The Wheels on the Bus

Public transportation in the only mode of transportation for me here. I haven't driven a car in a year and 4 months and I'm beginning to forget what it feels like to be in charge of my own travel agenda. While I have not had bus rides as long as other volunteers here, I've still experienced a few 7 hours bus rides in the past, and they're not fun; especially since, for the life of me, I can't fall asleep on a bus here. I felt like trying a different writing style to share a typical bus experience with you:

I squeeze myself out of the jeepney, hunched over as to not hit my head on the roof, while holding my inconveniently large backpack in front of me, trying not to fall on the woman with a baby on her lap as I shuffle awkwardly past. I make it to the back of the jeepney and jump down, glad to finally be free from the confined bodies squished on either side of me for the past 20 minutes. I stand up straight, take a deep breath, crack my back, put my backpack on, and look around the bus terminal for my bus home. I am hot and sticky and receive no relief from the equally hot and sticky air. I glance at my full water bottle longingly, debating whether I should save my bladder from bursting on the bumpy bus later or save myself from possible dehydration now. Instant gratification wins out and I down a quarter of my water, feeling only slightly ominous about a possible bursting, bouncing bladder in my near future. To the left I see the yellow bus under the sign that says “Dumaguete” and head over to it. There are only 4 people in the bus already, causing me to inwardly groan as I realize I still have at least 30 minutes to wait for the bus to fill up before it will leave. I take advantage of the silver lining this offers though and grab the front seat next to the driver that provides more leg room, and I pray no one will sit next to me. Bus rides are my zoning out time where I get lost in the scenery and my music, and having to spend a few hours riddling out a conversation in a foreign language with a stranger tends to take away from the zen state I prefer to experience bus rides in. Almost 45 minutes later the driver starts the engine and pulls out of the terminal, finally allowing a breeze to come through the open window beside me and relieving me of the sweat dripping down my face, stomach, back, arms, and legs. Nothing is safe from dripping sweat here. I am in luck with an empty seat remaining next to me, so I say a silent thank you for the locals being too timid and shy to sit next a foreigner, and sit back to endure the 6-8 hour bus ride ahead of me.

The first part of any bus ride in the monotonous drive out of the city, surrounded by flat roads, buildings, people, and minimal green. I take this time to go through my music options to determine the mood my music will take for the ride. I scroll through country, classical, soundtracks, pop, rock, upbeat, slow and lazy, audiobooks, everything I have and eventually decide on country music, as I knew all along I would. I choose “Somewhere in My Car” by Keith Urban, a new favorite of mine, and lean back with my feet propped up on the bus's dash board (another perk of the front seat) as the bus goes past children waving, dogs chasing each other, chicken running across the road, and elderly locals gossiping in groups. Soon enough we leave the city limits and are surrounded by flat rice fields with an occasional nipa house here and there with the mountains looming in the distance. The conductor has reached me by now, after making his way through the rest of my local travel companions, and asks for my destination. His hole puncher marks my ticket and the small punched out paper bits go flying into the hair of the girl sitting behind me. He hands me the ticket, I hand over my fare, and then continue with my window gazing. Every few kilometers we go through another barangay and the bus stops to let people on or off, never allowing the bus to go more than a few streets without stopping again. My seat-partner-absence is short lived as the seat is filled by a middle-age Filipino. I smile briefly and then return my gaze to the surrounding landscape, hoping he'll let me continue with my zen state. My butt starts to hurt so I shift in my seat and glance at my watch, hoping at least an hour has gone past so I don't feel too bad about my butt's low tolerance for sitting. Only 30 minutes have gone by. I sigh and accept, once again, that this will be a long ride.

My seat partner is soon sleeping (as all Filipinos somehow manage to do in the most uncomfortable positions) and I am bored out of my mind, seeing as rice fields are only entertaining for so long, and decide to take advantage of another perk of the front seat: reflective windows and mirrors. Sitting at different angles I am able to see a few of the other passengers sharing this excruciatingly long journey with me. A couple rows behind me is an older Filipino holding a rooster and I'm momentarily surprised I hadn't heard the rooster crow already, but then remember they tend to be quiet on bus rides for some reason, maybe too much outside stimulation to justify an attempt at displaying their dominance. I predict the Filipino won't be on the bus long. I can't imagine him wanting to ride more than an hour with a rooster on his lap. As I silently laugh to myself at the possible image of the rooster pooping in his hand, my eyes wander a few seats away and I see a young mother with her infant child sleeping adorably in her arms, mouth slack with drool starting to pool out. I take a moment to acknowledge that I no longer find it strange to see babies without car seats, instead relying solely on their mothers' arms to save them in the event of an accident. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever seen a car seat in this country. Between the mother's legs stands a young girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old. There's no room for her on her mother's lap with the baby there so she stands there, leaning her body on her mother's legs and resting her head on her arm on the seat-back in front of her, trying her hand at the act of sleeping while standing. I marvel again at all the odd positions I've seen Filipinos of all ages sleeping and remain quite impressed with their seemingly nation-wide ability.

My focus goes back to the road ahead and I feel a sense of excitement as I realize we are nearing the mountains, my favorite part of the journey. The sun is setting now as the landscape becomes more defined with hills, and I appreciate the beauty of the sunset with its perfect blend of deep purples, reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows, providing a perfectly contrasting background to the lush green rice fields in the foreground. Despite all the natural disasters, poverty, or political corruption that can happen in this country, its beauty has always prevailed and reminds its viewers that hope never dies and is always there to provide a silver lining.

Twenty minutes later we are in the mountains, weaving along the road on the side of the cliff, still passing through barangays every few kilometers. I begin watching the driver as he maneuvers the bus expertly around the corners and think to myself that this must be his favorite part of the drive too. Every now and then he pushes seemingly-random buttons on the dash board, whose effect I cannot determine, no matter how hard I try. It's one of the mysteries I ponder every time I'm on a bus. There are generally fewer people who want to get on or off the bus in the mountains so he can keep driving and get into the groove of his curve dance. His body seems to move with his hands as he turns the bus to the left and then the right and back again. It's almost meditating watching him do this. He looks so content in this moment of driving, weaving, dancing, repeat. He knows the boundaries of his bus well; we come to an area of construction where the road is half as wide and the driver balances the bus expertly on the edge of the paved road as we drive past the construction workers pulling a late night.

