heroes and villains

March 13, 2011

Sometimes when I give kids writing assignments I myself will do it, or at least think long and hard about it. I found out earlier this week that my teacher had a meeting and I would be watching the kids. Found out just as class was starting, so I said hokay and then came up with something I thought might be interesting to them, this way it is fun and they are working. I asked them what super hero power they would choose. Most kids picked invisibility. Mine has nothing to do with saving the world, and we’ll see if I can even explain it. My super hero power would be to make my first shot when shooting hoops. I’m not asking to make every shot, because that would be straight up cheating. What I’m talking about is the first time you pick up the ball you swoosh. Take an old ball to a new hoop, swoosh. The first time you attempt the shot in the shooting session was just beautiful and made that perfect swoosh sound.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my plans to run a half marathon in October around a volcano, but that is the plan. At this point if things don’t change I’m going to hate life come October. I’m out of shape something sore. I’m blaming the rain, the rats, the roosters, the fact that that 5:00 comes awfully early, and whatever else makes it look not so bad that I’m not running. My diet is hit and miss. I feel like I’m either ravenous or not hungry in the least. I also feel like there is a correlation between who cooks and how hungry I am. If it is my Auntie I get full pretty soon. I’ve started to take strides into being more self-sufficient (slowly swallowing that guilt like M suggested). And then there are the times when we convince ourselves we can’t live with out McDos (McDonalds). Who doesn’t need French fries? And today I needed a lot… and a lot of chicken nuggets, and an apple pie, and a Green Apple Float. I also needed to go to a birthday party and have some fried chicken, a Coke float, and an ice cream dessert. I also needed to do this in roughly a two-hour time frame. To be fair we did have vegetables last night.

I’ve started to stroll around this town in hopes it can start the habits towards running. Now that the rain is gone I can go out and about. I want to get to know the community. I’ve had issues with feeling like I just work and commute. With the rain gone (and by gone I mean it stops once or twice a week) I don’t hate leaving my house. I love how friendly the people are and how tight it just seems. Reminds me of one those places I call home and how you can just walk across the street and spend a couple hours with your neighbors. Tonight I really needed that walk, see food consumed earlier, and it was a good one: a lap of each side of the high way.

However, it did trouble me when after my walk my Auntie told me not to look at people who try to talk to me. “Um, Auntie, that is kind of the whole point of me here doing this thing.” Joke la. I didn’t really say that. What I did say was, “Kay ano, atay?”

“Because there are mga bad people, that is why I never look at them.”

“That is why people think you are stuck up.” I didn’t really say that either, but over Christmas at a party her family joked and said she was the stuck up one, but not really she just looked that way. So again just joking. What I did say was that I’d be ok. I guess my super hero power wouldn’t help me fight all the many bad people in town either. For those of you who are now worried about me, know I wield an umbrella when I walk and the people are in fact nice.

I texted this conversation to my site mate and she said, ‘She’s coo koo.’ This time I’m not joking, she really did say that. I love that D! But she’s been here a year and has had no incident and people tell me over and over again how safe it is. But I guess not safe enough for me to live on my own.

Now, back to that seemingly superfluous super hero power of mine. This town is riddled with basketball hoops. How awesome would it be if every time I passed a game I took my stance, clapped my hands, said ‘Pwede ka?’ with a lip pointed head nod to the rim, got passed the ball, drained it, and then walked off an Americano legend?  Went to the next court and did it all over again. Pretty sweet, right? I haven’t drained any shots yet, but tonight I did catch a tennis ball that came flying out of nowhere at me, and kids did think I was some what awesome for it. Win!

life is bununus, b-u-n-u-n-u-s

March 3, 2011

Chalk one up to cultural differences, they’ve helped me through many a lesson.

-lesson on cause and effect, cue There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

-lesson on onomatopoeias, cue Old McDonald Had a Farm

-the kids have been sitting in their seats for 45 minutes of English class and still have another 55 to go, cue The Hokey Pokey

Not going to lie, life has been hard lately (don’t cue the freak out stateside).

On my end there is little to do on my library. The main building of my school is very old. One teacher says 100 years, but she also says the materials are still in good shape (has she not seen the library I sit in). I’m thinking more like 60 years old. DepEd knows the materials are not in good shape, they also know they don’t want to tear the building down. Apparently it is the only structure of its kind in Region 8, which means preserve. Which to my schools credit, it is doing. They got the money and now they are working. In the process, classrooms have been scattered. The canteen is now a classroom, as well as my library. However, my school has not lost their enthusiasm for my project, or for any of my summer projects. I just need to sit down with my supervisor and finalize logistics. Which is hard when she is not around that often.

