The One Where The Ants Attacked

WARNING, this is a long one! So, I will start off by reporting some more amusing blunders…so you can continue to find humor in my misfortune and struggle. The other night, the power conveniently decided to go out during my nightly tabo bathing. I was not the slightest bit prepared, when I should have been since it happens so often. I nakedly fumbled out of the bathroom to find my head lamp, sloshing my whole place in the scavenge, also squishing a number of bugs and probably drowning the rest, just to have the power come back on a few seconds later. What a world. Another, I was digging through my dirty clothes to find my skinny jeans for school one day since they are formal wear here (even though I hate skinny jeans), I shimmied into them and began to feel a crazy painful burning and stinging all over. It was 5 AM, I was still half asleep and had no idea what was going on. It was quite a fight getting the pants off my confused and sweaty legs. Guess what I found inside? Hundreds of red ants. I literally had ants in my pants. Not pleasant…very very painful actually, I felt quite violated. This phrase would never have become a common funny if people knew the true pain ants in your pants entails! Itchy butt for a week.

Speaking of ants though. They actually fascinate me. What other creature can hold up to 100 times its body weight? Did you know ants are the longest living insects, living up to 30 years? Also , all of the worker, soldier, and queen ants are female, some species of which are asexual and clone themselves without requiring any males! Girl power! As you can see, they have gained my respect, which is why I did not support the unsolicited attack on my butt and legs in my very own pants. Another strange ant story, the other night I was eating a standard meal of entire fried chicken, head, feet, and all, eaten with my hands of course. After dinner, I took my water glass back to my hut. I went off to do something unproductive, and when I came back to my water a few minutes later, ants were completely covering the outside of the glass in the perfect shape of my handprint. I don’t know what I was thinking in not getting a picture of this because it was soooo cool. I guess ants like chicken grease too…and yes I am gross and dirty and did not wash my hands. I have decided that the theme song for ants should be Destiny Child’s “Survivor.”

Nicole and I in our backyard

Teacher Dance Party

So, what could be worse than a burnt puppy from the last blog? Well, here we go. The other night, a giant rat attacked and killed one of the baby kittens by chewing off its face. How do more and more disturbing things keep happening here? Luckily for me, I did not see the aftermath. I woke up to Nicole pleasantly informing me one of the kittens was dead with chunks of it’s head gone. Then, her mom told me a giant rat was the culprit. I am also pretty sure I spotted this savage beast scurrying across the top wall of my nipa a few nights ago. I heard its hisses and clicks, waking me up in the middle of the night, then I spotted its outline creeping like a creeper on the wall right above my bed. Thank goodness for my mosquito net to be able bounce that freak off before touching me if he fell, but it would still surely still be a traumatizing event. Why are rats so disgusting and yucky!?! LEPTOSPIROSIS! That’s a reason why. I was also in bed for 2 whole days dead to the world with a fever of 103, a few days ago then woke up the 3^rd morning to be back to normal…must have been too much poison in my system from all of the spider bites or who knows what else. Before I was fully recovered, my co-teachers dragged my sick self in my pajamas to a beach party. It was actually really really fun, and I saw a different side of my principal, other principals, and the coolest teachers. 5 bottles of red wine were consumed and lots of singing and dancing, one of the male teachers plays the guitar and took requests, pretty fly for a Filipino guy. Some other pleasant things, I got to skype with my Subic family! It was their first skype session ever, and they were so cute and excited. My little shadow, Chloe was pretty shy and not her usual spunktacular self, but she still told me that she misses me so much and loves me. Made my tummy tickle, and I look forward to going back to Subic for their fiesta in January with Daniel and Hillary.

A few of my favorite kiddos

I had a minor freak out the other day. I had just gotten home from school and was changing and fiddling about while the girls were playing on my computer. Nicole runs over with the computer to show me something, and within seconds it crashes to the ground. The most painful sound my ears have ever heard. The screen went to being covered by bright green and red squiggles while the computer actually cried BEEP BEEP BEEP repeatedly until I shut it off. At that moment, I though all was lost, my only connection to the outside world, how superficial I know… I took a deep breath, shooed the girls out of my hut in not the most pleasant way, Nicole, who dropped the computer was balling with guilt. Serves her right. Brat. Just kidding. Kind of… I have been on spoiled little girl overload for a while now. It was probably for the best because now they are too scared to touch my computer, but this has actually enhanced their focus on grabbing at me and commanding me to entertain them like a monkey. Anyways, I was so so so worried I had lost all of my lesson plans, entertainment sources, and connection to family. I just stared at it for a while shut down on my bed…said a short prayer…then called Daniel to whine and for moral support as I tried to turn it back on. Turns out…it works perfectly. There is a green nick on the right bottom corner where first vertical contact with the floor was made, but no other harm done. I honestly do not understand how I get so lucky sometimes!