As we come up on the next barangay I spy a dog sitting in the middle of the road in the distance. The bus doesn't slow but instead heads right for it, honking its horn in warning as it approaches. The dog glances up and seems to take a lifetime to decide if its worth the effort to move out of the way of the oncoming bus. I start to feel nervous for the dog as it lies there and glance at the driver, silently begging him to slow down or dodge the dog or something, but the driver drives on, straight at the dog. I brace myself for the bump we'll undoubtedly feel from running over it, but at the last possible second the dog stands up, moves 3 ft out of the way, and returns to his seemingly relaxing nap as we continue past, not seeming to care that his life could have just ended. I take a few seconds to calm myself down and reflect, for about the thousandth time, how different dogs are here compared to in the States. Dogs in the Philippines are extremely street smart. They look both ways before crossing the street, they know how much space a vehicle needs to get by and they won't budge if they know they're outside that space, even if they're sitting in the middle of the road. These dogs are amazing.

I glance at my watch and see that almost 3 hours have gone past, meaning that I'm almost half way done with this leg of my trip. I try to catch site of the speedometer in front of the driver to gauge our speed, but it's broken, as it is in most vehicles here. But since no one ever gets pulled over for speeding or other driving violations, this is of little concern. We pass a sign telling me we've gone all of 120 kilometers, or about 75 miles. In 3 hours. That means we've averaged 25 miles per hour. I'm confounded by this realization as I imagine how much faster this trip would be in the States, going 70 miles an hour on paved highways. And now I've opened a can of worms as I start thinking of home and how much I miss everything and everyone on the opposite side of the world. It's dark out now and with no street lights I can imagine the bus is driving in Indiana on back country roads were all you can see are the trees on either side of the road and the headlights in front of you; no surrounding landscape, no nipa huts on the side of the road, just trees and road in the middle of nowhere. I start to feel sad and then realize I'm still listening to country music, which is singing about all the things I miss from home. So I decide to switch my music genre in the hopes of putting a halt to this feeling of homesickness. I change to an upbeat Maroon5 song and focus on the non-American faces surrounding me, and I'm brought back to the present, my homesickness pushed to the back of my mind for the time being.

Eventually we exit the mountains on the opposite side we entered and are rewarded with a rest stop. My bladder wasn't as bursting as I had predicted so I give myself a mental pat-on-the-back at my small success. My stomach is beginning to growl though so I splurge on a 35 peso ($0.80) siopao (fluffy dough encasing packed meat and sauce). The driver isn't back from his break yet so I pace around the bus, stretching my legs and giving my butt a rest, dreading when I'll have to get back on the bus. All too soon it's time for me to take my seat again and the drive continues. Looking out the window isn't as entertaining anymore since it's dark outside, giving no view to enjoy. Instead I continue on with my music listening and reflection people watching as the remaining time goes by.

The end of a trip always seems to go fast to me, maybe because I start to recognize my surroundings and the journey is no longer simply unfamiliar scenes. We enter the city limits of Dumaguete and the bus begins to stop at every crossing, letting one or two people off each time, and considerably slowing our progress to the finish line. I begin considering where I want to get off the bus. I could stay on the bus until the bus terminal at the other end of the city and immediately transfer to my next bus to take me the remaining hour home, or I could get off in the city, grab some McDonald's as a reward for enduring yet another long bus ride, and then continue home. The internal debate doesn't last long and again, instant gratification and my growling stomach win out and I end the ride with a delicious caramel sundae from McDonald's. Happy ending!

A Note per Day

As I've already mentioned before, the Philippines is very different from America. After being here for a year though, these differences are becoming less and less obvious to me as they become the norm. However, similar to not letting myself take the beautiful scenery here for granted, I'm trying not to let the differences go unnoticed. It adds humor to the day and keeps things interesting. So with that in mind, I challenged myself this past month to notice one unusual thing every day that probably wouldn't happen in the States. And here are my notes!

8/1 – A vender on the street tried to sell me underwear.

8/2 – Smoky (my cat) ate and then pooped out a plastic bag.

8/3 – I saw an older Filipino woman scrapping the kitchen floor with a kitchen knife to get the scuffs off the floor.

8/4 – As I was running around the track I had to dodge a carabao every lap that didn't understand he was supposed to stay in the grass in the center.

8/5 – I met a Filipino with a real diamond-studded tooth.

8/6 – A Filipino was wearing a plastic bag as a hat. It wasn't even raining; the weather was perfect and he was wearing a plastic bag.

8/7 – I tried to use a reusable bag at the grocery store in the city and the bagger used it as the lining of a plastic bag (I corrected him though so no worries; one less plastic bag has been used in the world!).

8/8 – I passed a woman cutting the little patch of grass on her front lawn with hair cutting scissors.

8/9 – A chicken got run over by a bus. (Why did the chicken cross the road? It wanted to die.)

8/10 – A chicken and its chicks walked freely around inside a house and kitchen because the door was left open, climbing on the table and counter searching for food scraps. This ended with a chicken chasing another one around the house for the food it had found.

8/11 – As I was running around the track I had to dodge a pregnant goat every lap.

8/12 – As I passed by a caribao lying down on the side of the road I gave it a head nod, and it replied in kind.

8/13 – Twice in two days I was asked by older men how much I weigh. One of them was asking if I was thinner than his daughter.

8/14 – A random kid I was passing ran up to bless me. (This is something children do to older family members where the back of the elder's hand is pressed to the child's forehead, but this is usually kept in the family or people you are very familiar with on a personal level. I think I'd passed this kid twice before in town.)

