Fire and Rain

Things are as insanely wonderful and drastically tragic here as usual. Nothing seemed to be going right for me last week. My lowest level class is not improving at all, and it is so discouraging, I can’t seem to do anything that they actually retain, not to mention how disruptive and crazy they are by the end of the day, adding to my fatigue and defeat while bringing my day down. Half of the things we assign, they flat out refuse to do, I just have to keep experimenting and brainstorming with Ma’am Cathy to get through to them I suppose. Teachers are required to follow these “competencies” that students should be able to accomplish by the end of each grading period. These are created by some idiot in charge at Dep Ed from 2008, they are completely unrealistic, illogical, and ridiculous. I am actually too embarrassed for the Philippines to post any of them here. So, the lazy teachers follow the competencies, don’t make any sense, and the students don’t learn anything, then the good teachers have to think outside of the box and create completely new material that will benefit the students and somehow be able to be manipulated into following the competencies in defense of Dep Ed. Twisted system that appears in no way to be changing any time soon. All I wanted to do once day to ease my melancholy was eat pizza and watch a movie one night, like I used to do all the time back home in luxury. I went on a mission to make this happen…things did not turn out as planned. The first blunder was the pouring monsoon rain thunderstorm that knocked all of the power out in the city. For those of you who don’t know, my toilet is a tiny squatter, which is just a whole in the ground with a little bowl that gets flushed by pouring more water down it with a bucket. I have never complained, but recently, I have been thinking how nice it would be to be able to sit down on it, with a nice cushiony seat. I added this to the mission. I went to the big mall 45 minutes away in the city, and low and behold, the first thing I see upon entering the department store are those squishy seat covers. They are much larger than my biddy bowl of course, intended for regular toilets with backs, but I thought just maybe it could just be set on there. I made the mistake of asking a salesperson there, who replied sassily with, “we don’t do the provinces.” Staring off the night with a little prejudice was only the first punch to my tender stomach of failure! I couldn’t believe it, but I still had a hope for city pizza in my mind that I had planned to take home and stuff into my gullet as I watched a movie on my laptop and drown my sorrows in a shitty Shiraz wine.

The power was indeed still out, but the pizza place had a generator so my spirits were still high, I even got the pizza I wanted, still of course not as tasty as any pizza in America or probably any other country…but it was some real cheese for a change. When this whole ordeal first entered my head, I assumed the pizza would still be warm when I got home since it is so hot here…but of course…this rainstorm chilled the air up that night. I forgot my umbrella, so I am speed walking/trotting around the city, soggy pizza brown bag in hand, only to get to my jeepney station and get another punch in the stomach. There are no jeeps to be found, and there are about 20 confused people looking around and being awkward. This has never happened before….and by Murphy’s Law, this would be the one night it did. So, I take a trike to the other bus terminal and get on a bus going my direction. Standing room only, and holding my purse, pizza, and pride, was a difficult balancing act, but I was just happy to be out of the rain and on my way home. Finally, the adventure is coming to an end, as I am walk trotting the 10 more mushy minutes to my hut. I get inside, dry off, change into my cozy party pants, put a smile on my face, take a taste of the so-so pizza, and begin deliberating on a movie. Just when things were looking up, I go to find the bottle opener for the wine, and somehow slip from a tiny puddle from the leak in my bamboo roof, knock over the wine, and the whole bottle completely shatters. I might have sipped up a little through a straw…nahhhh. But actually yes... At least it didn’t touch my computer, or I would have flown back to the land of the free right then and there. I was actually not as depressed as you are probably imaging right now. At this point, I had a good laugh at my own implausible patheticness.

Now, I have to talk about the true tragedy that hit Dauin last week. One of the jeepneys (that I take every time I want to get to the city and that Matt rode twice every day) crashed head on with a larger government truck carrying cattle. The driver, and 3 others were dead on the scene, while 2 others, including one of my students from last year, were rushed to the hospital and passed away there. The people in the other vehicle were minorly injured, and it all was blame on the jeepney driver who was said to be drunk at 9 AM. This is probably true, but this is also the intensely corrupt Philippines, and the other vehicle was driven by a friend of the city governor, so who really knows with all the shady politics. My town has not seen anything this sad for a while, and in a country where anything uncomfortable is dealt with stroppy laughter and as a joke… was really hard for me to handle. Along with the fact that the whole crash was caught on video and uploaded by a student to YouTube, which I caught some of my class watching and laughing at during class. Some cultural clashes here, I will never get used to.

