the street at Masskara. 40 pesos lang! Only cost me about 1 dollar! I was ecstatic.

Me and Mask

A woman attempting to force her baby to dance at Masskara...funny.

Kung Fu Panda meets Manny Pacquiao

Float

Is That You Woody?

Every Part of Every Meat Possible

One of the most exciting parts of this trip was the 6-hour bus ride home. It was actually more of a roller coaster ride, not even exaggerating. Buses in the Philippines own the insane road and drive like maniacs. Honestly, it felt like we were going 100mph almost the whole trip, horn honking, bags flying, chickens clucking! Everyone around me must have thought I was a lunatic because of my goofy grin and giggles the whole time…Don’t get me wrong, I was equally terrified. I was also nervous that my big bag would fall down from above the seats in front and across the aisle from me to hit some innocent unsuspecting sleeping Filipino underneath. Yes, somehow they can sleep on this tummy churner…but guess what really happened? I was pleasantly gazing out at the kalabaw, when in some form of witchcraft, my bag soars out of the top and backwards 3 rows just to hit me right in the face from the side… most people who saw just gave a slight smile…I was just amazed by the humor of it and happy it was me who was the victim and no one else! Granted, the bag stayed on my lap for the rest of the journey. Oh oh oh, but so background info, my favorite restaurant back home is The Melting Pot, and low and behold, as we are driving down some creepy little unpaved road in Mabinay, out the window, I see “The Melting Pot” Restaurant, and I swear I saw fondue pots! Maybe I was hallucinating from an overheated and dizzy 4 hours in of the ride. My goal is to make it back there one day to check it out, surely I would be disappointed, but it would be an adventure. The 6 hours of open air window scenes were filled with gorgeous mountains, ocean, and silly named shops like “Skunk Tailoring” with a picture of a skunk, “ Summa Cum Laundry,” “Curl-Up and Dye” hair salon, and “Chinks” Chinese fast food…I know I know…Oh Philippines, and this is only the beginning…