Spectacle of Sinulog

Remember the giant paint throwing festival from last year? Well… this Sinulog festival was that on steroids… add thousands more people... and a loose tiger… we will get to that later. We had heard it was the craziest festival in the Philippines, so of course we had to check it out, and it definitely lived up to the hype! Jen, Chris, and I took the overnight ferry, about 7 hours, to the island next door named Cebu where this infamous festival takes place. Not the best idea, but we survived. This ferry ride was what I imagined it to be like for immigrants traveling to Ellis Island. No kidding. There had to be over 600 people on this boat… bunk bed types with each person getting one little vinyl sticky mat to sleep on. We were sardine smushed together, freezing winds when the tarp blew off, loud excitement and crying babies throughout the night, thank goodness my ticket was to sleep next to Jen, because we were almost on top of each other since we also had to keep our backpacks on the beds for security (not like there was any other open space for them to be stored anyways and they provided adequate pillows), all part of the adventure right? Yes, what we thrive on, and it was so worth it for the festival in store for us, an insane combination of intensely religious folks and families mixed with young liberal Filipino heathens… coming together in masses to celebrate, dance, parade, drink, and attend actual church masses, haha.

Makeshift Chinese New Year! Stolen Manila photo.

Night Ferry

The festival’s purpose is to commemorate the pagan origin of the Filipino people, and their acceptance of Roman Catholicism… what other reason to drink and party? The word “sinulog” comes from the Visayan adverb “sulog” which roughly means “like water current movement,” it describes the forward-backward movement of the Sinulog dance…which we observed and participated in countless times. In the 1500’s the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived and planted the cross on the shores of Cebu, claiming land for Spain. He presented the image of the child Jesis, the Santo Ninyo, as a baptismal gift to the rulers of the island, hundreds were then baptized to the Roman Catholic Church. When Queen Juana received the image, she danced with joy and was said to have brought it around to cure the sick and rid demons. This is thought of as the first Sinulog. Hence… everyone of all ages now dancing constantly holding up their baby Jesus idol statues every year all over the country! Sooo funny looking and wonderfully adorable.

Santo Ninyos!

So funny. Stolen photo. 

Awesome depiction of Sinulog. Stolen photo also.

We watched the religious processions with thousands walking down the extremely crowded street holding their dressed up baby Jesus dolls above their head, I still can’t believe how many different statues exist and how proud people are of their own little guy. To get the full cultural experience, of course we had to check out the heathen town as well. It took us forever to get there walking through the crowds, but again, that is all part of the experience, and it was just as we had imagined once we arrived… countless loony dancing people all drenched with colored paint, charcoal, and rum. A young man welcomed me to the festivities by a pleasant “pit senyor” greeting, then poured an entire beer over my head. This did not feel at all like the Philippines than I knew. This was a show of wealth and privilege… being able to throw away alcohol!?! My town would be so disappointed. “Pit Senyor” is addressing the baby jesus (Santo Ninyo), and patron saint of the festival. Throughout the weekend “pit senyor” was a greeting exchanged between everyone and the basic lyrics to the song that played not-stop for over 72 hours… It literally is used when requesting good fortune for someone in a prayer. So back the tiger… and giant python. On the busiest street of insanity, where people were zip-lining off a giant building, and where parades were held, which we did not even get to see because of way too many people and zero space to move, there was a drugged up tiger just hangin out on a table to pose with for photos. Ugh… so sad and sick… and people were draping themselves in pythons for photos. I was not a happy camper seeing these poor animals, but someone fed me a beer and I got over it…

Moment of Impact

Revelers

Jen, Sam, Me, Hil, Chris - Super Sinulog Crew

Alcohol is actually how most Peace Corps volunteers deal with depressing issues in their countries that have no chance of changing, but that is a whole nother blog! Calm down now, it is more of a joke than serious… for most of us.

