Well, hi there! I have just about hit the 1-year mark of
living in the Philippines…It feels like it has gone by in a flash, but other
times it feels like the hours of the day drag on like a snail trying to slosh
up a tree. I am feeling a little down now with my parents gone and Daniel and I
tangling on and off of the jagged rocks, but I am so happy my brother is
sticking around for a bit to keep me company and sane.
When I was in Bicol, Daniel’s host uncle took us out to his
farm. Goats galore, which of course I chased around. Toto, his uncle, joked
around and told me if I could catch a goat, I could keep it. He also kept
talking about how they have one horse, but all of the farmers are afraid of it
and it can’t be tamed. I was terrified walking up to it in the middle of the
rice fields, but I walked really slow and sweet talked quietly, and it accepted
my friendship! It let me pet it and it playfully bit my shirt. Tito joked that
I did not catch any goats, but I caught the most difficult of them all, the
horse! It was quite lovely moment that Daniel caught on his little phone cam. 2
weeks after that, and it was FINALLY time for Mom, Dad, and Matthew to arrive!
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| Lovely Horsey |
We stayed at swanky Hotel H2O in Manila for a couple of
days. We had an aquarium as one wall of the room, trippy. This place was very
cool, but still very Filipino…it was like a bubble of trendy calmness in a snow
globe filled with chaos, deranged cats, honking jeepneys, and street kids
outside…but no snow. The hotel was located inside a giant mall and basically Filipino
Sea World outside. We saw a Fountain show that cannot be appreciated for it’s
hilarious amazingness with just words, and I won’t even bother trying because
it would not be portrayed as it should. In short, it was all in English, but
nothing made sense, and it included live mascot scaly evil dancing men fish,
chefs, Nemo, one octopus, and 5 stars. We also saw a cute seal show, where a
gun was thrown into the pool as a prop for the seal to retrieve…only in the
Philippines… The family finally got to try the num nummy Ube purple yam flavor
in the form of shake. It got mixed reviews. Next, we all sat together and did
that thing where the fish eat off the dead skin on your feet. I don’t know if I
have ever laughed so hard before. I had done this before in Scotland, but the
fish here were in a fattened up league of their own, chomping on hundreds of
curious visitors each day. My dad and brother could not even keep their feet in
the water for more than 2 seconds, which might have been the funniest thing I
have ever seen, it is so rare to see my father’s face of fear and the high
pitch sound of terror that goes along with it. Sad to think that the times when
this happens, it leads me into a hiccupping heaving fit of laughter cry. Brings
me back to the times of Dr. Doom’s Drop ride at Universal Studios. My mom was
creepily unaffected by the extreme crawly slimy slippery tickles, which was
almost equally as amusing in its own right... she is a badass.
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| Bizzare. |
The next day, we took the 4-hour ride to visit my old host
family from training in Subic, and boy, what a treat that was! They had another
custom made tarp with our faces on it, cake, gifts, and a feast waiting for us.
They are the cutest! My family was also happy to see where it all began for me
in the Philippines. Just the other day, my brother mentioned something so
sweet. He said that I was literally leaving my mark all over the Philippines.
There are countless photos of me still in my old Subic family’s house, a poster,
my mom’s book, my gifts, even after 9 months. There are other framed photos
with the new family in here Dauin, islands away. My name is now permanently on
the wall along with the World Map at my high school. After he made the comment,
I thought of how these things will last long after I am gone and so many
stories shared along with them. It amazes me how my host families treated my
Texan family just as their very own flesh and blood, when they really had
nothing in common but me. It is really touching, and I am so blessed to have
gotten to be a part of their lives and so happy that all of my families got to
meet.
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| My Shadow and I |
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| Just the Kiddos |
Next, we were of to my home site and stomping ground, Dauin!
