uKaY-UkAy

An unplanned trip to Japan left me with one problem. I have no winter clothes here because I expected to spend two years in the eternal inferno that is the Philippines. So I had one simple mission before me: to find a giant sweater. The mission posed two problems one is finding a sweater for sale in a sub tropical environment and finding a sweater for someone with a 6'4" frame in a country where the average height is about 5'8". I decided to head to the ukay-ukay which is Filipino for giant thrift store. Rebeka and I were scouring the racks for a giant sweater but it didn't look like a possibility. Then all of a sudden I grabbed a light brown sweater. I gave it a look over and thought it might actually fit. I unzipped the sweater and threw it on. Just like a glove. A perfect fit and even in style. Then I heard Rebeka laughing behind me. I turned around and said "what, you don't like it". I couldn't understand what was so funny. I took off the sweater and was a little bit hurt. Then I noticed a big jean patch on the back of the sweater. Oh great I found a sweater that fits but looks like the 1980's threw up on it. After Rebeka stopped laughing she came up with the idea to cut off the patch, which said sicko on it. So we spent the 150 pesos (3 dollars) and took the sweater home. After an hour long procedure I removed the patch but the word sicko was stained in the sweater. Rebeka had a solution for this problem too. She decided to wash the sweater repeatedly and let the sun bleach it out. Well we're getting ready to leave for Japan and the sweater still has a faint sicko outline. I guess it might be an opportunity to get a new nickname. Oh how I love shopping.

Fiesta and Surprises

This past week was our town's Lambayok Festival. Lambayok is a combination of Lambanog the 90 proof coconut wine made from coconut nectar, and palayok which is locally made pottery. The highlights of the three day festival were a beauty contest, a boxing match, a dancing competition among the schools and free lambanog (my students especially appreciate this element of the fiesta). Wednesday was the street dancing competition and parade. Kids from the local schools were dressed in costumes made from native materials.

Standing in the hot hot sun sweating be cause the parade wasn't moving.

Our host sister. Her school won for costume and dancing!

Students from my school performing

We finally collected our last two bags from my supervisor's house where they have been stored for the past 4 months. Yes, we definitely over-packed! When we got the things from our bags we had lots of mold and this little traveler. He obviously had a liking for our American Tourister luggage.

Two of my third year classes!

We awoke to a beautiful sunset rising through the trees. Granted there was no power and we could hardly see, but we did spy something sitting on our windowsill... It was red and rounded? No, the color came from the hundreds of tiny red ants consuming the pile of ??? Yes our dear friend the cat (who came with the house and we share with the neighbor) had left a surprise on the window sill. Left over noodles that he hadn't digested? or a pile of parasitic worms? hmmm... Either way getting it and the hundreds of red ants off the window sill was interesting. We are grateful that rubbing alcohol is quite inexpensive and readily accessible for all of those times you just don't really know what something is.The other creature who really belongs to our neighbor and leaves lots of unwanted surprises around our house.

Steve with Leo, our host brother and Jimboy our neighbor.

Whale Shark Video and Photos!!!!

Healthy and happy!

A perfect scene

Which way is out?

Brittle Star

Sea Cucumber, its supposed to be delicious

Still cute

She's so cute!

Banana Blossom

Tail of Blue Marlin (only .80 cents per pound at market)

Stove

Faucet

Kitchen

From the living room window

Living Room

My new friend

Extinct volcanoes, fish traps, and fisherman

View from our local mangroves

After a long day of school

Shower

Bathroom

Bedroom 1 of our house

Whale shark sighting in our town

American Invention: The Personal Space Bubble

I spend many minutes of my day reflecting about the different situations I go through. These reflections cause moments of joy and laughter but never really disappointment. The one thing that many volunteers learn in the Philippines is to laugh at adversity, just as many Pilipinos do. One of the greatest differences in culture between Americans and Pilipinos is the concept of privacy. In America we have a form of hyper-privacy where people guard their thoughts and possessions with a passion. We even have a term in America which is the "personal space bubble". This term represents our individuality and need for isolation. The Philippines has no such code and Pilipinos live in the opposite manner of the American expectation. The below stories should more than explain exactly what I mean.

• I had been in the Philippines for about 2 months and was on a field trip for CRM. We had just been introduced to the staff of the CRM department and after a five minute introduction one of the staff members grabbed me by the arm. As we were walking down the stairs he informed me that his sister had been kidnapped and the governor of his province was working very hard to get her released. I was left speechless and just responded by nodding my head with my mouth wide open. (side note: having your mouth wide open is another way to say what in some parts of the Philippines) I didn't know this at the time but I wasn't expected to give an extraordinary response just an acknowledgement of the situation.
• About a month ago Rebeka and I were riding on a jeep home (tightly packed public transportation) and there was a women with an infant on her lap to my left. The baby started to cry and the next thing I know the mother was breastfeeding her child. Lets just say this was incredibly awkward for me. I was trying to face forward to give her some kind of privacy but kept having to turn towards her to collect money from passengers passing their payment forward. Then I felt a heavy object resting on my arm and come to find out it was the kids head. Heck, the mom must have gotten tired of holding her kid and my arm was available so it was the logical solution. I did sign on to Peace Corps to help in anyway I could. I wonder how that would look on a job resume: used as headrest during breastfeeding.
• Two weeks ago I was at work and one of the municipal employees who was a women was saying masakit which means pain. So I unknowingly asked what's wrong and her response was simply my flow. At that moment I wanted to cram my question back down my throat but it was too late. The next thing I know is I know too much. She is a 49 year old women, with two children, and she has started going through menopause..... That is the abridged version, the full length version includes descriptive terms that I am doing my best to forget in order to relieve Peace Corps of future payments to a psychiatrist.
  
