Summer Pictures

All camp photo- with wacky faces.

Alex, my counterpart, and another fellow teacher.

Campers at camp. After learning about keeping the environment clean, they decided to clean the fish pond so the fish would have oxygen and clean water.

Cute neighbors. The girl always says: "Hello, ma'am Sarah. Good afternoon," when i walk by, regardless of the time of day. Adorable.

PCVs who helped at camp.

Third graders at camp.

Pretending to be an octopus at camp.

Apparently I made this face a lot while teaching at NOMET.

Mimi, and one of her kittens. So cute.

My awesome color-coded schedule for camp.

campers dancing!

Torrential downpour during a typhoon. Kept us from going home after camp finished.

Mindi and I in Sipalay.

Sunset in Sipalay.

Kesa and I walking down the non-crowded beach in Sipalay.

Awesome hut that we slept in on our vacation.

Enjoying the hammock in Sipalay.

Summer Time

The rest of the world is gearing up for summer; school has ended or is finishing up, days are getting longer, the weather is warming up. Here, however, is different. Summer is over. Rainy season has arrived, driving away hot dusty days. The rice paddies are being plowed by carabaos. And school is back in session.

It’s crazy that summer has already come and gone. At a mere seven weeks it felt rather short. Despite its short length, however, I managed to squeeze a number of activities in- in fact, I hardly had a break.

Graduation, on April 7, signaled go and was the beginning of my marathon summer. Just after graduation, I went to manila for a week. Thus far in my service, it’s been my only trip to the capital. I didn’t get to see much, other than a huge discrepancy between rich and poor, because I was there for the meeting of the PC Philippines Grants Committee.

After a week in Manila, I flew back down to my island and on my way back to site I stopped at the Mango festival on Guimaras island. The sweetest, tastiest mangoes in the Philippines are grown on Guimaras and every year they commemorate their claim to fame with a festival devoted to the delicious fruit. Unfortunately I didn’t get to enjoy any of these mangoes at the festival as there was a shortage. But I did get to hang out with a bunch of PCVs, so it was worth it.

After the mango festival it was Holy Week. I escaped the crowds by traveling to Sipalay for some beach time with two other PCVs. It was very relaxing! We could actually swim in our bathing suits and didn’t need to wear shorts and a t-shirt. There was hardly anyone there, so we enjoyed a nearly empty and very beautiful beach. The place we stayed at is owned by a German man, and everything on the menu was deliciously Western. I ate at least four BLTs.

I went straight from my short vacation to a teacher training seminar held by a PCV near my site. After facilitating sessions on teaching writing, I rushed back to site to hold my own teacher training seminar for the teachers from my district. The training was successful, and it was fun to meet teachers from other schools in the area.

After one day off it was time for IST/PDM (In-Service Training/ Project Design and Management), another PC training. My counterpart was also invited and we learned about project planning and even started planning a project for our school. It wasn’t all work- there was a very memorable night of videoke!

I returned to site with three other PCVs, just in time for my barangay fiesta (it’s festival/fiesta season around here). We danced in the plaza, aka a small basketball court, and ate lunch at several different houses. There was just enough time to prepare for summer camp, which started the following day.

Camp was so much fun! It was day camp for 100 students from grades 3-6. Campers came from all over the nearby area, so we had campers from a bunch of different schools. There was a lot of fun and screaming, all things the kids don’t normally get to enjoy. In the morning we had life skills oriented sessions, and in the afternoon campers could select a given track for the whole week. Most campers went to dance, art, sports or photography. I think everyone enjoyed themselves, including the 8 PCVs who helped out. I’m already excited for next year!

I had one day to recover and then I was off again for a two week teacher training extravaganza. I helped out, along with twenty-six other PCVs at the Negros Occidental Mobile Education Training (NOMET). I facilitated a session on differentiation and multiple intelligences. We traveled to four different schools and gave a two-day teacher training to approximentely 500 teachers at each school. It was an exhausting two weeks, but was fun to hang out with volunteers I don’t get to see very often, as well as work with teachers excited about becoming better teachers.

And that brings me to my last week of summer break. I spent all of last week taking a rest. I read, watched movies, hung out with my host family. I even squeezed in a little laundry. And now school has started. This year I am teaching grades five and six, as well as handling English Club for grades 3-6. I’m excited school as started again! I’m looking forward to learning more about my students, Filipino culture, and working on some fun projects.

Boracay.

more Boracay

My student who was a TOPS awardee is in yellow. And my counterpart's daughter is in brown.

My 'gown.'

My counterpart and I.

All the kids.

Classic family photo. My host sister is pulling my host mother's hair.

Me and my host mom.

My host father on the left, and his awesome sister in the middle.

A fellow Californian! My host father's aunt came for a visit from CA.

My host brother is adorable. His school class was the USA for an event they had at his school.

