Here
are some more hordes of random.
My host
family sisters and school have been wearing me down a bit… but a spontaneous night
in the city usually pulls me out of the slump. I experienced just that when a
few PCVs went to a pasta night with the Australians in Dumaguete, since we
never see pasta anymore... unless it is the super sweet imitation spaghetti
that is always served at birthdays to represent long life. This was much better
though, parmesan cheesy and scrumptious, and we kept ourselves easily
entertained by playing charades. After, we checked out a live band, who plays
original Visayan songs, which is surprisingly rare because most bands here just
do covers... it was really cool. I thank the stars all the time for being
placed fairly close to a city, so I can have these escapes. I don’t think they
exist in most of rural Africa, which over 80% of Peace Corps applicants get
sent to… but then again, I would probably have equally as amazing adventures
there… just not “escapes.” I will forever wonder about the mysterious steppe
and gers of Mongolia…
Speaking
of attempted escapes…for Karla’s birthday and since it was “National Hero’s
Day” holiday too; we planned a little long weekend vacation getaway to a place
called Sipalay. We had heard rave reviews of a gorgeous white sand beach named
“Sugar Beach.” My co-teacher actually told me it got the name Sipalay for the
foreigners who go there to “Sip Away their problems and worries with alcohol…”
which was exactly what we depressed peace corps peeps wanted to do to suppress
and drown our sorrows for a change! The best place to stay was booked up, they
only have rooms enough for 6 people, but we walked around there a bit, and it
was realllyyyy cool, all eclectic with weird things hanging from the ceiling
and a giant seahorse statue I fell in love with…but we stayed at another place
that had room… called “Driftwood Village.” This place was pretty cool, made
entirely out of driftwood, however it was not the vaca we imagined. The drinks
were overpriced, so we instead binged on mango shakes and “chicaron” AKA fried
pork skins. We slept on mats on the floor and giant spiders/beetles/creatures were
at every angle. Hillary actually broke through the floor upon our tour of the
cottage and got a gnarly bruise… but no resulting discounts. The girls sleeping
downstairs swore that we had a midnight visitor one night, we debated whether
it was an aswang, capre, or one of the many other mythical terrifying creatures
that live in the dark corners of the Philippines…we later concluded it was a
stray dog that busted in to eat the open bag of potato chips that disappeared
along with a whole banana bunch. At least that is what we told ourselves in
order to fall asleep the next night. There were gorgeous sunsets and great
company galore, which is really all we ever needed. It was the first time I got
to hang out with a small group of all of my favorite PCVs, primarily Hillary,
Chris, and Karla! It rained most of the time we were there, so we spent countless
hours playing “Cards Against Humanity.” Have you heard of this gem? It is
basically Apples to Apples, but adult version and way past being
inappropriate…I peed my pants once from laughing so hard. However, us peculiar volunteers
share a certain deranged sense of humor that you might not be able to identify
with, so I will refrain from listing any hilarious line crossing examples here.
I left a day early though to save money and get back for an introvert lounge
date with a tub of ube ice cream and Game of Thrones before having to get back
to the rigorous school grind. As I was walking back from this very secluded
beach, it happened to be high tide, so there was no way to get out except for
wading through the boob deep ocean…so that is precisely what I did… Backpack held
high overhead, jean shorts thoroughly soaked…just dandy for the 6-hour bus ride
home that followed… not much phases me anymore.
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| Me and Karla, the Birthday Gal |
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| The Sipalay Gang at our one nice din din |
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| GIANT CLAMS... that's right. |
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| Yea... that happened. |
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| We found a bat cave! Yuck! |
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| The Nemos I painted on my wall |
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| What was calling me home the whole trip... |
For
some unknown reason, it seems all of the sudden, my hut has been infested by
giant cockroaches, or uk-ok, in Visayan, Good thing I have my savior roommates,
the giant Tuco lizards. However, our relationship is becoming less and less
symbiotic... Their favorite part of my place is the bamboo chunk right behind
my head. So every time they run to catch an unsuspecting insect, I wake up and
feel like someone is running at me to attack and shaking my whole house, quite
jarring and giving me crazy dreams too. Not to mention how there seem to be
more mosquitos now more than ever, I sit still for a second and I already have
20 bites in one area. Ugh…evil bloodsucking demon buzzers! I did have a
hilarious encounter the other day with the big Tuco though, I was on my
computer and all of the sudden I see his giant head slowly creeping up behind
my table, then we lock eyes… and he slowly moved reverse/backward crawling back
down. I don’t really know why I found this so amusing, but I was laughing very
heartily out loud. It was just like “Oops she is still out there… retreat
retreat… but slowly…calmly…” Aye yay yi… it is always the little things that
brighten my day the most.
