So I was getting a ride along with one member of the church in Manilla, Attorney Floyd. He's with the national office, and is one of the people who helps do all the organization in the national church. He was one of the first people we met in the Philippines, and is heavily involved in pretty much everything YASC. Technically he's our ultimate supervisor.
He and our driver, Lloyd, were coming out of Manilla to pick me up on the way to Bontoc. They ended up being very delayed by traffic and road construction. As in, they were supposed to pick me up around 2 in the afternoon, and didn't arrive in Baguio until after 6. We had dinner together and then headed out. I think I've mentioned how dark it gets as soon as the sun sets in the Philippines, so it was black outside of where our headlights illuminated as soon as we were driving.
Between Baguio and Bontoc the road is entirely in the mountain range, and that means that there is almost no straight portion of it. During daylight, like on the trip back, I was thrilled with that, because the views were incredible. But driving at night, on a very bumpy and winding road, did not agree with my stomach that much. Once I had the window rolled down to get some fresh air, and my stomach had settled, I was able to relax a bit more. And even in the dark, there was still some beauty. Calla lilies just grow wild here, and the road was bordered by them through half the mountains. You can see them even at night, because the white of the flowers reflects the headlights of the cars.
We arrived at Bontoc close to midnight, and by the time I was settled in my room and able to collaps on my bed it was closer to 12:30. I often find it hard to sleep in a new place, which tends to result in me waking up pretty early in the morning whenever I'm anywhere new. In Bontoc, that was about 5:30 that morning. Which, at least it gave me time to take a proper shower before we headed out for breakfast at 7. I met up with Ashley and we were walked down to the pavilion where we met with a few ladies from the Diocese of the Northern Philippines's office. I had a nice talk with a woman priest who knew Padie Alice, while Ashley was speaking more with the development staff.
We finished breakfast and had an hour or so to kill before the wedding, so we wandered a bit of Bontoc. Like Baguio, it's a city in the mountains, but it's smaller and less crowded, as well as being a touch warmer. Ashley got an orange for ten pesos (about a quarter) that she said was one of the best oranges she'd had. We ended up just talking a bit about our experiences, and about the point of YASC, which we both thought was more about the experience of building bridges between peoples than about some of the tasks we do on a daily basis. Then again, later in the evening Attorney Floyd was telling me that most of what he still remembers of the Bible came from his high school teachers, and that his father still remembers every single American teacher at his high school, so maybe we were giving our daily activities too little credit.
Then came the wedding. Ashley and I talked a bit with the bride's father before the wedding started. The main reason we were invited this far away from our normal locations is that the bride was an American woman, and Attorney Floyd thought that her parents would enjoy having a few more American faces to see at the wedding. I really think he was overestimating our importance there, at least to the bride's family, as they were much more focused on seeing their daughter/sister get married and navigating somewhat unfamiliar ceremonies in the reception to pay that much attention to us.
The actual wedding ceremony is pretty similar to the US. The major difference comes with the sponsors. Weddings here in the Philippines include the idea of asking several people to be your sponsors during the ceremony. Traditionally the idea is to give the wedded couple a few older connections to go to when they need advice throughout their marriage, and to honor older adults you respect or who have influenced you. Midway through the ceremony, after the bride and groom are pronounced married, they go to sign the marriage contract, and all the sponsors also go up and sign. This can take a while, especially when there's a lot of sponsors to get through.
After the wedding was over, Ashley and I were pulled over to the special guests pavilion to eat lunch there, along with the bride's family and a lot of the higher-ranking church officials. We didn't see the bride and groom, which I later learned was because they were pulled straight over to the main pavilion and set up at the table there to start receiving presentations: a series of speeches and performances directed toward them. The bride told Ashley and I a bit later that that meant she didn't get anything to eat, which I had previously thought was impossible at a Philippine gathering!
The reception bounced between traditional dancing and listening to various groups perform for the newly married couple. I ended up with my two natural groups: older women and young children. The women pulled me, pretty happily, into several of the dances. The young children decided I was a good toy/chair/jungle gym, and played accordingly.
I stayed for the first few hours, then retreated back to my room to lie down for a bit. Remember, only about five hours of sleep. I headed back to the reception a little before five, and that's when I ran into the first graders who had joined the party. They were a bit nervous around me until I pulled out the bubbles. Ten minutes into bubble time and they were running over to hug me when it wasn't their turn to try blowing bubbles. At least one girl was enraptured by my hair, and kept playing with it when I leaned over. Two feet of bright red hair is something they just aren't used to in the Philippines.
Ashley had been out for her walk at the same time that I was resting, which is when she encountered the Bontoc museum. She and Attorney Floyd came to collect me from the pavilion, because Bishop Brent had invited us to dinner.
Dinner was really fun. We had a long period of sitting and talking with Bishop Brent, Attorney Floyd, and Sir Patrick (Ashley's supervisor in Santiago). They've been friends since they were young men just starting to work for the church, and have a ton of interesting stories about their years together. This was done over drinks, where the guys put a good dent into a bottle of whiskey and Ashley and I had a glass or so of wine.
After dinner and conversation, we went over to the reception pavilion again. Most of the guests had left, and it was now the church interns, who had been working to put on the reception all afternoon, who were relaxing and celebrating. Someone had a guitar and we ended up having a sing-along. I ended up joining the ones leading the sing-along, because they were mostly singing folk songs I grew up with. No kidding, half the songs were John Denver, the others were divided between Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, and a few traditional American folk songs. I'm pretty sure Ashley was taking photos during that, but I was mostly working to hold the songbook so the guy playing the guitar could catch the chord progression.
The next morning, we met up with Ashley and Sir Patrick for breakfast, and then Ashley and Sir Patrick headed out to go back to Santiago. Attorney Floyd went in for a meeting with diocesan staff, and I was taken to the Bontoc museum by one of the staff members who wasn't involved in the meeting.
Really, it reminded me of nothing so much as Sunwatch Indian Village. The main building held mostly anthropological artifacts, with some photographs taken from between the 1900s and the 1950s, mostly of the mountain region. Outside of the main building they had the traditional houses set up, enough to see how villages were set up.
We got back a little before the meeting was over, just long enough for me to sit down and rest my feet a bit. Then it was back on the road for another five hours or so. Though, given that it was light out and I had the window down, I was a lot less nauseated, and could simply enjoy the views all around.
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