I fell in love with the big mall in Cebu, Ayala, it is brand new and has such beautiful architecture and felt just like America! They had a café where every dish had some sort of chocolate in it, Hillary and I drank spicy dark chocolate goldschlager and white chocolate raspberry martinis!?! Yes please! Greek, Thai, and indian food? My goodness yes! It also had my favorite Filipino store, which I thought was only in Manila, Artwork! They turn local art pieces into clothing! I really dig Cebu. Our hotel room was splendid too. Of course, we had to party bed it up again. The 5 of us (me, Hillary, Jen, Chris, and Sam, who lives in Cebu) fit perfectly in the 3 twin beds that we manually pushed together. I love these people so much. They are all so weird, funny, witty, brilliant, adventurous, and awesome. We had soooo much fun together just playing around, talking, doing some acrobatics/karate/wrestling/flying in our room, and constantly amusing ourselves.

We are cool.

You're doing it Peter!

I just had to spend an extra day with my best buddy, Hillary, by ourselves before heading back to the busy miserable school haze, and to avoid the bus terminal insanity the day before. We chika chikaed like usual, and went to a lovely little butterfly sanctuary owned by the cutest lovely little butterfly obsessed man. Good times. The next day, it took me 2 buses and a short ferry to get back. Our bus actually got on the ferry… more like a barge. They instructed us all to get off the bus so we wouldn’t drown if we went down. The barge was really swaying while we were walking up, and I felt like I would be smushed any second by the massive 4-wheelers I was sliding in between to get to the top of the boat. Aye yai yai… all part of the adventure. That was the end of the weekend Sinulog spectacle.

 

My one and only.

Lapu Lapu, who killed Magellan, made completely out of dead butterfly wings.

Upon returning to school, I smelled a foul smell while sitting at my desk. This is a usual occurrence living in the interesting smell filled Phillys, but this smell would not go away. When I eventually opened a lower drawer of my desk… there he laid, a belly up stanky lizard. Ew. One of my students noticed my disgusted face and came over to take care of it. I also had fun grading my students’ future perfect tense “dream scrapbooks.” See the picture below for one of my favorite pages. There was some crazy nostalgia as I smelled a certain glitter glue on some and saw burnt paper used for aesthetics for others. Remember when we did that for my project, Dad? Oh, to be a kid, all so simple then. Memories… misty water colored memoriesssss…

It still seems to be hellish days next to spectacular days. I had a bad cough for about a week, probably induced by the party bed and beer sharing, and was about to punch the next person who told me I was sick because I go to sleep with my hair wet. So many Filipino superstitions…but first of all that is ridiculous, second of all, stop knowing that I go to sleep with my hair wet stranger! I had to buy some toilet paper and snacks from the mall in Dumaguete one night,  pretty standard, but I had a pleasant encounter when a nice boy held my bags for the entire bus ride. I was last to get on the bus, literally jumped on in motion and sunk into other peoples’ skins. For some reason, that one time, people were very helpful!

I love my sisters, I do. I complain about them all the time because they are annoying spoiled brats sometimes, but they do some pretty cute things every so often. The other day they took turns brushing my hair, and Nicole in perfect English says “when the light strikes it, your hair looks golden.” Adorable. She also gave me a surprise artwork drawn with cockroach repellant chalk on my door…. Mariz thinking it was normal chalk drew on my face with it… burned a little, but I survived. She then proceeded to tell me if we were ever fighting, she would draw a crack in the heart to make it broken… Another weekend, I took them swimming with floaties… also speechless and priceless, and we swung on a swing, they had never played on swings before and were afraid! Blew my mind.

Roll Out

TEXAS Representin!

So with all this talk of festivals and shenanigans, I want to walk you through my average day… which is actually about 80% of my Peace Corps experience, but not what I usually write most about. I wake up at 6 AM (I wake up at 4 AM and 5 AM from the roosters cockadoolding/dogs freaking out/and pigs being slaughtered/ every day, but I manage to fall back asleep until I have to get up at 6. I eat my breakfast of rice and corned tuna, morningdaydream about delicious unattainable brewed coffee, and head out for the 5-minute walk to my school that has our flag ceremony at 7:15AM. (if I am super grumpy, I will skip this and show up after just before my class) The kids stand in line, sing the national anthem and school song, and do some morning exercising to whatever poppy song is popular.

