The End and the Beginning

No idea where to begin, this has been such a spectacular end of the year. Our school division had a giant teacher’s day celebration weekend, where I was made captain of the women’s basketball team. We ended up being the champions of the tournament… no big deal. Chris came to our games for the sheer amusement women playing sports here in the Philippines brings. Girly clumsiness, accidental violence, and confused cutesiness caused by sexism all at its’ finest. Women just don’t play basketball here, and if you do, you are deemed a lesbian. It actually makes me very angry for the girls at my school who talk about liking to play but won’t due to the stigma attached…it is sad. That night in celebration, my co-teachers, Chris, and I went to the carnival in Dumaguete, complete with Ferris wheel and luminescent candy cakes! Our school division also planned this giant dance number for the final presentation at the end of the week after the parade. Each division was required to plan a dance number, which is not an easy feat with over 100 teachers in each division. Ours was an evolution of dance grouped by age and including 4 different dances with all of the 60 and above teachers dancing a Gangnum Style finale of course. I would say turned out well and very spunky.  See video below, I am on the very left end in the beginning. The presentation of awards and dance numbers literally took 9 HOURS. Not even kidding, it started in the Dumaguete Sports Complex at 6pm with prayers, speeches, and intermissions, did not finish until 3am…and on a school night!!! Our school was a bit selfish though and went home after we presented around 1am. Way too sleepy! Dauin District Dance 2012

Intimidating right?

More random tangents that do not flow ahead, but I am being lazy so here we go...

My host mom confiscated two of the fighting spiders from a student at school, she planned to show me them fight since it is only this one breed of spider that does it quite viciously, but she forget about them in a matchbox in her purse for a few days. One of the spiders had roasted in the hot sun, whoops, haha. Sorry spider enthusiasts… There have been two new English teachers hired at school, finally! So, now I will only have 4 senior classes total each day, be much less stressed, and have more time to work on getting remedial reading for grade 7 organized and also enhancing the Glee Club! It is so bizarre that there are only 3 months of school left! Another note, I have gotten some cute used clothes from the “ukay ukay” market stands in the city. These are oodles of extremely cheap clothes that actually come donated from the U.S. and China. Fun fact also, they only sell A-Cup size bras in the department stores here… no comment.

Caroling from house to house is a big deal in the Philippines, and it would seem to be a nuisance having to get up from dinner every 5 minutes to give the visitors a bit of money, but no one ever seems to get annoyed. The other night, we actually had a giant group of nuns come to the door singing…guess what? They had MARACAS for instruments… made my night. I also went to my first Filipino wake the other day. Very strange… a wake happens for every single death here, and the body is moved into a glass chamber surrounded by flowers kept in the family’s living room. The tradition is that friends and family come over sporadically for around ten days to eat lots of food and talk around the body. My experience was intriguing, the deceased was a retired teacher from my school, and so I went with a large group of teachers. Once we entered the house, snacks and sodas were shoved into our faces as the daughter gave a teary eyed speech. Depending on the family, sometime it is taboo for the members to bathe when the body is still in the house. So many more fascinations still to learn about this culture…

I was chosen by the students to be one of the judges for the “Mr. and Mrs. GOLD pageant. They are all about the beauty pageants here. This event included sports attire, evening gown, talent portion, and question and answer test in English. I was amused and depressed by the blatant shallowness of it all, but it was fun. I was disappointed that the gorgeous/conceited girl won over my favorite female student, named Florida, but eh, that is the way the cookie crumbles here. If I had not dropped my camera clumsily in the ocean in Bohol, I would have showed you pictures… The next day was another performance of our school’s Rondalla ensemble, it was funny to see make-up being put on everyone, even all of the boys turned into white faced, red lipped dolls. That also reminds me of when all of us female teachers were getting ready before the big dance number. For some reason, I was elected to do everyone’s makeup? No experience there, but it was girly and cute. Then they drenched themselves in whitening lotion, which ruined it in my opinion, but that is the number one beauty priority here. Whiter the richer and sexier in the Philippines. Daniel said it probably looked like a Prince music video…

Our Dauin National High School Teacher’s Christmas party was a hoot. Tons of food and singing videoke, no surprise. Also lots of what are called “parlor games.” One of these is actually a version of musical chairs if you would, besides that fact that men are in a circle on the inside, women around the outside. The men actually tie eggplants around their waist and the women walk around, when the music stops, the women have to each grab an eggplant. Other games include the men having to run around fast and put straws into bottles that women are holding. Kinky. This culture never ceases to amaze me with the sexual games and innuendos used all of the time, but negative stigma of condom use and extreme Roman Catholic power and regulation. Maybe it is form of rebellion? Or, more likely, Filipinos just seem to love joking around about all sensitive subjects, which I actually find kind of cool.