• Our 3 and a half month house sharing experience came to an end yesterday. So after sharing meals and a house with our Pilipino family we are on our own. The last time we lived on our own was 7 and a half months ago when we left our apartment in Montpelier. We then spent a month bouncing around the homes of our family members, then three months living with our first host family and the last three and a half months with our second host family. Our last experience included a 8x10 foot bedroom that shared a 1/4 inch wall with a family of four. One bathroom, one kitchen, one couch, two chairs, two bedrooms and six people all under one roof. The experience wasn't easy by any means but it will be unforgettable for so many reasons. It is unbelievable that our host family invited two foreign strangers into their home and treated them with such compassion. I only hope one day that I can repay the favor to them or any person that is in need. I just want to say thank you to our families (American and Pilipino) for all that they have sacrificed.
  

Last weekend we spent a good amount of time exploring our local mangrove forest. This is one our favorite places in the world. The trees are old and full, and walking amongst them is cool and refreshing. The bark is amazing, look at the colors! The area is full of life (small things) like this crab. We came across this little girl and her aunt collecting small snails to see in the market.





Steve was recruited to our municipality's basketball team. They play nearby municipalities and have games on the weekend. Steve is the tallest on our team, but there are guys on the other municipality teams that are bigger than him! A rarity here in the Philippines. This is a picture of him with Joshua his #1 fan.

Some evenings we go down to the ocean and spend time enjoying the sunset and watching kids playing in the water. Its really fun to watch them throwing sand at each other, or flipping into the waves.

The best part of Peace Corps is never knowing what's next

Last night we spent the evening sipping cocktails, eating roasted lamb and fresh tuna salad, listening to a world class violinist and mingling with some of the most beautiful women in the world on a white sand beach at a world class resort. Peace Corps is tough. Miss Earth, the 3rd largest international beauty pageant http://www.missearth.tv, is held in Maynila and one of the judges owns a resort in San Juan. The resort owner hosted 10 of the girls at his resort (Japan, China, Costa Rica, New Zealand, England, Canada, Poland, Argentina, Columbia and Peru) for a couple of days. Steve and his supervisor have worked with the owner of the resort because he is very interested in the environmental conservation of San Juan; beautiful beaches = environmentally sound practices. Hence we were invited to attend the activities yesterday. In the morning the girls went to the Municipal Hall where they were greeted with a traditional dance and local treats like lambonag (coconut "wine" thats 85 proof). Later they visited a bangus (fish) processing center and "planted" a mangrove. In the evening we went to Virgin Resort and gorged on amazing food. There was lumpia, fresh tuna salad, fresh vegetables, roasted lamb and sandwiches for appetizers. For dinner we ate green salad (something we haven't had in 6 months!) soup, and grilled prawns with eggplant and tomato. Dessert was turon (banana wrapped in an eggroll wrapper, coated in sugar and deep fried) with caramel sauce and sesame seeds. To say that we were stuffed is an extreme understatement.
The range of our experiences has been so great, sometimes it is all a little surreal.

Students who performed a traditional dance for the visitors at our Municipal Hall

Miss Earth candidates and the resort owner with his family

Big Bats

One of the best things about our time in this country are the "once in a lifetime" experiences we have had. Last week we joined some Manila photographers in a trying horse ride into the mountains to see a pretty amazing site. The horses here are short and squat, perfect for climbing about the narrow and rocky trails. Luckily our hosts found a horse that was tall enough to keep Steve's legs from dragging on the ground. Each horse had a "saddle" that was formed from a piece of wood that had been artfully manipulated so that it laid across the horse. We rode about an hour into the woods on a narrow trail that wound up and down the mountainous terrain. We passed a number of small homes, bananas, guavas and areas where the soil was eroding down the hills. We also saw butterflies and unique birds that we had not seen before, but the purpose of our trip were the fruit bats. At one point we stopped and leaving our horses walked up a small trail to the crest of a hill. From this point we could see a couple of very large trees from which hung the largest bats either of us has ever seen. There are many bat variates in the Philippines and our hosts called them Giant Fruit Bats, but we are not sure exactly what kind they were. What is certain is that the bodies of the bats were about 12 inches long and their wingspan was easily 4-5 feet. They flew like birds, with a gentle flapping motion, and their toes pointing out behind them.
It was a pretty amazing thing to see.

The Wild Things...

One of the best things about being somewhere different is the variety of new and different animals we have encountered. Our first couple of days I was fascinated with the small lizards who we spied climbing on and in the hotel we were staying at. I soon learned that these are "butiki" and they really live everywhere here; I see two or three anytime I look at the wall in our home. The teachers at my school couldn't believe that we don't have butiki in Vermont. Steve has seen the most unique animals during our four months here, including a monkey (which was someone's pet, but was likely wild at some time) and a sea turtle. I decided to post a few of the pictures we've taken of local wildlife (and domestic life) to show you some of the animals we've come across in recent months.

This is not a butiki, but a slightly larger lizard we came across while visiting a historical site in Bataan.

This is the largest spider I think we have ever seen. She was bigger than my fist.
The dikya (aka jellyfish). We did not see a lot of marine life in our training site, but there were a lot of dikya.
The ugliest dog I think I've ever seen. He was mean too.

One of my favorite animals, the carabaw (water buffalo). There are so strong and gentle. People use them in the rice fields and pulling carts.A big slimy snail. These guys came out at night at the hotel we were staying at in Manila during our Swearing In.
Ants, there are SO many here! They are our constant companions.
Its hard to see, but that little dot is a lice egg. Ipis (cockroach) this one lives in our bedroom. He's about the size of my big toe.