A more upbeat note, Chris invited Jen and I to be judges in his school’s Mr. and Ms. Nutrition Month. In the Philippines, these large pageant like events are quite an ordeal, and judges get treated like royalty, so I was happy to accept. I got more than I bargained for when I was mentally assaulted by an adult bakla (gay male performer) wearing only a diaper and acting like a madman. Stay tuned for photo documentation, but it was all in good fun, and so entertaining to watch Chris have to MC this typical Filipino completely unorganized event with constant interruptions and awkward silences. I was entertained. The costumes were also amazingggg, one dress made out of lettuce! Many dance numbers like usual too. During one, the music paused as they changed positions and stops to the sound of “smoke weed every day” coming on the speakers only for that one line, then switches to another song. No teachers were phased, another amusing account of how music lyrics are never censored here because most of the time no one understand them. I had a good chuckle.

Veggie Lady Costumes! Redic...

No Comment... except Redic.

Afterwards, us three planned to go back to Jen’s site in Bayawan, since I haven’t seen it yet. For some Filipino reason, the buses were not running as frequently as usual, and we ended up waiting at the pitch dark lonely bust stop for two hours until one came at 1AM. We took advantage of this waiting time to have a Tom Waits/Bill Withers dance party and create a terrifying story of the creepy demonic goats that were everywhere, cats, dogs, bats, and falling mangos that all played a part in the night and our original story creation. We got to Jen’s house around 2AM only then to start drinking a few beers, talking politics, race, our students, and our own childhood tomfoolery until 4:30AM. What are best friends for? These Peace Corps friendships are not only fervent because we go through so many stressful work shenanigans, body/poop issues, and once in a lifetime experiences together, but also because these people are phenomenal in themselves, and they save me from curling up in my hobbit hole nipa hut and crying forever sometimes… which I often feeling liked doing. The Peace Corps batch 271 strong personality schisms have led us into various friendship circles, which I am guessing is most of our closest source of comfort. We started the next morning with some TV channel videoke. I am the first one up as usual, go downstairs to see Chris facedown on the couch, then we serenaded Jen awake from upstairs with “You Win My Love!”...no choices with cable videoke! We then made coffee with a sock filter and strolled around the town for a bit.

It was pouring rain again when it came time for me to go home. For those of you who know me well, you know that I do not have many fears, but being driven in torrential rain with limited visibility, is up there. Combine this with being in the very front seat next to the driver of a ceres bus (those buses that fly down the roads faster than a roller coaster and crush anything in their way) who is trying to sweet talk me in visayan while I am trying not to cry because I am more terrified than I have ever been in my life. As morbid as it may seem, at one point I took a deep breath and though at least I am in the front seat and it will likely be quick and painless, and I wasn’t scared for myself anymore, just for my family back home and how my Dauin community would feel. This might sound over dramatic to you, but I assure you, especially after the accident that just happened in my town, and they way everyone drives here…it is not! We joke about ceres buses knocking over old people, animals, and children, and flying off the roads over the mountain…but they do… all the time…scary.