This is my non-functioning library. Look at that rot!

School wise, things are basically done. March is the last month of school and the focus is so much on NAT tests that most everything else is just for show. Cue other tricks. In the past couple weeks I’ve taught my kids all those games and songs that are just innate to American public education students. When it is my turn to lead the study session we play Around the World. Which is a huge success. They are addicted to Head’s Up 7 Up. I just taught them Apples and Bananas, and my Grade 6 boys go into hysterics thinking about it. Yesterday I taught them Red Light Green Light. They were sweating and complaining about the heat (it feels like August out there and it is still not the hot season) but would not stop playing.

The kids playing Red Light Green Light in front of my one of a kind school.

My Grade 5 class was glued to the windows watching. When I walked by they asked why they didn’t get to play games. I was honest and said they didn’t behave well enough. At the risk of sounding very Filipino, this class is very naughty. Which is a major frustration of mine. Not so much that they are naughty, (which is the perfect way to describe it because they are not malicious or mean but just being kids) but because it is soo ok. The way these kids behave would not fly in a classroom at home, but the teachers have classroom management strategies. Here it is very much a turn the other cheek policy, but how am I suppose to ignore 25 of 36 students?

Luckily next year I’ll be here the whole school year, so I can establish how kids behave when I’m teaching, then move onto the lighter side of education. It will be good for so many reasons. I can be busy again, and not deal with the feeling of I could be doing nothing at home. Which has been a haunt of mine recently. I did get to teach a lesson this week, and it felt good. Hooray for teaching a lot more next year.

Also, hooray for still having a bag of tricks for next year. Because my grade 5 is naughty, and because I have them again next year I can use those games and have them be brand new! Heck yes!

giant pizzas and mini-despididas

March 9, 2011

An alternative title to this post could be: the other day.

This post has the potential to be very long, for that I am sorry. I will try to figure out how to link to things so if you don’t want to read about every tine minute detail of the awesomeness that is my life you don’t have to.

So, here goes. It is common knowledge amongst us PCVs that we are going crazy. Dear loved ones, I’m giving you basically 20 months (whoa) warning that I will be certifiable by the time I get home. Well, the other day I could not find my toothbrush. I had it the night before, I was positive I put it back where I got it. To be honest my living situation is such that if I don’t put things back where they belong than there is no where to put them. So this drove me nuts and I texted all around to vent it out. There was the theory that the rats took it, but really, the rats? So I got a new one and had been very deliberate about placing it where it belongs. Woke up the other day, and it was gone. So it is either the Tooth Fairy’s evil twin or the rats. 

I’m working on getting the bravado to kill them. Filipinos just deal. I’m not that culturally assimilated. Options are traps or poisons. If I go the trap route I’ve got to deal with I’m not sure how many rats there are. I am a light sleeper and would for sure here the rats’ demise as it snaps shut. Then the whole waking up and saying good morning to the rat in the trap and disposing of it. Gross. So poison. Still, I don’t know how many there are. They live in the wall, so what are the odds they will eat the stuff and die in the wall and then rot and stink? If they don’t die there will they just keel over in my room? Then I’m dealing with disposal again. See why I’m going loony?

Speaking of animals living in walls, the other day my teacher and I are chilling in the canteen. It is our prep period, so she was working on writing tests and I was grading compositions. The canteen is still a make shift classroom while the roof is being replaced. Well a bird flies into the canteen putting all the girls in a tizzy. It lands up on the rafters, then we hear thumping from the roof, a thud, and the bird falls to the ground with a thunk. Moments later a feral cat jumps down from up there and has a late lunch. Now the whole class was in a tizzy.

Now we are done with wild animals, I think. I showed up to school the other day and the kids were in an assembly. They were learning about fire extinguishers and the fire department. Or at least there was an illusion of learning. Really they were running around and getting yelled at. Then they all go to recess all the teachers go into a classroom and have their own fire safety assembly. Then we go to class, so I think, but nope, we do fire drills. As I’ve mentioned, school is all but over. Which means, of course, it is the perfect time to learn how to do a fire drill. I get that March is fire safety month, but it is ok to teach fire drills, in oh I don’t know June when the kids come to school.

(Back to wild animals. The other day after the town was basically all shut down I was lying in bed just sort of decompressing. I had my music playing and the lights out enjoying the false security of my mosquito net--see the post where the rats chewed holes through it—when there was a fire fly flying around. Just one glowing about, and it must have been a bad day or I was in just the right mood because it made me very happy.)