8/15 – Someone told me that the cure for a fever is to go swimming in the ocean at 4am for thirty minutes to an hour. (To me this sounds like how you cause a fever.)

8/16 – I passed a dog sitting pleasantly in a trash can looking for food. (The trash cans here are just open barrels so it's very easy for a dog to get in.)

8/17 – A motor with 7 people on it passed me today (one of them a one-year-old baby).

8/18 – I passed a Filipino guy that struck me as odd because he was wearing stuff that I consider to be an American college student style: ball cap, headphones, board shorts, t-shirt, and backpack. This was a very odd combination for me to see.

8/19 – As I was running around the track an older Filipino with no front teeth gave me a high five as I finished each lap.

8/20 – Apparently this is an old proverb here: The older the carabao, the harder the horns. (Not sure what it's getting at though.)

8/21 – In the States we have ice cream carts pushed by bicycles. In some areas here they have bread carts pushed by bicycles with the bread in a nice glass case on top of the cart for display.

8/22 – Another volunteer asked if I'd brought anything nice to wear for our weekend trip. My reply: “Yes! I brought a real bra (as opposed to just a sports bra) and a cute shirt!” And my definition of a cute shirt is one that fits and has somewhat of a defined shape, although all the ones I have here are horribly stretched out because of all the hand washing. My sense of style and fashion has greatly diminished during this past year.

8/23 – A Filipina changed a regular sheet into a fitted sheet by tying knots in the corners. Filipinos are very resourceful.

Ali and me after our race!

8/24 – I ran a 10k race today (got 3^rd place!!) and there was a Filipino running dressed in a Mr. Incredible costume, complete with mask and boots.

See, Mr. Incredible needs exercise too

8/25 – A motorcycle passed me today with a dog sitting behind the driver, balancing on the moving motor all on his own. Dogs here are very impressive.

8/26 – I saw a shop that was called Smile'y Market. I think they got the apostrophe wrong...

8/27 – I saw an older Filipino's manicured nails that had designs painted on them with little jewels and everything.

8/28 – I came home to find two goats tied up in the entrance to the house in the driveway. I only paused for a second at the oddity of this.

Smoky, my cat, apparently also finds them an oddity

8/29 – A chicken got run over by a motorcycle.

8/30 – Normally when people ride in the bed of a truck they just sit on the edge or on the floor. Here, though, they class it up a bit by putting plastic chairs in the bed so you can sit in an actual chair.

8/31 – My personal favorite: I was watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire Filipino version (which is a shock of its own because I didn't realize the Philippines had their version of this show) and these were some of the first few questions (disclaimer: this was all in Tagalog and I haven't spoken Tagalog in about a year, but I'm pretty confident in these translations):

• A fly swatter is used to kill what animal?
  Chicken? Fly? Goat? Hippo?

• What does this word mean in English? (It meant marble)
• Finish the title of these cartoon characters' group name: Teenage Mutant Ninja _______.

This last question was for P20,000, or almost $500. I could seriously be rich!!!

BONUS!!!!!
So this one actually just happened so it's outside of my month mark, but it's just so good I couldn't resist adding it:

I opened the fridge at home to find an eel in it. I think this is dinner?

Got eel?

Well that's everything! Thirty-one days of unusual things. Hope you enjoyed it!

The Year Mark

I have a secret to tell you all. I'm in a relationship. It's been serious for quite some time now, with good days and bad. I've mentioned this, but never calling it a “relationship”. I have plans tonight to take my date to a nice fancy restaurant with candles and red roses everywhere to celebrate a very special day in our relationship: our one year anniversary! Or at least, I would do this if my date fit inside a restaurant. Surprise!! My date is the Philippines!!! Did I get you? You can just tell me you were fooled so I feel better.

Today marks my one year anniversary in this country. A year ago I said goodbye to my parents at the airport with my mom crying (of course) and my dad even tearing up a little (sorry to bust your tough guy persona, Daddy). I flew to L.A. and met the 72 other people I would share this experience with, start to finish. The next day we left the States behind with our old lives and entered the Philippines and the world of the unknown. I didn't bother trying to picture how this first year would go because I knew without a doubt it would be completely off whatever I imagined, and I was right. I never could have predicted the experiences I've had here.

This year has been the longest time I've been out of the States (by a long shot), the longest time I've gone without seeing my parents, and also the longest time I've lived in once place since I started college. One year is both a really long time and a really short time. In this year I've learned more about myself than I thought possible and learned many life lessons to go with my new self-exposure. I'd like to share these with you:

• Just because you live in the tropics doesn't mean you'll be super tan all the time. I mean it. I actually avoid the sun here if I can help it because it's so hot. I'm not saying I'm winter-pale by any means, but I'm definitely not as tan as I would have imagined.

• Accept your flaws; they're not going away and there will always be people to point them out. One of my biggest insecurities was my hairy arms. I've always been self-conscious of them but here I've gotten really used to them being pointed out, and even having my arms stroked by people of all ages, just because they were different looking.

• Some habits I will never be able to change about myself. Like waking up early. For the first 6 months or so in the Philippines I tried to make myself get up early to go run or just get an early start to the day...but it was misery. I've accepted I will never be able to wake up comfortably before 8am or go to sleep easily before 11pm. It's just not in my nature.

• Exercise is a miracle drug. Not only does it keep you fit and healthy, but the endorphins you get from it are crazy! I've had a 20 minute run do a complete 180 on my mood more times than I can count. Seriously, if you're having a bad day go do a good 15-20 minute work out and your day will instantly improve.

• Long distance relationships are easier when those are the only relationships you have. I'm not talking just romantic, but also relationships with friends and family. Peace Corps is a hard core crash course in long distance relationships. You're forced into them and it really makes your relationships matter more. You find out the ones that are worth keeping and pursuing and the ones that aren't as much. In this past year I've maintained some friendships, even had some friendships grow (especially with other volunteers), but I've had a lot of them weaken. And I know everyone who recently leaves college goes through this same thing, but being sent to the other side of the world really makes you value the relationships that last, despite the distance.

