September 25, 2011
Another weekend in the big city.
Saturday I finally bought myself a bicycle. I went in Saturday morning, my plan being to sit my favorite little tea house type place, attack a list of internet things to do, have some pizza, grab the bike and come on home. It more or less worked like that. My Jeep was super fast and I got into town before my place opened so I stopped into McDo for breakfast. I had to go to the bathroom so I took all my stuff into the stall and went to put my backpack on the hook. It slid off the hook and I caught it right when it hit the ground. After this I trekked over to get my tea on. The place was so hot, steamy, and dark. The city was having a scheduled brown out. The poor guy was standing there stirring a hot pot of tapioca pearls and told me they didn’t have a brown out. Poor guy. I abandoned ship and went over to the coffee joint, which was so packed and crowded, due to brown out. I took out my computer and figured out my mouse track pad is all messed up, and kind of slightly my keyboard. I ran into some other volunteers there and ended up having pizza company. Then I went and bought my heavy new bike. I’m very excited to have it, and can’t wait to ride!
I’ve been in sore need of mall groceries for weeks now, but didn’t want to do groceries and bikes on a Jeep same day. It is enough of a pain with absolutely nothing on your person. So Sunday I went to the mall. I’d done my shopping and was walking through mall when I ran into what could be considered my host niece from when I first got here. It was her birthday and they were eating at Jolibee. I got the crazy idea that I would just say hi. Just saying hi does not exist here. Before I knew it was sitting there sipping Coke waiting for food. When the food came they plopped the fried chicken and rice and telling me to eat. I noticed the mom had no food, and I started to feel super guilty about my lunch. She said she never ordered food for herself just extra rice, at first I didn’t believe her, but then noticed that this mother of 3 ended up finishing off the better part of 3 chicken breasts. Luckily the gravy has free refills and she didn’t starve. Then the ice cream came and they went to the arcade. It was so nice bumping into them and feeling so welcomed.
I went to go sit after this and call my family at home. I ended up sharing an outlet (this country not only has a lack of power, but also a lack of power sources) with some guy working really hard. He was trying to skype with someone in Chinese and seemed to be having a hard time. After a while three Filipinos joined him. They started giving him a hard time for not knowing my story. We started talking and they work for the company this first guy worked for and were sent from Manila to be his cultural aide. One guy was a Waray Waray speaker, the other two were Cebuano speakers one from Bohol and one from Mindanao. Those three all had to speak to each other in Tagalog, which is no problem, but had to use their poor English skills to speak to the Chinese guy with even poorer English skills. They found out I was a teacher and the language classes began (minus the Chinese man who was still trying to work, and terribly shy and awkward). I told the Mindanao guy my teacher was also from Mindanao and he asked where. All I knew was from a region that uses to speak Cebucano (spelling check on that), which is known as a broken Spanish. I was telling them some of the little Spanish I’ve retained, and even how to say strawberry and apricot (neither of witch are popular fruits here) in Italian, which is basically all I learned outside of dinner terms from my short time there. When I left they said sianaura and laughed and laughed. I guess I’m a citizen of the world.
