Sweltering.

I apologize for the delay, I have had to muster up quite a bit of drive to write another blog, and things have been beyond hot and hectic here. Starting from last month, I finally smushed up some homemade guacamole for the family! Mariz and Nicole helped out and chowed down on the non-spicy one. The spicy one however, was the best guac I have ever concocted! My Boulder amigas will be jealous. I used the sili peppers that grow in my yard and a spritz of calamansi, that magnificent lemon/lime/orange/ Filipino hybrid wonder fruit. Yum Yum Yum, it was quite a treat. Funny how little things here like some tasty guac can boost my morale and make me so incredibly happy. If only I could find Tostitos Hint of Lime chips…

Mariz

Nicole

Photo Credits to Mariz

Our Peace Corps Project Development Training went very well. It was oodles of fun having our entire batch of volunteers together again, and my counterpart, Cathy, was so excited she got to come! She had never been on plane before, and Peace Corps paid for everything for each of our counterparts for the three days. Cathy and I created a great remedial reading program to be integrated into the grade 7 curriculum once school starts up again. We had people from U.S. AID and the State Department come to critic our plans and give feedback. Also, of course, always nice having showers and toilet seats again. It was fun to see how much more scraggly we have all gotten, will be even more interesting at Mid Service Training in 5 months.

I got scuba certified last weekend! It is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Right in my Dauin backyard, we spotted a spiny seahorse (one of my favorite creatures), several turtles, and crazy camophlaging cephalopod cuttlefish. Seriously, YouTube these things. They are unreal. We jam packed 6 quizzes, 5 dives, and a final exam all into 2 ½ days. Quite exhausting, but it is now very much worth it. It is an indescribable feeling being weightless swimming about in the deep blue sea. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.

The Palarong Pambansa or National Games were pretty cool. All sorts of competitions going on in Dumaguete, table tennis, badminton, archery, and all the other sports. A lot of students running around. I have been meeting with the Glee kids this summer, and they have decided to perform a surprise show for me and my American family, who will be here in ONE WEEK!

Daniel's Remedial Reading Camp

I rode a bus 8 hours to meet up with Daniel, but some sketchy airline sold his ticket, so he had no way of getting on the plane. So I had lunch with Karla, we strolled around the Bacolod Art District, which actually has awesome murals, and then took the 6 hour ride back home and alone. His journey was even more stressful. I am at his site in Bicol now to help with what I can for his summer reading camp. It is going really well besides a few miner disciplinary issues. For some reason, I though that this would feel like a vacation, but is just as hot and sweaty without A/C here, and the food is just as much goat and pork fat. It is hard for me to imagine a relationship with Daniel in the posh U.S., when we are so often here drenched in sweaty repulsiveness and having fiery diarrhea with no door to the bathroom. We could not be closer in terms of feeling comfortable with each other and our grossness… mind me, this is not by choice! I cannot wait for my family to arrive and for our Palawan vacation. Of course, on the way here, the A/C was broken at the biggest Manila airport = feeling like death and failing at life with too many bags. Then get this; my seat was 1D on this airplane fitting about 60 people. So, for some reason seat 1C and 1D were facing the opposite direction in the front. As if people are not staring at me all the time already, I was basically on stage the whole flight in an interrogating seat about why I like the Philippines… in Tagalog, which I haven’t spoken in forever. A giant group on the plane were all travelling together, they were the ones talking to me, and they were so happy because I was also wearing a yellow shirt, so I looked like part of their group. Again of course, many pictures were taken together on the gangway once we landed. Things like this are staring to annoy me now, which makes me so sad because these weird cultural interactions are a huge part of Peace Corps and what I wanted!

 

Art District

Awkward.

Double Awkward.

More Playing with Daniel's Fancy Camera

Double Weirdos

Nice.

<3

I had yet another near death experience. Have you ever seen the gentle swing rides at amusement parks? Image that… but in a demented fit of rage and on steroids. I could not believe how fast this thing was going… so of course, I had to ride it. I went to this makeshift sketchy carnival with my Filipino barkada from Dauin. A couple of them were brave enough to join me. I have never felt such an awesome sensation of flying or more terrified of shooting straight out into the sky. My feet started to hit a tree at one point, which was the most scary, I should have known they don’t test for gargantuan of my stature. We also went into the “Horror House,” which was not really even amusing, but what did we expect. That night hanging out with my Filipino group of friends, has probably been the most integrated that I have felt yet. Granted, they were still throwing in a lot of English along with Visayan, but I finally felt a bit at home and not like the foreigner for once.

Another frightening life event yesterday… Filipino monkey attack… We went out to Daniel’s family beach nipa huts, and his uncle has a monkey tied up there. Poor thing is tied up right at the men’s drinking circle and gets constantly tormented. Daniel and I were just standing looking at it, and all of the sudden the mangy beast pounces down on me and bites the back of my hand! I had not even been even trying to pet the thing or any provocation for such a pounce of fury! My life flashed before my eyes for a moment, and some scenes from Dead Alive, along with all of the traumatic Peace Corps rabies trainings on how we needed to cut off the head of the animal to test it. It has now turned into a yucky bruise with some tiny scabs…I think I will survive. Yet, another thing to add to the list… bitten by a monkey in the Philippines. What a life I live. On the way back from the beach, we rode standing up in one of the less chic modes of Filipino transportation… garbage truck. The garbage trucks are sans garbage though, and packed full of drunk Filipinos travelling about in the summertime, wish I could show you a picture, amusing sight, probably even crazier than you are imagining. Luckily, I don’t speak much Bicol or Tagalog, so Daniel did all the talking, and I get my Visayan as a much appreciated cop-out. Transportation just gets more and more unbelievable here. Daniel and I took a different bus back once that was insanely full and we had to stand, but we were too tall to even stand up straight on the bus! So we crouched like gargoyles with our backpacks for an hour. This is what I came here for right? Sure makes me not take things for granted anymore.

 So I will keep this one rather short and sweet. That is pretty much all that is going on, I am sure I will have many more entertaining stories once my parents arrive in ONE WEEK, and my brother arrives and stays for 2 MONTHS! We have a barangay fiesta right when they arrive in my town, complete with the famous lechon roasted pig, then the Glee kids performance, some snorkeling, then Palawan adventure with Daniel included. I am a little nervous for the big Daniel and biological family introductions, this will be the first merging of my two worlds! He has already won over my two host families, so there should be no worries there, and we both are in desperate need of a vacation with air conditioning and decent eats. Words cannot express how excited I am to see my family again, it has been almost a year! The longest we have ever been apart. I can’t wait to introduce them to my Filipino home and loved ones, and I only need to wait

 6 more days! YAHOOOOO!!!