My family got to experience the Filipino fiesta tradition when a teacher friend
in Zamboaguita, the next town over, invited us over. This was their first
lechon, whole roasted pig, experience and everyone took a taste…even my former
vegetarian little bro, who went all out and pulled out a few of the ribs, the
best part. We all stayed at a resort very close to my actual house, and one
day, we snuck my little host sisters over to come swim in our pool. One time
when the touristy parts of Dauin came in handy for me! My Dauin host family
also prepared a lovely dinner with crabs, fried fish, and the works! We took a
boat to Apo Island to snorkel, and we all spotted the giant sea turtles! We
also ran into the infamous Harold and his boat; he threw my bro over a mango.
My family were really troopers while over here, no complaining
about the heat, mosquitos, or being squished in between sweaty Filipinos. For
the most part, we had delicious resort food and air conditioning. However, one
night, we had to take the bus from Dumaguete back to Dauin and it was soooo hot, over full squishing as many people as possible, and standing room only! They mentioned that as a low point of the trip, but not
a single whimper was heard! Almost everyone in my town got to meet the fam at
some point too. My former principal even ambushed us at our hotel with mango
pasalubong when I did not answer my phone a few times. Then, when we went to my
favorite restaurant in Dumaguete, we ran into 3 other Peace Corps volunteers who
were traveling from different areas, and all of the Australian volunteers from
Duma, they were not even together! Whiteys flock together… Matt tried the duck
embryo, Balut. It was pretty dark, so he said it wasn’t too bad at all! The
last night in Dauin, my parents took my friends Jen, Chris, and I out to a
fancy buffet dinner at the nicest resort. It was good living for us, we really
did not know how to handle ourselves and ate way over our limit. I hadn’t seen
deviled eggs in ages! Not to mention way too many forks and knives to know what
to do with. I haven’t eaten with anything but a spoon and my hands for a long
time now. Rocked our world, thanks parentals!
Remember my Glee Club was going to put on a show for my
family? Well, we had a few summer meetings of planning it, and then they
decided they wanted to surprise me. IT WAS SO SWEET AND AMAZING. I will
remember it forever. I am trying to get the video up on YouTube or something. They
portrayed a whole life cycle of love from childhood friends/sweethearts to them
as an elderly couple, with a song for each stage and never a dull moment for
over 2 hours. Besides the drama with songs, they also had wonderful individual
numbers, a couple of speeches (they surprised me and asked me to speak…everything
was going so well until I started talking about my family, then the tears
came), a group dance number, and ended with “We are The World.” Cathy also shed
a tear during my speech and told me after that we need to save all our tears
for when I have to leave. She then started telling my family that she always
thought I was so tough…but I guess when it comes to family…then she started
crying again, haha. They worked so hard on it, and the other teachers told me
they had practiced every afternoon for the whole month of May. One of the
members also presented a direct message to me that made me cry AGAIN and was
adorable, talking about how Glee would have never started without me and then
just threw out compliment after compliment. I was so much more than proud, and
I cannot wait to continue and expand Glee for this year!
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| GLEE Club and Family |
A few days later we were off to the Philippines “final
frontier,” Palawan. This was also the Daniel meets the other 3 most important
people in my life moment. After one game of my family’s crazy rummy at the
airport, he had become one of us. Everybody got along swimmingly. Our first
hotel had giant statues of animals all over the place, I was in love, why is
weird so wonderful? We went on the touristy Underground River Tour, which was
actually really cool. Thousand of birdy bats and kooky formations. On the
forest walk after, we hung out with tons of monkeys of all ages and a giant
monitor lizard that looked like a dinosaur. Next, we were off to one of the
most beautiful places in the world, El Nido. This cluster of jutting limestone
formations and islands is home to the Philippine’s largest marine archipelago
and does not have electricity from 6 AM to 4 PM. The reason for this is to of
course conserve energy, save money, and the fact that most everyone is playing
in the gorgeous marine creature filled water at this time. I had the best scuba
adventure of my life thus far. On the last dive, I saw turtles, a giant clam
actually shivering, a humongous cabbage coral garden, trumpet fish (my new
favorite), a poisonous hiding stonefish, and a puffer fish as big as my own
body. It was actually quite terrifying. I have never ever seen such giant fish
or soooo many fish of all shapes, colors, and sizes surrounding at all times.
