Monday, May 19, 2008

A Rememberance

The day started off in an air conditioned office with me putting together a telescope and flipping through a bird identification book. Then sometime around noon we set out to the field site which was about a half hour ride from the municipal hall. I stepped out of the vehicle onto the sandy path beneath a cloudless sky and instantly felt the heat of the sun on the top of my head. After waiting for a couple minutes our "guides" arrived and it was at that moment I knew we were in for an afternoon of headaches. Our "guides" were a group of kids no older than twelve and the youngest one was still a bit wobbly since he didn't have complete control of his body yet. Despite the obvious set back we started making our way into the brush that is adjacent to the seashore. Our "guides" told us that they had seen two tabon birds earlier so this was going to be no problem. After an hour of not seeing our intended target, the tabon bird we took a short break. Then the idea was had to send the kids into the woods while we held stationary positions and waited for them to flush out the ideal birds. There was a lot of waiting in the sun but not much else happened. The afternoon continued to drag on with the same result. Our last effort was to send the kids into the woods one more time but it failed again. The sun was starting to set and we decided to call it a day. As we were heading back to the vehicle the guides/kids came running up to us telling us that they had just seen 3 birds. I just started laughing but other people in the group started questioning them like they believed them. I still don't know if they believed the kids or were just humoring them. I can only hope that they knew the truth. We made one last stop at a house on our way back so someone in our group could buy crabs from a fisherman. I had fished out my hanker chief to wipe of my face which was nice and sweaty from our excursion and set it down on a table next to me. After the crab was purchased and the conversation ended we were ready to go. I reached down to grab my hanker chief and it was gone. I looked around and saw one of our guides had swiped it. I gave him a half smile and started to walk towards him but he ran. I could see this was going to be difficult. I smiled again and told him to come here. He just laughed and started to walk back to his house. I made a quick movement towards him and he took off running again. It was than that I knew I had a decision to make. I could chase him down and wrestle the hanker chief from him and possibly spark an international incident or I could try to obtain help from his parents or people in my party but they seem too amused to provide any help or I could just give the kid a dirty look, remember his face for future retribution and leave without my hanker chief. I definitely wanted to see where option one could lead but I decided to choose boring option three and just walk away from the situation. I took one last glance back at the kid and saw him showing his newly claimed prize to his friends. During my reflection of this incident I've know decided that if I am ever in the situation the best thing to do is grab one of the kids sandals or something else of theirs so at least it's a fair trade.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

A Year of Highlights

Well it has been a year since we started this whole experiment so it's probably a good time to reflect on our current situation.
*Rice is now our dietary staple which we eat 2-3 times a day and when we go a whole day without it we become irritable, we develop headaches, and we feel dizzy. Joke, Joke, Joke! Well the last part we really do eat it 2-3 times a day.
*We have witnessed first hand that dogs are dual purpose: man's best friend and man's most delicious friend.
*We might have signed up for Peace Corps to save the world but it seems at times we are nothing more than the punchline of a joke.
*We have learned of fruits like rombutan, langka, and durian.
*We have eaten for the first and probably last times in our lives coagulated pigs blood with pig innards as a meal.
*I have hit my head 427 different times on 103 different things. The most common objects are the ceiling of jeeps and trikes. The best one was a ceiling fan that I knocked of the ceiling by standing up. That is zero points for the ceiling fans and one point for me.
*Sitting on the bottom of the ocean and looking upwards through 68 feet of water.
*Having complete strangers give you food and refusing to take no.
*Being called Joe every place you go.
*Seeing mangroves for the first time.
*Living with two different families, that speak a different language for a total of six months.
*Watching all the different ways people use me as a measuring stick. There are the jumpers that walk close to me and see how high the can jump compared to me. Then there are the stalkers that kind of nonchalantly walk next to me and put their hand on top of their head and move it next to my body to see where the top of their head is. They aren't any where as sneaky as they think. Then there are the back to backers that just walk up to me and without warning stand back to back with me and have their friend mark off their height on my back.
*Watching all the different expressions that people make at us. Now I like to create a carnival nickname based on how shocked they looked. If it is a long stare something benign like "the tall white guy" or if I get a mouth on the floor look without a broken stare then I give myself a name like "the mega-giant, long footed, lumbering amerikano from the other side of the globe" sometimes I even inject the ooh-aah. I just realized I might have already been here too long. Oh well.
Favorite Pics from the last year in the Philippines
Our Filipino family


Emma loves Peace Corps

Mangrove - amazing!
beautiful Palawan jungle

We love handwashing!