Bicycles, Black-Tie, and Boracay

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 7^th 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.

This last week has certainly been interesting. Monday started early. My alarm beeped wrenched me out my sleep at three am. I dressed according to precise instructions given to me by my counterpart, and was waiting out on the street for my ride by 3:45. This being the Philippines, and me having yet mastered Filipino time, I waited for a good twenty minutes in the dark. Finally, the jeepney arrived with the other teachers from my school and we were off to the capital of our province, San Jose. Our destination was the house of the province’s congressman; it was his birthday.

They have a unique tradition here in which people go to the house of someone important on their birthday early in the morning (or in my opinion, in the middle of the night), and sing songs to the person. It was a rather big affair, no surprise, it being the congressman’s birthday. The teachers of the province started out the morning serenading the congressman. Supposedly other government agencies and employees were in charge of other parts of the day of celebration.

I should mention that the congressman here was celebration his 30th birthday. Not only is he young, but also, apparently, he is single. Therefore, many people, including my host mother, have decided to try to set us up. That is probably why I was given precise instructions as to what clothing to wear.

On Tuesday, my municipality began celebrating a three-day fiesta. Tuesday was “Teacher’s Night.” All the teachers from the elementary schools performed, by school, different Filipino folk dances. Originally, I was supposed to be part of our school’s troupe, but I guess I’m freakishly tall (at not even 5’6”), and none of the other teachers were tall enough to partner with me; so I just watched from the audience. It was actually quite entertaining to see such a variety of native folk dances. I also thought my school’s teachers were the best, not that I’m biased or anything. After the performances, there was a live band, and I lived up to my new reputation for being a good dancer by dancing with various government officials, the mayor included.

Thursday was the parade for the fiesta. All teachers reported, and we all wore a blue Dept Ed shirt with a bright colored sash, and a beaded type necklace. I was expecting to walk with my teachers, sort of in the middle of the crowd, but my district supervisor had other plans. I held the Dept Ed banner and walked at the front of all the teachers from our district. Along the route, the district supervisor stopped every twenty feet to introduce me to someone new. When we finally reached the end, they forced me onstage! Although I guess it’s not really force if I acquiesce so quickly. I sat up there watching the rest of the parade, and stayed for various performances by the high school drum and lyre groups (lyres being glockenspiels in this case).

My internet project(s) have been put on a standstill. I was misled into believing it was possible to install internet at the school. My counterpart and I inquired last week, but the cable has yet to reach as far as our barangay, perhaps next month of the month after. So it will have to wait until the next school year, which starts in June (this school year ending end of March). Thanks to everyone who agreed to be an email pen pal! I’ll send out another query in a few months.

I’ve now been at my permanent site for close to two months, and Icouldn’t be happier with my placement. My host family is amazing. Ihave two host siblings; Deo (aka Bimboy)- age six, and Clarisse- agenine; there is also a niece that lives with us who is 13. My hostfather works for the governor, and my host mother works for the Dept.of Environment and Natural Resources doing a lot of agro-forestry andwatershed management projects. From what I’ve seen, it’s uncommon tohave such a complete family here in the Philippines. Usually, at leastone member is off working abroad.

My school is small, and all of the teachers are nice and have gone outof their way to make me feel welcome. Everyday someone on staff bringssome sort of Philippine delicacy for me to try. So I’ve tried allsorts of things made with very very sticky rice, and other delicioussweet pastry type things.

I have figured out my schedule, I will be teaching both sections ofgrades 4 and 5, in their English subject. I taught a couple of classesbefore the Christmas break, but I will start teaching full time thisweek. Also, I have resurrected the school’s, non-functioning, Englishclub. So twice week I’ll be teaching English club, starting tomorrow.

Celebrating Christmas here was both what I thought it would be, andalso a bit different than I was expecting. Christmas spirit had beenbuilding for months by the time December finally arrived. And then Iattended several Christmas parties throughout the month of December.The Christmas parties were not quite what I expected. There is alwaysa program, people get up and perform- either singing or dancing, andeach act is interspersed with games. And of course Christmas presentsare exchanged. There were all kinds of sales, and exchanging ofChristmas gifts, so naturally I assumed that my family would beexchanging gifts as well. So I went out, to the mall (yes there’s amall), and bought them all gifts. But alas, on Christmas, no giftgiving. But I think they appreciated it anyway that I gave them gifts.

My host family and my counterpart (who is my host mother’s sister)have been great about taking me along to birthday parties, toweddings, and to see various places of interest. I feel like I’vealready seen more of culture in the Philippines than I did in my firstyear in Kyrgyzstan. It also sort of feels like I’m going throughtraining now, because I’m doing and learning all the things I shouldhave learned during PST but didn’t get to do.