Fun fact. Everything is “ube” flavored here. Ube candy, ube filled bread, ube cookies, ube ice cream, ube, ube, ube! It is also bright purple! I have always been so amused and curious about this flavor’s true origin. I found out today that it is a root crop kinda like a sweet potato. AKA purple yam, native to the Philippines. Pretty cool. TEAM UBE!

Actual UBE!

The bathroom situation here never ceases to amaze me or gross me out. There is no toilet paper of course to be found anywhere. Most all bathrooms are toilets without seats and a bucket of water with tabo sitting next to it. I understand that hands are used, and tabo pours everything down after instead of a flush. But what still blows my mind is at my school, these immaculately put together women in their cute uniforms go into the tiny “comfort room” do their thang, and come out looking the same with no water spills or splashes anywhere even though the entire floor is a couple inches of standing water at all times! Oh, and no one washes their hands? There is no soap to be found anywhere...flabbergasting…and Icky? Will I ever understand?

Us 4^th year teachers planned a community clean up project, and we took all of the oldest 4 year students out to clean up the area all around the town cemetery since so many people will eat and sleep there the night before All Saint’s Day to spend time with their dead ancestors. It was covered with gross trash and weeds, but I think we did a pretty goof job at spiffying it up. My Dauin Filipino friends here had a Halloween party the day after Halloween, which is really not a big event at all in the Philippines. It was pretty cool though, giant speakers and strobe lights were set up in an uncle’s backyard. We all painted our faces for fun. A funny thing is that for Halloween, if people do dress up here, it is a vampire, zombie, or something else scary. Scary is the only option. We also walked for like an hour to a far away deserted cemetery at midnight, quite spooky, and the boys had a few good pranks. Families all go to the cemeteries to pay respect to the dead on Nov 1^st, All Saints Day. I went with my family to visit a few relatives and light some candles. I also had a long conversation there with my host mom about her deceased father and the whole tradition, it was a pretty cool cultural exchange.

 Some cool Negros kids came to visit me this weekend, including Hillary! We all cuddled and slept on the floor and went snorkeling and ate ate ate. We found some awesome restaurants and bars in dumaguete. My new favorite place is called Hayahay, it has tons of tiki lights and carved wood sculptures, they play a different style of live music every night and have the best fresh seafood, and it is where all the cool kids hang out. Saturday night was a volunteer’s going away party. The famous Harold hosted it at his actual house. Tons of drinks, food, and videoke of course. I had been going through videoke withdrawals, and I definitely got my fix this weekend. Hillary and I hit our all time low of getting a score of 22 on some Phil Collins song...I am telling myself it was because we were sharing the mic. Get this too, best part of the weekend, those of you who know me know how obsessed I am with Lando, one of my best friend’s bullmastiff doggie. Walking up to Harold’s house, I spot the spitting image of sir Lando. I might have cried a little bit…actually I definitely did, and was a loner for a good hour outside of the party playing with Lando doppelganger. No regrets. Harold has a bullmastiff and a Rottweiler, both are so so so cute. I still can’t believe how much Ms. Aubrey looks like Mr. Lando. Best part, Harold says I can come over anytime to walk them along the beach right in back, and he will feed me scrumptious food in return. Definitely made my night and helps a tad with homesickness. Harold’s house is so fancy and nice, seeing as he is loaded from the hostel and dive shop he owns. The night was pretty epic and turned into a dance party that moved to the one club in dumaguete and lasted into the wee hours of the morning. I mentioned he dated a few Peace Corps volunteers before, but after this wknd adventure it became even clearer of what a funny Filipino player Harold is. I give him props, I don’t find him attractive at all, he is in his 30s, but he has these young, hot foreign girls who stay at the hostel from all over the world fighting for his attention. It was actually pretty amusing, and one of his best friends, Christine (40 something year old sexy fake boobed Filipina with a 20 something German boyfriend) gave us so much entertaining chika chika, but these people basically live a telenovela soap opera life. I am still deciding how good of friends I want to become with these people, they might actually be insane….but sure are fun! Harold invited a few of us over to his other beach house the next day, which was great and relaxing and we said a final goodbye to Andrea, who went back to the states. If the weekend was not busy and crazy enough, I get asked to be a “candle” at my Filipino friend’s sister’s 18^th birthday party. All 18 of us girls wore dresses and said a little speech. The girl’s father sang her this beautiful song, and I started balling. I don’t think there was actually a pair of dry eyes anywhere in sight. From what I have seen, most Filipinos are very sensitive and sentimental, not afraid to show their feelings. It was so sweet, but it made me miss my own dad soooo much and this is the most homesick I have been yet…but thank goodness for our weekly skype dates, makes it a bit easier.