On to a lighter subject, I had Glee Try-Outs this week! I had asked that interested students fill out these applications I made in order to lesson the number, but I still got 50 applications, and when it came the try-out day, 70 students wanted to show me what they got! Sadly, I already had 20 students continuing on from the year before, and I can only manage so many rambunctious hormone-filled adolescent in one area at a time. So, I told them all that I would only be able to accept half of those who try-out, and you only get 1 minute to sing/dance/or act your choice! As you can imagine, there were both very cute and very awkward performances once again, and others were a pleasant surprise. Like the student who gives me the most trouble in my last period class. He is Fil-Am, his mother was a GRO (Guest Relations Officer AKA Prostitute) and his father is MIA. He acts out constantly in class looking for attention, when he does actually show up. Well, turns out, he is an amazing singer! Granted, he speaks very little English and he sang most words wrong, also looking painfully shy while singing in drastic comparison to his outgoing self during class, he will probably be my best male. The look on his face was priceless when he saw his name on the limited final list, and he said to me in Visayan, “Ma’am, next time I will sing with all my heart.” No matter how much he frustrates me, that was adorable, and that was one of my most important reasons for starting Glee Club, to give students most at risk for dropping out, a fun reason to come to school, where they can gain confidence and feel accepted and talented.

I made versiona of "Chutes and Ladders" but with test review questions... my students were all about it!

The time finally came for my first GLOW camp. This is a project I was sure I wanted to do before I even got to the Philippines. GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World, and 6 of us girls on the island of Negros got together a few months ago to plan our attempt at a nation-wide initiative. The first of many GLOW camps was held last weekend at Hillary’s school in Sagay City, 8 hours from my site. I went a week early to finish up all of the planning/ preparation of materials. It was a lot more work then we had thought, but the end result was so worth all of the effort! I stopped off in Bago City on my way to Hillary to have lunch with a couple older women volunteers and visit a former PCV’s project site of handmade bags. These bags are made entirely from recycled plastic bags, and many women from local barangays make a decent living off of them, so this PC project is a great example of a sustainable livelihood project!!! It is great. I bought a couple for Christmas gifts, and then I was off to end my long day full of bus riding and window gazing, which I actually love doing when the sun is shining on my face out the window.

The weekend before was packed with GLOW preparation, but we did have a fun night out squished in there. It might be one of my coolest nights so far in Peace Corps. Hillary and Dave have made good friends with a local guy named, Nep, from Bacolod. He is also high up working in SM Mall, and he gave us a generous donation for GLOW and made us a tarp. Bacolod is the capital of Negros Occidental, the top half of my island, and it is the third largest city in the Philippines. It is actually my favorite Filipino city, it is packed with delightful trendy cafes and an awesome art district, and actually art/graffiti all over the place, I love it. We went for dinner at a tasty restaurant that actually looked more like an art gallery, seeing how the other half lives in the Philippines. I fell in love with so many pieces on display. The food was delicious, then I mingled around a bit and started talked to this super cool hippy chick, who turned out to be the owner, and one of the main artists on display! We hit it off, having very similar painting styles and tastes. She was excited to introduce me to her cousin, the other main artist on display. His work was mostly black and white really cool abstract characters, but my favorite was a colored character mural that he did, which covered the whole back wall of the place. I have never been to any place where I adored every single painting on display and had such a cool vibe. When her cousin walked in, turns out I already knew him! He was one of the friendly hippy guys I met in Siquijor at the Healer’s Festival during Holy Week last March, who we barbecued on the beach with and whose group was camping next to our digs. Small world huh? Hil and Dave had not met him yet, so I felt pretty suave and integrated doing the introductions. The one downside to the Bacolod art scene is there is no such thing as starving artists. I will make a generalization and say that everyone who makes art to sell in the Philippines is pretty well off… because those are the only people who actually have time to make art and not be working their butt of to provide for their starving families. All of these artists are in their 20s and definitely have family money, but they are really talented too. I wouldn’t mind having their life, haha. I miss my paintings from home…I have only been working on 3 here since most of my free time is spent sleeping. Well, that about wraps things up for now. My first and favorite class, Glee Club, and GLOW have definitely brought back my motivation, feelings of productivity, and excitement that has been laggin a bit behind recently! I have alottttt to say about Glow goodies, it was beyond marvelous, so watch out for the next all GLOW blog!

I was reunited once again with the sweet fluffy lovin of the UBE DONUT in Bacolod... they are extinct in my area!

Love it. 

My only other picture of some of the pieces... I was too excited and overstimulated to take pictures.

Click HERE if you have an hour to spare and want some more Philippines insight besides from my babble... this is "The Toughest Place to be a Bus Driver."