• You can get used to anything. You can get used to stares, bucket showers, bugs, ants being literally EVERYWHERE, hot weather, roosters crowing and dogs barking almost nonstop 24 hours a day, everyone being late, never knowing the day's schedule, sleeping in bizarre places, etc. The list can go on forever, but I'll spare you.

• If you're tired enough you can sleep anywhere. I don't even know how many times I've slept in bizarre places here, but the list includes tile floors, bamboo benches, plastic benches, beaches, and a bed shared with 6 other people. In Peace Corps, I've noticed a skill we have of cramming the maximum number of people in sleeping places. For example, one night during a trip we were taking we stayed at a little house with 2 rooms, each with a double bed, and a couch. There were 30 of us. We all fit. We had 4 or 5 people in each bed, 2 people on the couch, and everyone else slept on the tile floor or outside on the porch. The biggest thing I've adapted to sleeping on is a tile floor. Again, if you're tired enough you can sleep anywhere. Sadly I don't think I've ever been tired enough to sleep on the bus since I still haven't managed it. And that can make for a very long 6 hour bus ride. I'm working on it though.

• Food can make or break your day. I know I've gone on enough about food in past posts, but I cannot reiterate enough how much food can make a difference in my day. Having food from the States can actually relate to exercising in terms of improving my mood, which seems kind of ironic considering a lot of this food is junk food. This goes in the column of things I've learned about myself: I'm a total food girl. Food is everything!

• Everyone needs a little fur ball to cuddle. This goes along with exercising and food as far as improving a day. I think the best decision I made in this country was to keep Smoky, the kitty that came to my house begging for food one night. She stuck around that first night after I gave her lovin' for a good couple hours and hasn't left since :)

• Language is both important and unimportant. Of course it's important to learn the local language to be able to converse and share ideas, but when it comes to simple things and commands, it really isn't as important as you'd think. The first few months at site my language skills were terrible (they're still not that great but they're better than they were then), and most of the time I understood people by their body language. Even now, body language fills in a lot of the gaps I have for understanding at least the gist of the conversation. Most people are very expressive when they talk.

• Simplicity is best. I wasn't much of a high maintenance girl back home, but here I've become even less of one. I haven't bought any knick-knacks here because I don't have the space to put them and I don't want to spend the money on them. It actually kills me when I have to buy shampoo or toothpaste because then the only things I'd spend my money on are food and transportation. I think when I get back to the States I'm going to do a major cleanse of my unnecessary things.

• It's the small moments in life that change it forever. As I've probably said before, you get a lot of time to think here. And one of the many thoughts I keep coming back to is how I ended up in Peace Corps and the moments that led up to that decision. It all started my senior year of high school when I was starting to look for colleges. A colleague of my dad suggested Hope College to him and my dad passed the suggestion on to me. I'd never heard of the college before but I looked into and ended up going there. During my first year at Hope I was having lunch with one of my clustermates one day (we weren't necessarily that close but we were neighbors so we occasionally ate together) and we were discussing what summer jobs we were going to apply for. She mentioned being a camp counselor and I really liked that idea since I'd never been able to go to camp as a camper, so this way I'd get paid to have all the fun I'd missed out on. I looked into camps and ended up working at Cub Creek Science Camp in Missouri (a completely random destination, if you ask me). There I met Jeff Hubely, one of my really good friends, and that summer he happened to be in the process of filling out his Peace Corps application (he's currently serving in Tanzania). I'd always liked the idea of Peace Corps but had never really thought of it as something attainable, just one of those pipe dreams you wish you could make a reality but is never really practical, like owning a private jet or something. But Jeff made the possibility real for me and we became pen pals once he left and he got me more and more excited about the experiences to come. Then the summer before my senior year of college I applied, and the rest is history! And it all started with my dad's colleague suggesting Hope College in a passing conversation. Maybe I would have ended up in Peace Corps regardless if it was fate, but this is how I ended up here. And I know Peace Corps has changed me already, after only half of the service. So like I said, don't belittle the small things in life, because they have to power to change your life forever.

The Work Blog!

Now here it is! The post you've all been waiting for! The post that shows I've done more here than just sit and observe our cultural differences and crave food! I've been promising you a post about something work-related for a while now, and here it is! At the end of May/beginning of June a few other volunteers and I put together a series of youth day camps in collaboration with the NGO working in the area (a non-government organization called EcoFish). We called the event Ocean Week. As you may have noticed with past blogs, I tend to favor writing in bullet points instead of paragraphs. I find it easiest to organize thoughts this way, at least when it comes to setting the scene. So here we go:

WHAT: Ocean Week: A Series of Youth Day Camps

WHEN: End of May/Beginning of June, at the end of the schools' summer vacation; one day at each of the 4 participating volunteers' sites (it made it much easier to organize since a volunteer was located in each municipality so we could each be responsible for organizing the logistics at our own site).

WHERE: 4 municipalities in my province, all within an hour and a half of each other.

WHO PARTICIPATED: The camp was designed for 30-50 high school kids at each site, although we got up to almost 80 kids at one site (luckily we didn't have to provide food for that group) and another site turned out to be more elementary age than high school age kids. But we learned to adapt, like with everything else here.

*Side note: Quick explanation about the schools: they only have elementary school (grades 1-6) and high school (grades 7-10). There's no middle school. And they usually graduate from high school at age 16, so they're the same age in each grade as American schools, they just have 2 less years of it.

WHO FACILITATED: Three of us volunteers were the main facilitators: Ali, Charlie, and me (all of us CRM volunteers in the area). The 4^th volunteer, Chris, was an Education volunteer and helped as an emcee at his school. EcoFish employees assisted us as well.

TOPICS: Since the three of us are CRM (coastal resource management) volunteers and the camp was called Ocean Week, you're probably guessing that the camp had an environmental theme to it, and you'd be correct! Congratulations! Although it really doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Charlie gave a talk on corals, seagrass, and mangroves (the three marine ecosystems in the Philippines), I gave a talk on solid waste management, and Ali gave a talk on climate change.

