I am currently in the province of
Batangas for the Supervisor's Conference. And I just learned that I
will be moving to Siaton, Negros Oriental on the island of Negros on
September 19th, and I just met my counterpart for the
first time!!!! I'll also have to learn a new dialect
(Cibuano/Vasayan), which is only slightly similar to Tagalog. Ya,
this is getting real.
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| My counterpart, Nick-Nick!! |
The hotel they have us in is probably
equal to a 4 star hotel in the US (so pretty nice), but this feels
like complete luxury compared to the last month and a half! I got to
take my first actual shower with actual hot water since I got to the
Philippines (it's been all bucket showers with cold water)!! I
honestly am kind of resenting the shower though because the water is
too hot (even with barely any hot water on) and I'm wasting so much
water! I've never been so conscious of how much water I use, but
with bucket showers, I use maybe 2 gallons of water per shower, and I
definitely use way more than that in regular showers. It's
interesting to notice. But...the hotel also gives us cotton
towels!!!!! I've been using my quick dry towel that barely covers
half my body and is super thin; the cotton towel feels like a dream!
And another crazy thing about this hotel.....the bathrooms have
TOILET PAPER!!!!!!! AND PAPER TOWELS!!!!!! AND SOAP (like soap that
actually foams, not that watery substitute stuff)!!!!!!!!!!! I
haven't seen paper towels since being in country and tp is also super
rare to come by. To give you an idea, I went to a hospital and the
bathrooms didn't have toilet paper OR paper towels (they did have
soap though)....but a hospital!! I was definitely shocked.
I have now been in the Philippines for
more than a month! There are some things that I just don't really
feel like putting in paragraph form, and I'm very fond of lists, so
here comes one of the little differences in everyday life here.
For instance, seeing geckos on the
walls of the house no longer causes me to raise an eyebrow, and the
cockroach who lives in our bathroom (who I've named Alfred) is more
of a comfort now.
- I've become very used to always
being wet in some way; either from sweat, rain, showers, or just
humidity.
- Roosters cock-a-doodle-doo at all
hours of the day and night...nonstop. I can now give first-hand
knowledge that it is only a myth that they only call out when the
sun rises (sadly).
I eat my food with my hands 70% of
the time now. That wouldn't be weird in the US, except this
includes eating rice with vegetables and sauces. I'm definitely not
pro quality, but I'm getting there.
Bringing my umbrella wherever I
go. I can rain here at anytime.
Meriyenda (snacks) have become a
daily routine and my stomach is on the schedule of being hungry at
7:30am, 10am, 12pm, 3pm, and 7pm.
Bringing TP everywhere. It's
guaranteed no where. And then throw it away in the trash can...never the toilet.
Accepting there are no mirrors and
there's nothing I can do about it. It's always a surprise when I
see pictures of myself now.
Stray dogs and cats are everywhere
and they are not to be touched. They actually don't even want
attention since that's the way they've grown up.
Eating fish bones is unavoidable.
Having regular, unsweetened peanut
butter is a delicacy.
Some things I've gotten to experience
here so far/some stories:
Videoke. I'd say this is by far
the favored past time of Filipinos. It's exactly the same as
karaoke in the States, except it's called videoke. I've lost count
of how many times I've done it so far. At least a couple nights
every week involve videoke in one way or another. Almost every home
has a videoke machine here, and it's become a thing among us
trainees to compare different components of the videoke experience
between the different places. We've identified the microphone that
makes you sound the best, the best location mood-wise, the most
high-tech machine, the most organized song book (it's unbearably
annoying when you have to flip through thousands of songs in both
English and Tagalog and the songs aren't even in alphabetical
order), the location where we also get free snacks out of it, and I
could probably go on forever. Basically, it's the thing to do.
It's also necessary to have a few “go-to” songs as back-ups just
in case the locals force you to sing before you've been able to sort
through the songs. Mine have become “Mamma Mia” (or really
anything from ABBA) and anything by Shania Twain. These are plenty
others of course, but those are my go-tos. I've also learned the
Tagalog song “Pusong Bato.” You should look it up. As a
presentation for the Supervisor's Conference, we CRMers made a music
video for Pusong Bato, and it is crazy good, if I do say so myself.
I'll add a link to that eventually if it ever gets put up on
youtube.
Opening coconuts with a machete.