Hopefully I will have a bike sometime in the next two weeks, so I willbe able to go out and explore the area around my house a bit moreeasily. As it is right now, it’s almost impossible for me to go to thecenter of my town as there is no transportation going that way.Really, the only place I can get to is San Jose, which is the capitalof the province I am living in. This is fine most of the time, becauseI can get almost anything I would want in San Jose. This Peace Corps experience is so different than in Kyrgyzstan. First of all, as I already mentioned, there is a mall only twenty minutes from me. At thesupermarket there, yes the supermarket, I can find almost anything Iwould at an American supermarket- including spices, cranberry juice,and peanut butter. The only thing lacking is cheese. My family hascable, half of which are channels in English, many of them American channels.

That’s it for now. The internet I have access to is too slow to postpictures, so those will have to wait until this weekend when I go intothe city. Happy New Year!

Sign from our Swear- in

My language cluster at Swear-in.

My host brother (wearing sunglasses) and host cousins. We spent a day at the beach.

Rice Terraces. My host mother does a lot of agroforestry projects, this is one of them.

Sibalom River valley.

My school!

On the walk home from school- I have an entourage.

The road home from school.

They made me a sign! It's hanging in my office.

Ernie Dave, aka my godchild, at his baptism.

We had to judge some type of contest at the elementary school.

The mural that was painted during our English camp.

Drawings from my session at English camps.

Teaching at English camp.

Kids working on the mural at English camp.

My training host family.

My sixth grade class on my last day.

Students studying hard.

Groups of students had to simultaneously stand on a very small piece of paper. HILARIOUS.

The teachers at our practicum site threw us a despedida (a good bye party).

Halloween

It’s my last day at my training site. I took my LPI (language profiecieny interview) yesterday morning; I don’t think I did as well as I could have, but oh well, I won’t need the language at my permanent site anyway. This morning we, the PCTs, threw a despedida (a goodbye party) for all of our host families here to say thank you.

I took most of my belongings to my permanent site on a day trip last Saturday. It was a long day, but worth it to get most of my stuff there, so that I do not have to deal with it this week during our counterparts’ conference/ Swear-In.

It’s been a crazy week for my language cluster, which is a bummer because I feel like it tainted my last week here in Banate. But I am really excited to just get to permanent site and start being a volunteer. I’ve been ready since I got to the Philippines, and it’s been rather frustrating to have to go through training again. But now its over, yeah!, and I can finally go back to being a PCV.

The baptism a couple of weeks was interesting. It was not at all what I was expecting. When I got to the church, only the godparents were present for the baptism, of which there were about twenty for both babies being baptized that day. Ernie Dave’s mother held him for the ceremony, while we all crowded behind, and then we simply blessed the baby. The whole ceremony lasted only about ten minutes. After the baptism, it was back to the family’s house for a feast. And it really was a feast- including a whole roasted pig (lechon).

Halloween here is celebrated on November 1^st, in conjunction with All Soul’s Day. After I had language class in the morning, I went with my family to the cemetery. At the cemetery we lit candles at the family graves, watched some people play mahjongg, eat some snacks, and enjoyed a cold beverage. The cemetery was packed with other families doing the same things.

That evening, Trisha, a fellow PCV, dressed me up in costume and the two of us, and her family, went to the Barangay Capitan’s house for a Halloween party/ costume contest. There were a lot of kids wearing ridiculous face make-up, and a few adults dressed up as various ghouls or dead people.

Spirits are taken very seriously here. Most people believe that they exist. On such spirit is the White Lady (my costume for Halloween). The White Lady is a ghost that can frequently be found haunting the roadside. Another that people commonly believe in is the aswang. An aswang seems to be a cross between a zombie and a vampire, but with more emphasis on the zombie. A person is infected by another aswang spitting into his/her ear. There’s actually a verb in the language for this action- yanggaw. A capri is a large man that smokes a fat cigar. Apparently capris hide in objects in your house, such a in a post, and upset the general order/ health of your household. My language facilitator told us that when he was little, his grandmother’s house had three Capri living in the posts in the living room, and this was the cause of recent illness in the house. A ‘shaman’ had to come to the house to exorcise the spirits.

Christmas has really picked up around here. On the news every night, there is a countdown until Christmas. And everywhere I go, there is Christmas music playing. I feel like there’s going to be this great build-up to Christmas and then on the actual day, it won’t really be a big deal.

Our English camp, which we did as our community project, was last week. It went amazingly well! We had more students the second day than on the first day because so many students had gone home and told their friends how much fun it was. Each session of the day was devoted to a different macro-skill (listening/speaking, reading, and writing), and there was also a session of mural painting. The mural turned out beautifully and now the school has something to always remind them of us. On the second day we made all the students do a scavenger hunt, and that was probably my favorite part. Watching the kids run around and make human pyramids, sing a song, or tell a joke was adorable. I really love all the elementary students- so smart, and so cute!