THE AGENDA:

8am begin (we never actually got started until 9am, but that's the Philippines for you!)

Charlie's lecture and activity

My lecture and activity

Ali's lecture and activity

Lunch and a Movie! With Blue Planet: Corals dubbed in Tagalog

Poster contest

Review game

Prizes, Certificates, Pictures

Closing (usually done by 3 or 4pm)

It usually made for a very long day. It was nice the way we had it structured, though, because all our hard work was done by lunch, then we just let the kids go to town on putting all their new knowledge to good use. My favorite part of the days was the poster contest. It amazed me how artistic the kids were. In the States if kids have to make a poster they'll maybe spend 30 minutes tops on it and it'll look pretty decent but you'll be able to tell they were forced into it. Here, though, one day the kids spent 2 hours working on the posters and they were still begging for more time! And the posters were amazing! I'll put pictures after this of my favorites so you too can experience the wonders of their artistry. I would hate to deprive you of that.

Another thing I couldn't get over was how excited the kids got about the activities we did. We followed each lecture with a game or activity related to the topic (in addition to the poster contest and review game activities at the end of the day). And these we not very intricate activities; they were simple running around, doing crazy gestures, or matching games. Apart from the few kids here or there that were “too cool” to join in, the kids went crazy over them, nothing like you would expect from high school kids in the States. Can you imagine American high school kids enthusiastically running around playing tag- and red rover-type games? Definitely elementary school kids would, maybe middle schools kids, but probably not high school kids. They're way too cool to break a sweat playing tag. But the kids here loved them and were so enthusiastic about them. And that enthusiasm is the same with every age group here. Even adult Filipinos love doing games and Ice Breaker “repeat after me” songs (although their bodies may not retain youth and energy, their hearts definitely do). It makes it really fun to facilitate things here and allows you to really get into teaching. One of the parts of my presentation included the song “The 3 R's” by Jack Johnson and the kids were getting really into the song, swaying and singing along, and it became contagious....and I ended up dancing to the song in front of 70 kids! Of course they all loved it, but if you know me, you know this is a big deal.......I don't dance......especially not in a spot light. Their excitement was just so infectious!

This enthusiasm also carried into the review game. We split the kids into groups and each correct answer earned their team points. I'll tell you, the amount of screaming at getting the right answer sometimes made me think I was at a Justin Bieber concert. Kids would literally be jumping up and down and cheering at every correct answer. Granted, it made the simple 15 question review go on for about 30 minutes, but it was really entertaining to watch.

It'll be a very rude awakening for me to go back to the States, try to do a presentation the same way (expecting the same level of excitement), and be met with complete silence and stares. Hopefully I won't take our cultural coldness to heart, though. One thing I'll take from this is the observation of how much more enjoyable it is to teach a lively audience, as opposed to one that just sits quietly and listens or stares at the wall behind you.

Like I promised before, here are some pictures. I'm going to apologize in advance for the unusual spacing. I can't really get a handle on it without wanting to rip my hair out.

Our tarpaulin

Charlie's 3 ecosystem talk

Charlie's game

My solid waste management talk

My matching game

Ali's climate change talk

Ali's game

Collision!!

Mangroves vs. Typhoon game
(similar to red rover)

My 3 favorite posters

We facilitators did our own poster!

Zamboanguita, Ali's site

Bayawan, Charlie's site

Siaton, my site

Santa Catalina, Chris's site

Filipino Mannerisms and Stuff

I'm going to state the obvious: Americans and Filipinos are very different from each other. It's not only the cultures and traditions that make us different though, it's the mannerisms and habits that magnify this difference. For me, it's the combination of these little things that make the biggest difference in every day life. Just to satisfy your curiosity (because I'm sure you're all sitting on the edges of your seats waiting to hear these differences like your lives depend on it), I'll tell you some of them, or at least the ones that are the first to come to mind. I'm not sure if “mannerisms and habits” necessarily describes all these things, but those are the best umbrella terms I can come up with.

First of all, Filipinos are very expressive with their faces. If they can get a message across without using words, they do it.

• The eyebrow hello. This is the simple raising of the eyebrows (or eyebrow bob as I'll refer to it) in greeting while looking at someone in passing, very similar to “the nod” in the States, but with no bobbing of the head, and therefore, requires less effort. I've become very used to this, and it's really nice because “when I walk in the spotlight, this is what I see, e'rybody stops and is staring at me” (little musical interlude there), and if I happen to make eye contact with them, I just do the eyebrow hello, they do it in return, and it defuses the awkwardness of me catching them staring at me. You have to be careful with this though because if your greeting becomes too enthusiastic and you do two eyebrow bobs instead of one it turns from a hello greeting to a come hither, sexy kind of thing. Definitely something to be cautious of.

• The eyebrow yes. Just like with using an eyebrow raise for a greeting, Filipinos also use one simple eyebrow bob to say “yes”. It took a while for me to actually catch on to this and for me to automatically catch this as an answer to my question. Imagine asking a Filipino a very simple yes/no question and have them just look at you in silence doing an eyebrow bob. For a while I'd think I was just getting my Cebuano words mixed up so I would try asking different ways: “Are you going to the store later?” [eyebrow bob]..... “Later, are you going to the store?” [eyebrow bob].... “To the store, going later, are you?”[eyebrow bob].... “Are you going to the...market?” [eyebrow bob].... You can imagine the frustration. Eventually I caught on and now I do the eyebrow bob myself sometimes.

• The mouth huh. If Filipinos don't hear you or understand what you're saying, they hang their mouth open until you repeat yourself and they understand. If they still don't understand you after you've repeated it, then their mouth gap gets even bigger to intensify the degree of non-understanding so you REALLY understand that they REALLY don't understand you. So it's like saying “huh” without actually saying anything. Like with the eyebrow yes, it took a while for me to pick up on the subtle movement (although some people open their mouth as wide as possible so that it's actually not that subtle). But now it's become second nature for me to also do this, and it's kind of fun. So I'll apologize in advance for the dumbfounded-mouth-hanging-open expressions I'll undoubtedly have once I come back.

