It’s crazy how I will go weeks without doing anything exciting, and then I do a bunch of new/ fun things in one week; last week for example. It started out like any other- I struggled to get out of bed on Monday. But I pulled myself together and ran to school. Once there, my day continued like usual. However, after my last afternoon class I had a special errand to run. So I ran home, quickly changed clothes, put on shoes (this was only the 7th time I’ve done that since getting here in August), and hopped on my new bike. I rode into San Jose, which is the city closest to me. It’s not too far, and I’ve gotten my time down to about a half hour.
Once there I met my host mother and we went shopping for fabric. I needed to buy fabric to have a gown made for an event I attended Friday. A friend of hers designed it, and we just had to pick up fabric and a few other things and head to a tailor. It didn’t take long. Soon after, I was back on my bike and riding towards home. I made it about two kilometers before I had a bit of an accident avoiding a large rock in the road. I tumbled off my bike and rolled into the middle of the highway. I am really lucky, and I’m mean really lucky, that there was a not a car coming the opposite direction. I jumped up as quickly as possible and scrambled back to the side of the road. My brand new bike wasn’t damaged, but I was a bit scraped up. I had hit the cement road with my left shoulder and knee, and my right hand. Shoulder and knee ok, except for bruising. But I’ve been wearing a sling on my right arm ever since. I had to go to the hospital Tuesday in Iloilo for x-rays, but thankfully nothing broken.
Thursday was a fun day. A relative in of my host family lives in the next barangay over, and it was her barangay festival that day, so she invited everyone over for dinner. We all piled into my counterpart’s van (my cp is also my host mother’s sister), and drove two minutes down the road. There were a bunch of kids and we just had fun dancing and playing outside all night in the dark. And thankfully I didn’t hear Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka,’ which typically plays on repeat here.
Despite my bum arm, I got my gown made, in a traditional Filipino way, called a Filipiniana. The sleeves are big, but not puffy, and stand up about two inches from my shoulder. I wore the dress Friday afternoon to the province’s TOPS awards. The awards were for the Ten Outstanding Pupils and Students of Antique Province. One my students was an awardee, so I got to go. It was kind of fun being at a black tie event, Filipino style. And I my ‘future husband’ (as my host mother refers to him), aka the Congressman, was there, so I met him again. I even had my hair and make-up done!
On Saturday I finally went to Boracay (you should take the time to google that). Everytime I meet someone new, they inevitably ask me if I have been yet. It’s tropical paradise, and it’s only a four hour bus ride away. So very early on Saturday morning I headed out with two fellow PCVs for a short weekend of sun. It was amazing. It’s very touristy; it was weird to see so many non-Filipinos, and to see so much skin! Usually when I go swimming here it’s in shorts and a t-shirt, but in Boracay everyone was in their tiny bathing suits. And because of all the tourists there are restaurants of every variety, so I got to enjoy some non-Filipino food. I had a delicious bacon cheese burger, with real ketchup! The real ketchup was amazing. Most of the available ketchup here is banana ketchup, made from bananas, not tomatoes! It’s amazingly not too far a departure from tomato ketchup, but it’s still not quite the same.