My first class and highest performing is at 8:30, so I have a bit of time to get ready for it. They made me giggle most days, they are so smart and hard-working. My desk sits in the library that Cathy and I created, and we both hold our classes there. Since another teacher left the school, I have classes non-stop until lunch, including 7^th grade now, so I have to create a totally separate lesson plan. I eat lunch from the school canteen because someone decided I had to (most all other PCVs go home for lunch! I only live 5 minutes away! I am not bitter…) on good days I have fish soup and kalabasa veggie with rice, on bad days “meatballs,”(which are actually pork fat balls) with rice. I eat in the library so students have a place to come hang out and read or chat, if I did go home, it would stay locked and unused, so that is a benefit. Next, I have classes straight after the other until 4, quite stressful when students are also coming wanting to check out books, but, there is no where else for our classes to be held. New classroom construction is happening now. My last class is the lowest level, loudest, and most troublesome. They suck out every smidgen of my energy, but they are also probably my favorites. I give them some credit too because they have also already had 7 different classes that day and are super sweaty and tired themselves, and I am yelling some foreign language at them. School lets on around 4:30-5, whenever the principal pleases. How my students respond to the lesson affects my mood drastically, along with if I can avoid seeing other teachers who will always make-fun of my appearance or force feed me something unpleasant tasting. Some days I work really hard on a lesson that completely looses the class attention and fails miserably, and other days I work really hard to think of a creative interactive lesson, and they love it. Depends on the day…my mood…and their mood. I really have tried to detect what makes the difference, but it still feels like just luck.

If it is Wednesday, I look forward to my weekly skype date with my parents (Pretty sure I would go insane without it.) Thursday, I have Glee Club, which is a bit of work but always fun, and the students adore it. If it is Friday, I have yoga for the teachers. Then sweaty, exhausted, and tainted with my own mixture of student and stale Allie stench, and if there is no special dance that must be learnt for any upcoming event, I head home, either feeling useless or successful. Mariz, Nicole, and dogs Pepper, Bobby, and Budoy greet me daily, along with the 5 stray cats that try to claim our yard. Some days I allow the girls to come into my hut, every day they anxiously wait for the verdict of open or closed door, but about every other day I lock the door and drown in my own sweaty sorrows to work on the lesson for the following day until family dinner which is always a surprise… could be my favorite chicken curry or my not-so-favorite, native chicken bones or “bulad” very fragrant dried fish. Who shows up is also always a surprise, could be just us 5, or any of the 20 other neighbor relatives. After dinner, I either chat with my host mom Joy, she loves to chat, or retreat to the safety of illegally downloaded reality TV or hardrive movie, while on special occasions, drinking wine out of the bottle in my hut. Then I wash myself with a tabo out of cold water in a bucket…still goosebumps every time… and maneuver into my surprisingly cozy, but far too small, mosquito netted bed. Such is my life, the life that I chose. Tomorrow is another day.

Too cute for words... kids up for adoption at Casa Miani in Dgte... anyone interested?

Reading Day

That is my butt. I think those are mosquito bites.

Catouflage... hehe.

One final plug for money! Help support gender development in the Philippines by donating to my GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp this April! Most of our school funds are going towards construction projects and new chairs/tables since so many are falling apart, so we are needing a lot of help in funding GLOW this year. Any amount helps, and the more money raised, the more girls get to attend the camp! Look back at my last GLOW blog to get a refresher of everything we covered and all of the fun! Also, be watching for the next blog covering our One Billion Rising event to end violence against women and children, and Glee Valentine’s Day Song Dedications, where proceeds will go towards a much needed feeding program for my high school!

Click HERE to DONATE to my GLOW Camp 2014!