Peace, Paradise, and Parasites: July 2014

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.

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.