• The lip point. Instead of pointing in the direction of something with their finger or doing a head nod in that direction (like some Americans do), Filipinos turn to the lip point. It's actually a combination of pursing their lips and pointing their chin in a certain direction (I'm gonna guess you're trying this right now as you're reading and looking like an idiot). They can respond this way to questions like “which direction is the bank?”, “where did you put the water?”, etc. It's interesting when a Filipino has to talk while doing this because then he has to talk with his lips pursed, which is just a whole other kind of funny.

For the rest of these I'm not sure what category to put these mannerisms/habits in, so we're just going to move to an uncategorized list.

• Shhhhht!!! Filipinos make this sound whenever they're trying to get someone's attention or scare a dog or cat away, kind of like when Americans use “hey!”. If executed correctly, this “shhhhht!” can carry a really long distance. For me it's a hit or miss if I can get the sound to carry a few feet. I have to really be feeling it for it to be heard. Apparently I still haven't embraced my inner-Filipina.

• Touching. Especially among females, Filipinos are very touchy. If two girls are walking together, chances are they are touching in some way, either linking arms, holding hands, or leaning an arm on the other. Many times if I'm walking with a woman from my office she'll grab my arm to escort me wherever we're going. Males are also touchier with each other than in the States; and by touchier, I mean they actually touch each other for more than just a high-five, a fish pump, or a quick bro hug. They'll put a hand on the others leg if they're sitting down or lean into each other, and these are straight guys. Like I said, this is a very touchy culture. Cross-gender touching only happens if people are dating and even then, it's just hand holding. But if people are the same gender, chances are they're touching, at least in the 20's and younger generation.

• Waving. When Americans wave people over, we do it with our palm facing the sky. Filipinos do it the opposite way with their palms facing the ground, kind of hanging their hand from their wrist. It looked weird this way when I first got here, but now the American way looks weird to me and I kind of laugh to myself whenever I see the American wave on TV. I've personally adopted a combination of the two waves, where if I'm waving with my right hand, my fingers are pointing at a 7 o'clock – 7:30 direction instead of the Filipino 6 o'clock and the American 12 o'clock. So I'm basically doing it Filipino style while still keeping some American in me (maybe this little bit of American is what's hindering me from getting the correct amplification of my “shhht” sound.

• Sleeping. This should actually be called “lack of sleeping” because I have no idea how Filipinos survive with their sleep schedules! They must be a breed of super human because the majority of them never get more than 3 hrs of sleep at a time. I've noticed this with the 2 different host families I've lived with where I've been able to observe their sleeping habits on a daily basis in order to collect data for my completely legitimate scientific study of Filipino sleeping habits (joke lang aka just kidding). But seriously, from what I've observed, the average Filipino goes to bed around 1am or 2am, wakes up between 4am and 6am, then they'll take a couple of naps throughout the day, never lasting more than an hour or two. I really don't understand how they can live their lives with this schedule.

• The Absence of Clapping. I didn't notice this until I left Western civilization, but we are very clap-happy. After concerts, performances, speeches, anything where someone stands out of a crowd to do something, we feel compelled to clap, sometimes for 5 or 10 minutes so the performer REALLY understands how much we appreciated their act. Filipinos aren't programmed this way; they barely clap, at least compared to Americans. Or they do clap, but only halfheartedly and just for a few seconds. I don't think it's to be rude or anything (even though Americans would find it very rude to have a performance met by the bare minimum amount of clapping) it's just not part of their culture. And to offset this, many times, the DJ of the performance will play a clapping track, which is always super loud and super overdone and drowns out the clapping done by the actual audience. But now that I think of it, maybe that's why Filipinos don't clap that much, because their clapping would be drowned out anyway so what's the use in wasting the energy and making your hands go raw? Huh, never thought of that. Maybe they're on to something...

• Music. I guess this is a good lead-in to music in general. The only music I've heard here are Filipino songs in Tagalog or Cebuano that all have a very 'Pop' music kind of feel and American Pop music. Nothing else. I'm going to be completely out of my Country music scene when I get back (sniff sniff). (I want to give a shout-out to my lovely friend Chelsea who's been trying to keep me somewhat up to date with the new songs coming out :) Anyone else is welcome to contribute and tell me good new stuff to look up on my internet days!). Anyway, back to this music stuff, Filipinos of all ages are into Pop music, old and young. And whenever music is playing, it's blaring! You can heard music playing at the gym 4 blocks away when they're having dances or concerts. My house is about 2 blocks away so I can still hear the music at 3 am even with my fan on. Then if there's a new song that's becoming popular, it's played ALL the time! When the song “Clarity” by Zedd came out a few months ago, the plaza outside my Municipal Hall played the song on repeat for a few days straight. And the song from Frozen “Let It Go” became an overnight sensation. So once songs get started here, they really take off.

• Introductory questions. Filipinos can be very straightforward with some things, especially when it comes to introducing yourself. For example, the first time I introduce my self to someone, the questions I usually get are “What's your name?” “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” “Are you single?” in that order. Male or female, these are the questions they ask. Then when I tell them I'm only 22 they respond with “So young! Where are your parents?”. It's very difficult for them to understand that we don't live with our parents until we're at least married. But anyway, this is the dialog I have almost every single time I'm introduced to someone else. Maybe they'll ask about why I'm here and what my job is, but that's only a secondary curiosity of theirs.