I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means, but I would
definitely put myself in the intermediate level of ability. A
couple nights ago we made pina coladas with freshly poured coconut
milk and meat, drank them from the coconut while watching the sunset
on our beach. It was definitely a textbook perfect tropical
evening. I do have one interesting story I have with opening
coconuts, though, and I would like to start out the story by saying
that everything is fine now and I'm perfectly okay. So Jess,
another trainee, and I were learning how to open coconuts for the
first time together. It was really hard work and frustrating, but
we finally got it! Jess cracked open the coconut and the milk
started pouring out, so she held it up so it would drip into her
mouth. Well it was dripping from multiple parts along the crack so
I wanted to get in on it too. I got under the coconut to get my
drink (unbeknownst to Jess) just as she decided she'd had enough and
brought the coconut down right on my nose! And I'll tell you, those
things are as hard as rock!! I've been hit plenty of times in the
face/nose with volleyballs and such over the years, but never has my
nose bled because of it...and this caused a full fountain of blood.
And to make matters worse, there were about 20 children around
watching this unfold along with the other trainees, so there was a
full audience present for my graceful performance. To cut to the
chase, the bleeding eventually stopped and I was left with a little
scrape and slight bruise on my nose for a few days. Nothing more
exciting though :( I would have liked to have a better battle wound,
but alas.
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| Before the accident |
Local transportation. I've been
able to experience trike rides (motorized tricyles), jeepneys, and
buses so far. I have yet to experience a ferry, but I'll get my
chance. A group of us took a public bus and jeepney to get to a
nearby mall for our weekly internet access a few weeks ago. It was
definitely an experience. We waited for 30 minutes at the bus stop
outside Mabayo and the bus that arrived had standing room only (the
mall is 40 minutes away) with a roof that was only 6 ft high (there
was a guy that was 6'4” and a guy that was 6'1” with us). We
got on the bus and the entire bus started laughing at our tall
entourage. I wasn't too uncomfortable during the bus ride, but I
can't say the same for my companions. On the way back from the mall
we ended up walking in circles for 20 minutes trying to find the
right jeepney and finally found it just as it was about to pull
away. We squished the 5 of us into an already full jeepney and
ended up having 25 people total in there, which I thought was a
pretty impressive feat. I was actually sitting on someone's lap for
a little bit of the ride.
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| My first trike ride with my host family and all my luggage! |
Dreaming in Tagalog. This was
more comical than impressive. Earlier in the day I had seen a kane
spider for the first time (a relatively big and creeping looking
spider) and then preceded to dream about one being in my room. In
my dream I was with 2 other trainees and they were very casually
informing me that this terrifyingly creepy spider was “right over
there.” I was having a little dream confusion where I wasn't sure
if “here” was talking about at school where I had seen the
spider earlier in the day or if it was in my room currently. So in
my sleep I spoke aloud “nandito o dyan lang?” (here or over
there). There was complete confusion on my part linked with fear of
having a huge spider right in my room, and this led to a very
restless rest of my night.
After this supervisor's conference I
will have 10 more days in Mabayo before leaving it for good and
moving to Siaton! We'll be finishing our technical training and
taking our language proficiency interview (LPI), basically the
Tagalog language exam, and doing our community projects. I realize I
haven't said much about what we're learning for technical training,
so here it goes.
The first half of PST (pre-service
training) we were learning how to survey and assess seagrass beds,
mangroves, and coral reef ecosystems. This was pretty awesome
because it meant we were actually snorkeling around these reefs and
had the great Philippines outdoors as our office for the day...a
pretty hard life if you ask me. Below is a picture of the little
cove we went to for seagrass and coral surveys for class on a
Saturday (I would complain about class on a Saturday at 7am, but I
really don't have much to complain about). The fishermen that boated
us out there caught fish while we did our surveys and then cooked it
right there on the beach and served it to us as a snack! They also
found spider conchs from the reefs there, cooked those, and taught us
how to crack open the shells and eat the muscle right there on the
beach! Definitely the freshest sea food I've ever eaten.
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| Our office for the day....ya....life is hard. |
The second half of PST we've been
learning how to do community assessments and collect socio-economic
data to help us get a better idea of our community's profile. It's
been really interesting because we had to interview community members
like fishermen and barangay council members to get first-hand
accounts of the community. We're also going to be doing a youth camp
next weekend where we will teach kids about the importance of
environmental conservation and everything. I'm pretty stoked for it.
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