Speaking of fire, it has been hot. It still rains, but now when it is not raining it is hot hot hot. I’m just loving my east-facing bedroom, or not. The other day we were running errands for our send off (more on this to come) and it was just so hot. We stopped and got pop in a bag. I’m hard pressed to think of something more refreshing than Royal Orange Soda in a plastic bag, and that is the honest truth. So we are walking along and C starts groaning. The one from Atlanta is groaning, while M who is from San Fran, one of the least warm parts of Cali, and I are just quietly sweating it out. I am certain that I’m not going to make it through summer. In fact I doubt I’ll make it to summer. Graduation day, the official start of summer, is on my birthday. I’ll make it to 25 and then just stop. A quarter of century well spent!

Really I jest, but it is miserable, but I guess there is some good from it. I went to class and was getting my students going, Ma’am would be along shortly. They were doing some last minute studying and then they all started looking at me. I have students who will not talk to me, but usually some one will do it for them. So, Jacquleen says, “Ma’am Denver says you look very mahusay because it is mapaso,” to this I replied, “ Ano? I look beautiful because it is hot?” Then the whole class says, “Yes, you have rosy cheeks!” So at least the heat is becoming.

Almost done I promise. M left the other day, which has given us heavy boots but we wish the best for her! So to send her off we went to pizza. There is a local joint downtown that is a favorite. The first time we went while we were eating we saw this huge pizza come out of the oven. It was the group consensus that we needed to get one. It was M’s last meal request and we were happy to oblige. We got half veggie half tropical (Hawaiian) and waited. Then it came out, 36 inches of pizza! We ate, and by we I mean the ladies went to town and the boys had some. Most of the pizza was gone and we went home happy.

But for us, it was not enough of a goodbye, and we threw a mini-despidida for M, but used our own rules. Technically a despidida is when the person leaving throws themselves a party and pays for it all. It is the same with birthdays. Well, we weren’t having that. We got fixings for nachos and got some Dunkin Donuts and a giant bottle or two of beer. And had a party. It was perfect! Wishing you the best M!

insert gloria gaynor quote here.

March 11, 2011

A friend of mine once sagely stated that only the survivors survive. Heck yes for those random moments of cafeteria wisdom. Well I am a survivor and I am surviving.

I’ve not been evacuated, and am staying put as advised by PC Safety and Security. When deemed safe here is what one does in case of tsunami (or as Filipinos say choo-nam-ee,):

-Encode 4^th contact tests for grades IV, V, and VI. All there major tests are next week and I said I’d type them up for my teacher. After that stick a fork in school it is done. Except for that whole two plus weeks we still have class thing.

-Check out the local happenings. Tonight is the Junior and Senior prom. It was very similar to the last prom I went to but this one had popcorn. Take that Palo. And the girls had more dress to their dresses.

- Walk around the town. Today it rained all day so tonight is really nice temperature wise. I’ve done some walking around, but I really enjoyed my stroll tonight.

-Get text blasted. Peace Corps sent texts way ahead of time telling us who needed to find higher ground (I did not). My warden called me, and is still sending me updates. I’m very far inland, and more than 50 feet above sea level. I’ve also kept in contact with my red zone friends.

-Listen to podcasts. Current fave is NPR Tiny Desk Concert. The Adele one is only 3 songs long but I can listen to it for hours!

-Feel loved. My sister-in-law works the grave yard shift and saw on the news the details. She called her husband (i.e. my brother) who then called my paps. He interneted and saw that Leyte was a target island. He knows I live inland but sometime head into town for the weekends, and it it was 3 in the morning and he wasn’t thing straight. So he called to make sure his favorite daughter was alive.

So here I sit. I’m sure if I had a TV. I’d be more aware of the situation and might be more freaked out about this. But as is the cable has been out for what I’m sure is years, or a month. So here I sit debating a game of solitaire. I would go to bed, but there is a prom bumping outside my window.

This girl doensn't have cable either. On my walk home from school I saw her watching TV under the gate.

In other news, I did run out of tea this week. Don’t know how I’ll survive that one.

sometimes ups outnumber the downs

Feb. 24, 2011

Fingers crossed and all other anti-jinx precautions but I think I’ve successfully rid my room of the rats. After months of working to get my windows to close I’ve been able to secure the possible entrances to my room. That is, for now. My room may be rodent free but the house is far from eradicated. They live in the walls, they live in the floor between the downstairs and upstairs, and as of last night I think they finally made it to the ceiling. Like all structures in the Philippines my house has ants and other wood-eating insects. They’ve eaten through the beams creating a perfect entry for rats and mice. At night I can hear them scratching and clawing and gnawing in the walls working their way to the ceiling I guess. Last night they were running and running and running around up there. Victory laps or something. Talk about things that go bump in the night. It was raucous. I just laid in my bed hoping that despite the huge hole the rats chewed into my mosquito net a few weekends ago it would still offer protection if they managed to bust in. For hours they ran and ran and ran. Running into things, knocking things over. It was bedlam. I hated them. I wish I could say I slept poorly, but I just didn’t sleep. They calmed down right about the times the roosters started to crow.