BOHOL: Land of the Tarsiers

The Bohol vacation with Daniel was everything I had hoped for and more. Of course, we had our fair share of quarreling (being together 24/7 for 13 days,) but nothing too terrifying. He was a big hit with my host family after making them nutella crepes and singing “Pusong Bato” by heart, the most popular Tagalog song. His uncle took a video of him singing that song for his school, and you can’t even hear his voice under all of the tweens screeching with excitement, haha, pretty cute. My little sisters also really warmed up to him, which was adorable. We had a night beach excursion and Mariz even drew a picture of us. Filipinos always pronounce “Daniel” as “Danielle,” which I still find amusing.

We hopped on the Bohol bound ferry the next day and the adventures began. We stayed at this really snazzy resort for Christmas Eve and Christmas. It is on the highest point of the island and overlooks everything. Gorgeous, but such an endeavor to get to! Our poor tricycle driver did not know what he was getting himself into. Up up up, at one point the driver and Daniel were actually outside pushing me, the bags, and the trike up the hill, everyone was more amused than frustrated though, and we eventually made it to the top. Even though the fancy resort style is not quite our scene, the view was so worth it, and we basically had the whole place to ourselves. Christmas Eve, we drank peppermint schnapps in hot cocoa, trying to pretend it was snowing outside. We were woken up at midnight by loud blasts, went out to the balcony to see the entire island shooting off fireworks for Christmas on all parts of the island. The panoramic view was spectacular. We opened our present on the balcony in the morning. I had made Daniel a sentimental painting with some other tid bit gifts. He gave me one of the awesome animal bags that his mother made him, which I have been obsessed with since spotting them, a much needed bug zapper, mango tic tacs, 2 Bicol fans, and a number of other delightful treats. We splashed about in the infinity pool after, playing water games from our childhood, read a little, and lounged a lot.

Our  Bohol Balcony View

We hopped over to the other half of Panglao Island next to Bohol for the next three days. We stayed at this secluded beach place, 1/4^th the price of the previous place and so very much cooler. Virtually no tourist on this beautiful beach, Doljo Beach, and it was surrounded by average Filipinos who live there. I should have spoken more Visayan with them, since it is my language at home, but I get too nervous with hovering Daniel, the language master, around. We randomly walked down the beach a bit to the point and stumbled upon one of the coolest reefs I have ever seen! The best aspect was that it was so undiscovered and not even the hotel workers knew about it, or maybe they are too used to awesome reefs to think it was something special. So many crazy colorful spiny starfish and urchins, florescent fishes, and all sorts of other under water wonders. With my clumsiness, I dropped my small camera in the ocean… but the experience was worth it. We also ate the most scrumptious grilled fish of our lives at the hotel that night, which broke the bank by costing us about 4 dollars. We checked out the famous “Alona Beach” later on, and we found it to be overrun and ruined with tourists and not nearly as good of snorkeling as our secret Doljo scene, but we did get long awaited decent Thai food. 

Doljo Beach

My sand portrait of Daniel

My favorite picture of all time.