There
have been many celebrations here recently. My school celebrated our 43rd
Founders Day with a program including an intermission number from my Glee
babies. They were so cute and great, with only a few mic mishaps holding them
back. Then that afternoon was the “mass demonstration” which is where every
year level performs their giant group dance number, and one group is awarded
the best… so strange and so Filipino, but very entertaining. We also had our
school sports eliminations for the district meet coming up; I was in charge of
the table tennis group… almost lost an eye. The Glee group that I chose to
perform at Founder’s Day were mostly from my last class of the day, and I was a
little nervous about their dedication, but they surprised me so much by showing
up to practice on time and staying way past the time. They also surprised me
again with a random adorable thank you video for me. My students here are
seriously the best and sweetest anywhere… I don’t deserve them. This video made
me laugh a lot more than they expected I think, each one of them popped out
from behind this bush one at a time, said their message, then hopped off
screen, which I found hilarious. However, the part of all this that made me
feel the best was it was all the idea of my former most despised troublemaking
student! One of my best students even talked to me about how the other student
finally was not afraid to show his actually creative ideas, and that his whole
group has already been “changed” by Glee Club. It really made the butterflies
in my tummy flutter about like crazy. My brother joked that they should make a
Disney Original Channel Movie out of my experience here, which I think was a
twisted satirical compliment.
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| Founder's Day |
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| Founder's Day |
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| Ummm, Founder's Day |
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| My Glee Cuties Practicing! |
You might
have seen my super snazzy scuba photos on Facebook. My dream finally came true
with the picture of my turtle friend and me. I somehow snagged a special invite
to the dive instructor Apo Island dive trip with Harold, most likely because I
live in Dauin where they were sailing off from. I was a little nervous while
diving since everyone else was SOOO much more experienced than me and no one
did the safety checks, but everything went smoothly and I survived and got some
fabulous photos! Turtles… clownfish… camouflaging
cuttlefish… scorpion fish… a school of hundreds of jacks … trumpet fish … triggerfish…
what a spectacular underwater magic world! I am so scuba spoiled. But alas, I
have spent the last of my personal money on those dives, so it will be a while
before I get back down below.
BUTTTT
something else truly magical happened most unexpectedly on a lazy Saturday.
Just
another beach weekend in the Philippines, I was tandem paddle boarding along my
lovely backyard Mindanao Sea with the lovely PCV Vicki, who was transferred to
Dumaguete… a paddleboard is just a bigger surfboard, and it was not really
meant for 2 people, but we both have really good balance her from surfing me
from snowboarding and we made it happen! We are just playing around with one
paddle when lo and behold, a curious WHALE SHARK nonchalantly shows up to join
our tomfoolery! I saw the spots and went
into brief shock of elation, luckily we did not fall over right on top of it!
It was around 4 meters or 13ft long! Too bad our shrieks of excitement scared
him quickly away, but it was truly magical. Dauin is not on the normal
migration pattern for whale sharks… I actually paid to go on a whale shark tour
up north, and the guide could not find any… but this is a much better story for
my first siting… everything happens for a reason!