 On Tuesday I was left in charge of things. I had just done a quick lesson on autobiographies for my students and went over the hamburger method of writing paragraphs and they were studiously working. Then all their faces convulsed at once and they started gagging and other like noises. This has happened before, the CR can be smelly. So they dumped some water in and got back to work. But then they did it again. They turned off the fans, and again got back to work. Then they all stood up and were moving around talking in Waray. or rather shouting in Waray. I had no idea what was going on, they could be planning mutiny for all I knew. But it was obvious it was still odor related. They were yelling at each other and pointing and standing. Then this one student, searching for words, told me it was the waste of a dog. Oh I laughed, and laughed. Somebody had stepped in it and the class was in an uproar.

Ahh, the ups and downs of what I’m doing. One fourth of the way in and still very much in love with it.

skin-a-ma-rink-a-dink-a-dink, skin-a-ma-rink-a-doo, i love you!

February 17, 2011

I’ve been in the Philippines for 6 months! I love that! This week was Valentine’s Day! I love that! To celebrate this blog is about other things I love!

Meryenda! Everyday for recess my counterpart and I have banana-ques and talk with the other teachers at my school.

Teaching! A lot of volunteers come to the Peace Corps not wanting to be teachers, so when they say they love teaching here believe it, but imagine just how much truer it is for someone who actually came in from the education side of things. For Valentine’s I had the students write poems and I taught them Skin-a-ma-rink. They loved it! I love that all those songs and games we just grow up knowing are brand new to them. New favorite, Heads Up Seven Up! Try it at your next office party!

Working with my school! I’ve been lucky (at most times) to have the chance to work with student teachers. Once last month one of the student teachers asked if he could use some of my activities in his own class. How is that for stability? Also I have a lot of support with my staff for the ideas I want to bring to the table.

My walk to school! I love that on my walk to school I am called: ma’am, teacher, friend, atay, sister, cousin, American, beautiful, and the most affectionate hey you!

Mail! It shows how much people are behind me at home. I love that I got the last of the Christmas packages on Valentine’s Day! I also love how much the people at the Post Office love me. I’ve spent almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday checking on those packages. The ladies are more excited than me when I get one (almost)!

The conductors! The Jeepneys know my stop. Doesn’t matter which one I hope into at Campetic they all let me off at the same eskiana. Even the Jaro Jeeps! The conductors and drivers talk to each other and they all know where to let off the young American. The other day I was walking along the highway in Palo, a Jeep from Alang Alang slowed down and honked the driver waving. It made me very happy!

Rain! Haha as much as I hate it I love it. This past week it has been hot and humid, and I’m fairly confidant I prefer wet feet to sweaty all over!

Site mates! D is the best! I’ve been doing things here and there with her. I even helped her at school one day! Also my extended site mates! I love my Palo and Tacloban people, and have very heavy boots about M leaving. I also love my Region mates! I miss K and L way up in N Samar, hopefully I’ll be seeing them soon. And also my island mates, hopefully I’ll be able to see more of them.

My readers! Most of you are my family and friends, and I love you! I’m loving what I am doing, but some times I really miss you guys! Thanks for all you do for me!

same old song and dance

February 1, 2011

This is not a complaint, but life is kind of boring. The biggest headline I have is: I finally bit the bullet and took my laundry to a drop off service. I’m hooked, best decision ever.  Now we are price looking, too bad I can’t do that locally. I realize I can hire a lady here in town, but there is just something about the way clothes fit out of a drier that I’ll pay for. Does that make me a bad volunteer?

Really other than that all I can say is it is still raining. I’m not joking. Things at school are good. This week is a bit of an off week for me. The student teachers I’ve been working with are now doing their solo teaching. I’ve really enjoyed working with them, and it really made my idea when Sir asked if he could use some of my ideas when he is a teacher. We are just starting the 4^th contact of the year (quarter), and I’ll be out of school before April.  All of my projects at school are still very much in the ideas on paper stage, but I’m thinking the first steps are being laid for my library. If only I could talk to my supervisor once in a while.

I’m starting to feel a real sense of community here in Alang Alang and with in my Peace Corps group here. Last weekend some of the volunteers from the farther corners of this region came to town. So that was fun, we even made real tacos. And that was my excitement for the past little while.

I like that my life has a routine, but I’m also plenty busy still sorting through this gig here. I’m glad for the boring, it is a nice break from those months of emotional chaos.