Tarsier

Tarsier

Monday, June 10, 2013

Summer Summer, Not a Bummer!


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!
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.
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.
My Shadow and I



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!


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…

Into the Underground River we go!
INSIDE
MoNkEys 
We are cool.
Us
Cutest of the Cute
<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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