The teachers of Sico 1.0 National High School

Monday, May 5, 2008

Next time we'll do a head count

The day before my supervisor told me we had a meeting in the provincial capital and to meet him at the municipal hall at 8 am. So since I am culturally adjusted now I arrived at 8:05 am because 8 am here means more like 8:30. I walked into the municipal hall and was met by a frantic office employee telling me to go up stairs immediately. My first thought was "great, people are on time toady". So I went upstairs to our office and found my supervisor sipping a cup of coffee. As soon as he saw me he asked if I had seen the driver and I said no so he told me to go downstairs and wait because it was late. I went running downstairs and waited and waited and waited until 8:30 then the driver showed up. We said hi to each other then he parked the car and went into the municipal hall so I sat back down and waited until almost 9. The Fisheries Chairman showed up just then and asked where the driver was so I told him. I waited another five minutes and then we all finally piled into the jeep and were about to leave when the Fisheries Chairman asked me where my supervisor was and I said I didn't know maybe upstairs. He then asked if he was joining us and I said no. We traveled to the provincial capitol and picked up the head of the Agriculture Department on the way. We arrived at the capitol late but the meeting hadn't started yet. It took some time for everyone to find chairs and say there hellos but the meeting started eventually and was only thirty minutes behind schedule. The meeting was about a national law that the province wants to change related to the fisheries act. The most interesting thing happened half way through the meeting when my supervisor walked through the door and sat on the other side of the room. I thought that it was peculiar for him to decide to take another form of transportation here. The Fisheries Chairman noted his arrival by nudging me and we just looked each other and smiled. The meeting eventually ended and my supervisor came over to the Fisheries Chairman and they started having what looked like a serious conversation. Then the Fisheries Chairman started laughing hard and pointed at me. That was my cue and I joined the conversation. My supervisor was supposed to get a ride with us and was planning on attending the meeting. After this was explained to me there was an awkward moment of silence and then the fisheries chairman started laughing again. My supervisor got in line for lunch and the fisheries chairman asked me what he said so I told him and this brought out another round of laughter. I started thinking to myself why had I said that he wasn't riding with us. He had never told me his plans but I had assumed I knew what was going on. I began to feel a little better about the situation after I realized it wasn't my language skills that were off but my reading of the situation. I had assumed that he wasn't joining us since I was treated like we were in a hurry and waited downstairs for an hour to leave. I figured my supervisor would have been acting hurried and checking every couple minutes to see if the driver had arrived. So I got over the situation and decided it was a cultural misinterpretation and not a language one which was easier for me to deal with.
On our way home the head of the Agriculture Department bought food and invited us over to her house. We were all sitting around eating when the Fisheries Chairman asked me "Anong sinabi niya?" (what did he say?). Then he started to laugh, uncontrollably.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

It's Official

Well after reading 200 plus pages, watching 2 hours of instructional videos, spending a day in the pool with scuba gear on, and doing 5 dives in 2 days, we are officially scuba certified! The last five days are a blur and I feel like I might have grew gills. The trip started with a two hour bus ride to the port city and then a hour long ride on a passenger ferry. As we approached our destination we could see the beach packed with hotels and resorts. This is the first resort area we've been to in the Philippines and it had a different feel. The first big shock was that half the population seems to be American or Europeans. I don't know if I've ever heard so much German spoken before. The other unique thing was the town had a French Bakery and a store that sold Maple Grove Farms salad dressing from Vermont for 150 pesos (about $3.75). While the above water scene was a little bit disorienting the under water scene was amazing. We spent our first two days reading, watching videos, and practicing in the pool. Then we moved into the real big fishbowl the next day. We put on our gear and tip backwards into the water and dropped down to 24 feet below surface. We just kneeled underwater for about an hour practicing all the same things we learned in the pool and then headed back to the surface. By the end of the day we felt a little tired but were definitely excited for the next day. The following morning we made our first real dive in a coral garden area. We went 36 ft. below the surface and saw some beautiful soft coral and different fish species. We had one more dive left in us so later that afternoon we went on a wreck dive that took us 68 ft. below the surface and we got to see 3 different wrecks. The wrecks were interesting but the schools of fish were much more interesting. We saw striped eel catfish, moorish idols, harlequin ghost pipefish. The diving was a lot of fun and we look forward to taking advantage of the wealth of dive sites in the Philippines.