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| THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO... OR THE SAME SHARK... but I wanted to show you the whale shark paddle board size relation which is accurate to my experience! |
The
biggest event of the year happened last weekend in Dauin, our town fiesta in
honor of our patron saint. If you remember me talking about fiestas before,
this is an event where families go house to house and eat eat eat. The
wealthier houses have the big lechon roasted whole pig. This is not my idea of
a good time, but luckily a bunch of my friends came to join/save me. I was a
fool to befriend our adorable family goat…he licked my legs and toes each morning,
as I would scratch him on his favorite ear. We also had been fattening up our
own pig. Every morning for a week before fiesta, I would be awoken by the worst
sound in the world. Pigs being slaughtered. They make the most terrifying and
ear piercing sounds…they also are smart enough to know what is about to happen
to them, so they fight so hard against it and poop all over the place because
of their terror. I can’t watch it because I can’t help myself from crying and
the Filipinos around me get very confused because they only see animals to be
used for food, profit, or protection. Animal companionship is not a thing here,
except for the westernized better off people and their cockapoos and such,
whatever the hell that is. When my friends came, I took them to our town disco,
which is a giant dance party in the street. This actually happened in some form
every night for a while before fiesta that made it not easy to sleep, but when
we actually went it was fun. We did the traditional “tagay” drinking rum out of
the bottle and had our fare share. We ended up all 4, Jen, Larry, Chris, and me
falling asleep on my one tiny guest bed… the most action any of us has gotten
in months… I was the first one to wake up in the morning… slowly putting
together what happened, and I went into a hysterical laughing fit. My light was
still on, 3 sweaty and fully clothed, including shoes, Americans, squished on
this tiny bed, not even large enough to fit one American comfortably, we were
all drenched in sweat because no one brought the fan over or bothered to turn
it on and way too much body heat… no space… no air flow… and Jen had moved from
her original spot curled up at the foot of the bed to being face down snoring
on the cement floor. It was suchhhh a funny scene, and it definitely was an
embarrassing highlight of the weekend…
I have
been coming pretty close to losin it recently with all the chaos happening in
town. By losin it, I mean completely losing my shit, and opening a can of whoop
ass on my co-teachers, certain students, even little and round sisters Mariz
and Nicole. No one is safe. I am sure you are thinking what a whiney brat, she
gets to go scuba diving, finds a whale shark, drink with her friends. Let me
remind you, these things happen VERY RARELY, but I think you enjoy reading
about them more than reading about my daily boring struggle with teaching to
hormone enraged religious restricted adolescents, surviving of a boring diet of
rice, fruit, and fish, and the sad scenery of poverty mixed with snobby
foreigners’ mansion that surround me. That is something that makes Dauin
unique… because of the beach and diving, there are a couple of rich European
old men who live literally right across from starving kids living on the
street, who eat from their trash bin. I see this almost every morning while
walking to school. I don’t know what I would expect the rich guys to do… they
can’t feed them all… but it is just depressing. But yes yes… the amazing
moments make every bit of the struggles so worth it. It is mostly just the
little things that drive me the most crazy like, ugh, how many times during
fiesta when I would just eat some fruit because I had been force-fed to the
point of bursting at so many other houses already. Then the teachers go on with
ohhhh Allie’s on a diettt…. Um, no women, I just would prefer not to eat your
dead unidentifiable animal that has been sitting out for 2 days and has bugs
flying all over it. Just a little bit of venting here… I am also NOT a fan of
the teachers always leaning on/holding/grabbing me… this would not be so
infuriating if I were not always drenched in sweat… but I am… so it is very
unwelcome and uncomfortable… even if it coming from a cute place of affection. I
will not even begin to state all of the unbelievable flaws in the institution
of Dep Ed (which was actually implemented long ago by us dumb Americans) that
makes students understanding the curriculum impossible. As if work isn’t hard
enough, combine that with constantly feeling alone in a room full of boisterous
Filipinos and battling loneliness on a daily basis, even though I only speak in
Visayan with my co-teachers now, they still manage to critique my accent or
point out some other way I am different from them. Anyways, this blogs vibe is
going downhill fast, so I will stop now. Let’s bring the vibe back to wonderful
whale sharks and my super sweet students, who are the reason behind the rhyme
of this bizarre and rewarding Peace Corps experience.
I will
leave you with some wise words from one of my 15 year-old male students, “we
should just love, not fall in love, because everything that falls gets broken...”
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| Our Fancy New City Sign |
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