Another really phenomenal moment was when it was just the dive master and
myself and we saw a school of thousands of triggerfish, he motioned for us to
swim through, and as we did, they formed a magical circle all around us, indescribably
beautiful. It still boggles me mind that it was real life. Later in the day, an angelfish bit my leg. The bite mark had two
layers of teeth, yucky, like a Beldar Conehead fish. My parents celebrated
their 30th Wedding Anniversary while in El Nido, and Matt’s birthday
was a couple days later…too bad he spent it having the tummy shames…
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| Into the Underground River we go! |
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| INSIDE |
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| MoNkEys |
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| We are cool. |
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| Us |
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| Cutest of the Cute |
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| <3 30 years |
So soooo sad saying bye to my parents, but lucky that my
brother is staying with me for another 2 months! He is volunteering every weekday
at LCP or Little Children of the Philippines. They have an orphanage, soup
kitchen, health center and more. All of that, and me busy at school, but we
still make time to explore, poke fun at primitive skills expert and hater of
shoes, Cody Lundin, and our new obsession of absurdity, RuPaul’s DragRace.
Also, secret, I reinstalled The SIMS on my laptop… hey hey, I am sure you are
thinking “Oh no she didn’tttt,” but I promise, I can handle balancing my SIMS
life with my Filipino real life this time around. In real life, my neighbors are in the process
of building an ugly cement block fortress. It amazes me at what Filipinos spend all their money
on.
I laughed very hard today when my class was presenting their
interpretations of a story. One of the girls started off by laying down, then “
Oh hi, I have been looking for you all, didn’t see you there, I am here to
present our class dramatization of the story.” It was not in that correct
English, and not supposed to be funny, but I was laughing loudly and alone like
a crazy person… which I have been doing a lot lately. Like when I found erotica
in the 60 year-old librarians desk, and another time when Cathy told me she
bathed with a glass since they didn’t have a tabo at our fancy conference
hotel, and it took forever.
So my classes… I have 4 fourth year classes, the seniors
again. I love it, but I have the superstar highest-level class first, and then
the levels progress downward as the day goes on, to my last class that has to
have a completely different lesson plan. It makes me leaving every day feeling
a little defeated and useless. My counterpart, Cathy, and I are also in charge
of completely making over the library. We have about a thousand books (after we
condemned over a thousand that had rat bite holes, no covers, and falling
apart) Anyways; no one went into our old “library” ever. The door was kept
locked and dust had been accumulating for who knows how long. So this epic
project was put on our plate the first week of school, which has been the most
frustrating thing ever, but we are making it work. I could list all aspects of
my infuriation with this whole process here, but what good would that do? We
will get it done eventually, and the students will enjoy it, and it will be
legend…wait for it…DARY! Every day is still an emotional rollercoaster. Of course,
the worst times happen at the worst times, like being pulled out of my own
class by a teacher to pull me into the office and force feed me all the while
every teacher at school is staring at me and joking around making comments
about my appearance and making fun of my accent when speaking Visayan. There is
only so much I can take before snapping and body slamming everyone to the
ground. I know, I know, there is nothing really wrong with any of this; it is a
huge part of the culture. The more time I spend here, the more I realize how
much our values are a product of our home cultures and environments. As Peace
Corps Volunteers, we are forced to respect our local societies not in an
abstract, rhetorical fashion, but through the accountability that comes with
living embedded in those societies for over 2 years. It makes us leave even
weirder than we came in, but hopefully learning something profound about the
human race as well.
Whew! That was a lot of info, not much else coming up except
for my mundane 24th birthday in a couple of weeks, then my mental
breakdown when my brother leaves on July 10th. My door is open to
anyone who is bored, wants a change in their life, and to make a difference in
the lives of those less fortunate, come stay with me and take over my brothers
work and play with the kiddos!!! THE PHILIPPINES NEEDS YOUUU!!!
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