Campus Tour

It occurs to me that I've been spectacularly bad at taking photos and putting them up on this blog.  Part of that is that I tend to not be a very visually oriented person.  Blame the eyes that don't correct all the way even with glasses on, I guess.  And another part is that I am terrible at remembering to bring either a camera or spare batteries for the camera anywhere I go.  The final part has more to do with my internet hating to load images on anything, so the less time I spend fighting with blogger and photobucket, the better. 

But since I have this quiet time between quarters, I used it to take something of a campus tour with my camera, and I thought I'd orient you to where I'm living and working.

This is the view right outside my bedroom balcony. Look at the flowers blooming in December!

This is my room here in Easter College.  Please note, it is almost never this neat.  I tend to use half the bed as secondary storage.  Also, look at the pretty pretty quilt my Dad made for me.  See the prettiness of it? 

Walking out of my rooms, this is my immediate view.  The earth stairs you see lead up to the President's office, which used to be the rectory. 

This is my kitchen/laundry room space.  It seems huge, but remember this is a shared space with the Easter College HRM staff, and whenever they need to do laundry, it can get full very fast.  This is where I held that dinner party in November. 

This is the exterior view of the HRM building, where I stay.  I'm standing in front of the high school building to get this shot, which tells you how short my commute really is.  The flowering tree you see peeking out from the very back of the building is the same one I photographed from my balcony. 

The high school!  I spend most of my time in this building, going up and down to the classrooms.  This week is about the only time this building is quiet, there's almost always a few students playing or hanging out on the school campus, even on weekends. 

This is the view from standing on the steps of the high school, out across the central field to the elementary school building.  I've learned to quantify levels of fog here.  On a moderately foggy day, the surrounding mountains fade away.  On very foggy days, the elementary building is invisible.  And on the most foggy days, towards the end of the rainy season, the tree I photographed from my balcony was invisible except for the main trunk. 

From a spot very close to where I was photographing the high school, this is the College building/gymnasium.  My lay institute classroom is in this building, but since it's locked for break I couldn't get in to give you a better picture.  And yes, the inclines here are steep enough, this building is three stories on one side, and four stories on the other. 

Wandering down a bit further, this is the college library, sitting opposite the near portion of the college building.  They tell me this used to be the chapel before Holy Innocents was built, and then they converted it into the college level library. 

The campus canteen is attached to the college library.  At this point I've wandered a bit further down the main paved road, and turned to my left.  The canteen is actually composed of about five or six different booths, each run independently, selling slightly different meals for snacks and lunch.  They just recently put in a frappe booth that sells various flavors of frozen coffee for between 39 and 59 pesos.  That's right, if I'm craving it I can get a frappe for under a buck. 

The canteen also houses a load machine right next to the guardhouse and gates, which is where I go every week to put more load on my internet.  It might be slow and occasionally argumentative, but it is how I keep my access to home, so it's worth it. 

Walk through the gates at one end of the canteen and you get to here, Holy Innocents Episcopal Church.  This is where I go most Sundays, if I'm not getting taken along to visit a different church.  It's also where the high school holds its Wednesday services. 

I walked out from the Holy Innocents gate and back around to the main Easter College gate to take a picture of the welcome sign.  The banners below the name of the school are about Foundation Day events, which will be happening in early February, and about the various degree programs offered by the school. 

Walking back in, this is the same paved road I walked down and turned away from to head towards the canteen and Holy Innocents.  On the left is the college building, on my right, the edge of the Easter Weaving Room building. 

Another view of the main field, this time from the steps of the gym.  Flat, undeveloped land is a bit of a rarity in Baguio, and Easter College keeping this section as a general play area is a large part of the draw for several students and their families, who like knowing that there is a safe, accessible green space for the kids to play in. We are looking in the direction of part of the elementary, and the hill where the President's office is on, but you can't see it well yet because of the trees.

Looking up the hill towards the President's office from the edge of the field.

Me, with the President's office building in the background.  And of course my picture will not rotate around correctly, what, you think photobucket ever wants to cooperate with me on this?  And yes, that is me wandering around sleeveless a day or two after Christmas.  Because this is the Philippines.  I'm actually missing snow right now, even though if I were back home I'd be complaining about the unreasonableness of temperatures hitting 0 Fahrenheit. 




And there you have it, this is the place I've been living for the past four months or so.  It also took me two hours juggling between photobucket and blogger to get this written, so you're not getting another photo-intensive post for a while to come.