• Comments. Another thing Filipinos are very straightforward with are comments on appearance. There is one guy in my office that tells me every time he sees me that my face is looking very fat, then goes on to mimic a chipmunk cheek kind of expression. I really don't understand where he gets that because I look exactly the same as when I first got here and he just started doing this a couple months ago. There was also one day where my host family told me at breakfast that I was looking very skinny today, but then 10 minutes later in my office I was told I'm looking very fat today. Another time I had gone running in the morning, showered, then gone to work and the second I walked into the office someone asked me “What's wrong with your face?”. I guess my face was still a little red from running, but the way they asked it was just very blunt and straighforward. They don't say any of these things to be offensive, but just to make a comment and to say that they're noticing you, or to satisfy their curiosity. This is a really good culture for people who are sensitive about their weight or appearance to come to, because you learn really fast to brush it off and not take anything offensively because that's really not how they mean it.

• Long sleeves on hot days. The final thing I'll list here is how Filipinos wear long sleeves and long pants on hot days. The hotter the weather, the more they cover up. They do this because they don't want the heat of the sun on their skin and they don't want their skin to get darker, but I honestly don't know how they can stand to be covered head to toe (even with a shirt tied over their head so they only have a slit for their eyes) on days with 90% humidity and over 100 degree temperature and not die of heat stroke while working in the fields. I don't care how used to the heat they say they are, it's just not natural.

So once again, this is all for my list of weird Filipino things. I'll start posting about work soon but if there are any other cultural things you wanna hear about let me know and I'll see what I can do! Cultural differences is always a hot conversation topic among PCVs so there's always something to say about everything!

Food, Food, Food!!!!

I'm gonna apologize in advance for the length of this post, but hey, it's about food. So how can I not have a million things to say about it? One thing I've learned here, food can either make or break your day, as I've experienced many times.

I have now been in the Philippines for about 11 months. During this time I have grown very accustomed to the local cuisine and don't even raise an eyebrow when told that the meal was cooked in pig's blood or contains liver bits. I have also come to crave very simple things that I took completely for granted in the States. I'm trying to decide which I should write about first because I know when I start talking about the American food I'll work myself up and then be forced to come back down to Earth again. So should I get all emotional about food now or later??? Hmmm....this is a real dilemma.......oh whatever! I'm already getting all worked up about it so I may as well just continue! (Disclaimer: I could probably write a 10 volume novel on all the food I've been craving but I won't put you through that, so I'll just go with the highlights.)

First off, you'd be surprised how many time the topic of peanut butter comes up in conversations among volunteers. One time I was having dinner with some of the other volunteers and we had a 20 minute conversation about peanut butter, no joke. We talked about the best brand, creamy vs. crunchy, the best way to eat it, what we would give to have some peanut butter right now...you get the picture. I mean, I liked peanut butter in the States as much as the next PB&J fan, but it's a down-right obsession here. A single jar of peanut butter is sacred to the average volunteer (I say average because there are some crazy volunteers that don't even like peanut butter...go figure). My parents sent me a box with 10 jars of peanut butter (there may have been more, I forget) and in the States that could probably last me almost a year, or at least 6 months. But after 3 months, I'm on my 2^nd to last jar. That stuff's addicting! Especially when it's the only munchy available when watching tv shows.

Next, sandwiches!!!! It's pretty much impossible to find good sandwich bread, cheese, and cold cuts in this country, believe it or not. You never realize how much of a staple in the American diet sandwiches are until you have to go without them for what seems like a lifetime. And those three ingredients (bread, cheese, and cold cuts) go into way more meals than you would imagine (okay, maybe not the cold cuts too much, but definitely the bread and cheese). So you're just forced to go without those, which can just kill a girl.

I've been able to find decent substitutes for American pizzas and burgers here, but let's just say it'll feel so nice to be able to sink my teeth into the real deal. One of the most painful experiences here food-wise occurred a couple of months after coming to site. I was with the other volunteers in the area and we decided to splurge on a pizza while watching a fiesta's parade. We ordered our veggie pizza, completely stoked for what was in store for our ravenous stomachs. We opened the pizza box and were a little puzzled by the appearance of the pizza. The crust looked like a dense pita bread, there were carrots on top, the cheese was a weird color, the sauce didn't quite look right, and they'd given us tubes of banana ketchup as a condiment. We all had our reservations, but we're Peace Corps volunteers, gosh-darn-it! If we order a pizza, we're going to eat it and enjoy it!! So we all grabbed a piece and began to eat. Now, it's been a few months since this happened so I can't remember the exact taste, but I'll just say that not one of us (the guys included) finished a second piece. We counted our loses, gave the remainder of the pizza to some street kids, and to this day cringe when we talk of that pizza.

Back to the happy side of food! Salads!!! I always took those for granted in the States, but it is surprisingly hard to find any kind of salad here and decent dressing to go with it. The concept seems strangely foreign to Filipinos living in such a tropical environment, surrounded by greens. I had my aunt and uncle send me some good ol' ranch dressing though, and I've managed to make it last quite a while, eating it with cucumbers and carrots (and Filipinos would consider that a salad, just two veggies). The first time I did this my host family gave me quite a few stares, but I've trained them to accept my sometime weird food habits, even if they can't understand them.

Breakfast foods!! To Filipinos, breakfast includes the same kind of foods as lunch and dinner. They eat the left over fish and rice from the night before for breakfast. I quickly taught my family that I could not do this. I will succumb to many of their different cultural tendencies, but that is one that I will insist on holding strong to my American upbringing. One breakfast food I hadn't realized I missed so much was granola. I'd never been a huge granola eater in the States, enjoying it every now and then but never going out of my way to get my hands on it. Well I asked a volunteer who was visiting the States to bring me back a box of it. It was vanilla almond flavored. Up to this point I had been eating corn flakes cereal for breakfast every day – a Filipino brand of cereal that really has no flavor or sweetness (and I usually go for the sugary cereal or add a cup of sugar to each bowl) – and had gotten used to the non-flavor of it. When I got my first bowl of granola, I wasn't expecting anything ground breaking, just a nice break from the monotonous corn flakes. The second the granola touched my tongue, however, my taste buds went crazy! I had tingles all over my body and I felt like I had just entered another dimension in the world of food!! I'd never had such a strong reaction to food. Even now as I'm typing my mouth is watering just remember it. I was very proud that I made the box of granola last a week. And then the other breakfast foods we find so common (eggs, pancakes, toast, french toast, waffles, etc) are almost unheard of here except in the cities or within the homes of the more westernized families. Filipinos have lots of eggs, but they only do hard boiled eggs. So many opportunities with eggs that they simply don't take advantage of, it breaks my heart.