The next day was finally TARSIER day and my giddiness was frightening. We triked it about two hours or so up through stunningly gorgeous scenery and into the untouched jungle. The air up high was cool, trees were still, and the promise of a tarsier around any corner was so great, I thought I was in a dream. When we got there, it was deserted, so we got a private guide. Took us about 5 minutes to find the first fuzzy cuddle muffin. We also saw two tarsiers nestled together; the guide told us that that night was the ONE NIGHT a YEAR when they mate on the full moon, what are the odds!?!? We also saw a few other tarsiers up close, with their peculiar larger than brain eyes. They are so much cuter than I had even imagined, and they are really only the size of your palm. There fur is velvety, which I so wanted to snuggle, but would never dare risk traumatizing the poor creature. Tarsiers are actually known to commit suicide by banging their heads against blunt objects in captivity…eccentric animals indeed. I am so so happy I finally got to see them in the flesh. We went to the city of Loboc next to take a ride on the touristy floating restaurant, the river was pleasant, but nothing really special. Then we stopped by a freaky animal park and saw a giant python and made friends with Gussy the adorable and lonely monkey, who actually seemed to be taken good care of. We debated about making the trek to see the “Chocolate Hills” or not. We had head they are major touristy and a let down once you get all the way out there. We had a bit of extra time on our last day, so we made the trip. They were just what we expected, but worth the journey to now say we have been there and seen the tears of a giant. The ferry ride home was over rough seas and the crew literally had to through our bags over the ledge, which was a sight. Boy, were we stinky and grodified once we got back home. We then met up with all of our friends who had arrived in Dumaguete, had a good old tabo, and then hand-washed all our clothes at my host family house, pretty unique and cute Philippines moment and perfect end to an absolutely wonderful vacation!

TARSIER: I took this picture!

Just had to put this one in...

Chocolate Hills

New Years Eve comes around. It was so much fun having us all close Peace Corps friends together. We played homemade apples to apples, drank “tuba” coconut wine that tasted a little like bacon… and lots of videoke and canoodling. We were on the awesome roof of the hostel, Harold’s Mansion, and we were able to see all of the fireworks and a few Chinese lanterns being freed once midnight struck. It was a really fun night, and then we were up at the crack of dawn to leave for the planned boat trip with Harold. Our first stop was the famous Apo Island, right off the tip of my island’s coast. It was stunningly beautiful, with jagged rocks jutting out of crystal blue waves. People scuba dived and a bunch of us snorkeled around. My wish was granted when I found a turtle while exploring. I yelled at Daniel who was floating about a ways away, and we got to swim alongside this majestic turtle for a few minutes. Quite a cute moment, and yes, we were cheesily holding hands… We all got to explore the island a bit later, and hiked up to the very top to see the lighthouse. Most of us went back to the boat to sleep to save money, but it was not the best night of sleep by any means. Pluses include: amazing stargazing, bioluminescent bacteria lighting up in the ocean, and gorgeous moonlight, minuses include: chilly constant wind, baby jellyfish stings, one thin sheet with no pillows, wet ground boat floor, and smelly mildew. We got through it though, and the next morning, we were off to the mystical island of Siquijor. We snorkeled a bit more, and got more convinced to get scuba dive certified, people saw Beetlejuice like black and white poisonous sea snakes. Then, we had another great night of boat bonding, drinking, and game playing. Hillary and I showered with rain in our swimwear on the edge of the boat during the thunderstorm, pretty cool, scary lightning. Daniel planned out a game of Philippines trivia for us all with a little jar of nutella for the prize (forgot to say, there were 18 peace corps volunteers total on the boat, along with one of Harold’s random Italian girls who did not like wearing a bra). Fiesty competition, our team winning, then everyone ended up just eating the nutella, all with our fingers of course. After that, we all had a cute singing session with Chris playing his guitar, and then he broke out some surprise original songs that blew us away! The lyrics were so creative and touching, and his style is so similar to my favorite artists. My favorite song, “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young was also serenaded. Hillary and I forced him to record his songs at school one weekend so we can put them on our iPods, haha. That night was definitely the worst for sleeping. Every inch of the boat was soaking wet from the constant storming, the tarps were blowing up up and away, all we had was one ridiculously, soaking sheet to try to keep us warm in sleeping on the floor…it was actually a bit of a nightmare…but I guess us peace corps peeps are use to struggling, because there was surprisingly little complaining. It was quite an amusing/tragic sight, looking at one another covered in soggy sheets shivering and swaying after a night of drinking and then trying to get home on the rough waters in the early morning storm. Pictures to come! No surprise, exhaustion hit once I got home after taking Daniel to the airport, and I slept for a good day.

Soggy and Freezing

Peace Corps Boat Peeps

BARKADA Reunited and it feels so good!

Hillary and I floating about by Harold's boat

I am closer now more than ever to Daniel, he owns my heart, and my Peace Corps friends, they are the bomb dignity, but for now the fantasy is over, and it is back to real Peace Corps life, loneliness, snail-like project progress, emotional beatings, and sweaty teaching. This is finally the end now, thanks for reading this lengthy one, until next time, ayo-ayo!