Hayahay

We watched a storm moving over Apo Island

THEN…I get a call from Peace Corps during my class on Monday telling me that we are having an emergency drill and since I am the warden, I have to consolidate my whole group at our meeting point in Dumaguete as soon as possible, even from the other island of Siquijor. It could not have come at worse timing, my students have been preparing for a month this special dance and song to encourage anti-smoking that there were going to present that afternoon…so I missed it. Quite bummed, and it was stressful telling my principal and teachers that I had to leave right away and texting/calling all my peeps to get them informed, but it worked out fine.... a little bit like amazing race. Funny enough, our consolidation point is Harold’s Mansion Hostel in Dumaguete, so we had more rooftop beers and chillaxed for the night once again. We also cut up some fresh pineapple and ate chooks to go chicken (the best fast-food whole chickens in the Philippines) while we filled out our form about how the consolidation process went. We only do this drill once a year, so it is good to have the surprise over with. Especially since later that night was the worse night here for me in the Philippines so far…It consisted of no AC in a dorm with 16 sweaty girls, phone fighting with Daniel, loud and drunk Australians coming in and out of the room at all hours of the night, someone throwing up in the doorway at 3 AM…stinky, and the shower I was so excited about not working…then having to make it back to school early the next day for my daily 6 exhausting classes. Depressing. That is today now and where I am at.

I went to the giant launching of “Ten Moves” last weekend. TEN for The Entire Nation, Moves. It is a campaign to raise enough resources to build 10,000 classrooms in public schools all over the Philippines. Its main strategy is to get 2 million people to donate P10 per day for 10 months. The schools with the greatest need will benefit, and a few of those schools are in my region of Negros Oriental. The Philippines public schools total recorded lack 66,800 classrooms. So, I realize I have not talked much about my actual work here at school. This is mostly because it is not exactly a positive situation at the moment. I have been extremely frustrated at school recently because there are a number of English teachers retiring. Nothing against them, but since they are just taking their “leave” now, not actually retiring until later, no other teachers can be hired. It has led to a very unpleasant and exhausting situation of only 3 English teachers left to teach over 1000 students. What is more infuriating is that I am technically not allowed to teach alone in the classroom for Peace Corps liability reasons, and I do not have Philippines teaching certification. To get around this, I have my own classes, but random teachers just sit in the back and all of the paperwork is under their name. For the past month, I have been thrown around everywhere to cover for teachers and this and that, so I am finally so happy to have a somewhat regular schedule. Turns out, I am only teaching 4^th year now, the oldest students. I co-teach three of the classes with a really amazing teacher, Cathy Credo, and have 3 classes of my own. It is a lot of work, stress with grades, and lesson planning since the classes are at different levels, but my students are so sweet and motivated to do well as far as I can see now. I also found out when us Negros kids consolidated, everyone else is still observing and most are not feeling useful at school, so at least I am feeling productive! Even if it is leaving me physically and mentally drained every night, it is what I came here to do. I have begun to implement a remedial reading program for certain students, grade 7, the youngest, who do not meet the expected level, the school actually calls them students at the “frustration level.” We will see if this will be successful or not, I just have to find a time when all of the students can meet. Glee Club is also pulling together nicely, I have the by laws all written up and objectives, we might even have our first meeting next week! My co-teacher, Cathy is so excited to help me with this, and it makes it so much easier having her enthusiasm and smarts be a part of it. There are almost too many students who are interested though, so we might need to hold try-outs. Who knows though, things move at a much slower pace here. Nothing much else to look forward to any time soon…a lonely Thanksgiving…but my students make me laugh every day and the beach cuddles and comforts me when I need it!