So like I said earlier, I could go on for pages and pages about food I miss, but I'll make myself stop here and go on to Filipino food stuff.

Fish. I mentioned fish in a previous blog, but I'll reiterate here: they prepare fish differently. They don't clean the meat off the fish, then cook it, then serve it. They gut the fish, cook it, then serve it, with the head, eyes, fins, tails, and bones all there. If there is fish on the table, it's assumed that you'll eat with your hands (at least with my fish eating ability it is; some Filipinos eat the fish with fork and spoon, using it to get the meat off the bone, but I haven't mastered that technique yet, and frankly, it takes the fun out of it). For me, I put the fish on my plate with some rice and a side plate of soy sauce. I pull the meat off the fish with my hands, remove the bones I find, dip the meat into the soy sauce, then mix the fish with rice, using the soy sauce to help hold the rice together, and then enjoy! I actually really like eating fish here. It's an excuse to play with my food. There are other ways to prepare the fish also. One of the most common ways (apart from frying the fish) is drying the fish. To do this, you cut the fish in half along the dorsal fin, open it up “hot dog style” (as we'd say in preschool), and leave it in the sun for a few hours until it's all dried up. I think they pour salt on it too to help with the drying process. I generally don't eat the fish this way because it's really really salty, and I prefer the fried method.

Mango Float!!!!!!!! Sadly I haven't had this too often here, but it's by far my favorite food that I've eaten. I guess it's more of a dessert, but I eat enough of it to make it a meal when I get the chance. It's a layered dessert with layers of graham crackers (pronounced grA-ham here), sweet and condensed milk and cream mixed together, and slices of mango. Put it in the fridge or freezer for a few hours and enjoy!! I swear it is one of the best things I've ever tasted in my life. When I was having a particularly rough week two of my volunteer lifeline friends made it for me and it instantly improved my mood! It's the best way to be cheered up!!

Buko Salad. This is another dessert. Buko is the Filipino word for coconut. It's a chilled dessert with coconut meat, coconut juice, sweet and condensed milk, and these random fruit flavored chunks. It's really good, although I have no idea what the chunks are actually made of.

Halo-halo. This is a traditional Filipino dessert. There's really no way to describe it since they can contain different things depending on who makes it (and probably the region of the Philippines you're in). Halo in Tagalog means mix, so the literal translation of the name is “mix-mix”. It's really just a random mixture of different things. It's also chilled so it has crushed ice, sweet and condensed milk, sometimes ice cream, the random fruit flavored chunks also found in buko salad, sometimes corn flakes, sometimes beans, sometimes corn, sometimes chunks of sugar, and sometimes other stuff. It's really weird, but when you find a good mixture, it's really good. You'll just have to come here and try one for yourself!

This is just one version of the dessert but it shows the colors and some of the variety of the ingredients.

Pansit. This is a noodle dish that's a go-to for Filipinos. It's made with rice noodles and has chunks of meat and some vegetables thrown in. Like the halo-halo, this too can vary depending on who makes it.

Lechon. Aka roast pig. They cook it over a fire pit with a piece of bamboo going through it, mouth to butt. They roast it over fire and coals for a few hours until it turns tan and the skin is nice and crispy. Every major Filipino event has lechon. If lechon was eaten by Americans on a regular basis, we wouldn't do it justice because we'd only eat the meat and throw everything else out. But here they eat EVERYTHING: the meat, the entrails, the blood, the hooves, the fat, the ears, and the skin. The skin is by far my favorite part, even more than the meat. It gets nice a crispy with a thin layer of fat underneath with salty seasoning....'tis perfecto!! (cue terrible Italian accent and kissing of finger tips).

Spaghetti. Pretty similar to the States although they make is sweet here. I don't know how they do it but they do. I prefer American spaghetti.

Adobo. The name for a certain kind of preparation involving cooking the meat or vegetables in soy sauce, vinegar, onions, and garlic. It's delicious and you can cook pretty much any meat or vegetables adobo-style (that I've noticed).

Rice. Of course I had to mention rice. Within the first 2 months here I ate more rice than I'd had in my entire life! Crazy! It's eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No meal is complete without it. Even after being here for almost a year with my host family getting to know me and my eating habits, if there is a day I choose not to eat rice with a meal they give me the strangest looks ever! The proportion of rice to meat (or whatever else they're eating) doesn't make sense to me either. They'll have a plate towering with rice and one 5 inch long fish to go with it. It puzzles me. And Filipinos are so creative with the different ways to prepare rice, too. It can be made into a patty-like-consistency and made into a sweet dessert, or made watery with chocolate and turned into a kind of soup, or so many other ways. Simply put, Filipinos would die without their rice.

Fat. When I say this I don't mean they'll eat the small pieces of fat attached to meat unlike most Americans who cut around the fat (I'm guilty of this). I mean they eat chunks of fat...only fat....no meat. I was completely baffled when my host family during training told me about this and they were in turn completely baffled when I told them I don't eat fat. It was one of the instances where you just stare at each other and cannot, for the life of you, fathom why the other culture does something. My host family had a nice time teasing me about it the rest of the time I was there though.

Banana Leaves. This doesn't have to do with eating as much as food resourcefulness. Banana leaves are used for everything here. They're used to cover the food and protect it from flies, as table clothes/covers, and “paper” plates. The leaves are huge so their purpose is pretty versatile. I was told this was an interesting fact so decided to share.

Okay, I think I've gone on for long enough about food. So I'm gonna end this here. I'm planning on writing a post soon about what's going on a work, so...Coming Soon to a Blog Near You!!