It's no secret that I was originally assigned to the Diocese of the Southern Philippines. I was then transferred to the north out of some safety concerns, and given tensions on the island of Mindanao, as well as the earthquake centered in the southern islands, I have been just as glad to be up in the North Central Diocese instead.
But sometimes I can't help but wonder what it would have been like in the South.
This particular bout of wondering increased because I just spent two days at a conference/workshop of CE teachers from throughout the Philippines. The Episcopal schools in the Philippines are working to create a uniform, comprehensive curriculum for CE, and I was invited to attend the workshop being held here at Easter College. I spent the past two days living and working with other teachers from many of the other diocese, including a bunch from the south.
A group of teachers from Zamboanga City adopted me almost from the first, and made me feel like such a part of their group. After the first day was over in the early evening, they decided they wanted to tour parts of Baguio, and invited me along. We went to Burnham Park and played and took pictures there, including renting a boat and paddling around the pond inside the park. After that, we went to the Harrison Road Night Market, which is this giant street market that sells used clothing and various trinkets. It was a bit of a late night, and we all had to get up early the next morning for a 6:30 church service, but it was worth being tired just to be with everyone.
The next day was spent actually working on and critiquing the curriculum. There were some subjects I knew a lot about, hello medieval society, thank you for giving me a very thorough grounding in the medieval church, while with others I didn't have much to contribute to, as my knowledge of the history of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines is very surface level, but it was exciting to be a part of making this curriculum work for the years to come.
We finished in the early afternoon, and many groups headed out soon after, so they could get home in time for the feast of All Saints. I did get an invitation to come and visit the Southern Philippines, especially Zamboanga City, and I so want to go and see my new friends there again.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Songs and Poems
Three weeks ago now, Ma'am Brigid, the president of Easter
College, invited me to come with her choir to a concert they were
doing in the lowlands, a benefit for San Gabriel the Archangel
Church. We were driven almost three hours down and three hours back,
and I rode with most of the alto section in one van.
The concert itself was amazing. I loved the music, and I want to kidnap their entire alto section and bring them back to the States to sing at Christ Church, because they were that good. I don't think I could fit the tenors into my bag as well as the altos, but they were also incredible.
As much as anything else, I enjoyed being part of the fellowship of the choir. Even with language barriers, it felt comfortable and easy being among choir people again.
On the way back up the mountain, darkness fell, and the choir members and I grew silent, simply being present with each other. This poem grew in my mind during the ride home, and was promptly written up before I fell asleep that evening:
The concert itself was amazing. I loved the music, and I want to kidnap their entire alto section and bring them back to the States to sing at Christ Church, because they were that good. I don't think I could fit the tenors into my bag as well as the altos, but they were also incredible.
As much as anything else, I enjoyed being part of the fellowship of the choir. Even with language barriers, it felt comfortable and easy being among choir people again.
On the way back up the mountain, darkness fell, and the choir members and I grew silent, simply being present with each other. This poem grew in my mind during the ride home, and was promptly written up before I fell asleep that evening:
Your shoulder leans against mine
as the road climbs up the mountain
I wonder, have our grounds now touched?
as the road climbs up the mountain
I wonder, have our grounds now touched?
When did I last lie in the grass?
This past summer, it was.
Evenings laying amid green,
rolling and crawling with a child
cross grass and clover and dandelions.
Have you that recently played so,
half-way across the world are we alike?
Do you know the same peace it gave me?
Have our grounds now touched?
This past summer, it was.
Evenings laying amid green,
rolling and crawling with a child
cross grass and clover and dandelions.
Have you that recently played so,
half-way across the world are we alike?
Do you know the same peace it gave me?
Have our grounds now touched?
And if you got through the poetry,
here's a cute dog that sat underneath my pew during the concert and
listened to the music alongside me:
Saturday, October 19, 2013
A wedding in Bontoc
This past Thursday, as the title of this post explains, there was a wedding in Bontoc, Mountain Province. The wedding was between a deacon of the Episcopal church, Kurt, and an American woman who has been living and working in the Philippines for the past seven or so years, off and on. Several members of the national church decided that, since the bride and her family were American, Ashley Cameron and I had to come, in support for our fellow American lady. Arrangements were made for the both of us to go over to Bontoc for the wedding.
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.
Christine and her father.
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.
One view of the example village buildings.
Me in one of the houses. That cabinet behind me is apparently the sleeping quarters for the whole family.
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Fiesta!
Fiesta!
The past two weekends have been making
me feel rather popular, as I was invited to two separate church
events. In the interest of not making these blog posts prohibitively
long, I'll be talking about each one separately.
On Sunday October 6th, Holy
Guardian Angels Church was hosting its fiesta. Ma'am Rouilla, one of
the teachers I work with at Easter School, attends there, and
insisted that I needed to come. She picked me up and we rode a
jeetny down to the church.
I should back up and explain what a
fiesta is here in the Philippines. Every church has its feast day,
normally the feast day of its patron saint. On that day, the church
congregation throws a big party, celebrating a special mass and then
having lunch, music, and dancing in the afternoon. It's a big deal
for the congregation as a whole.
So after the church service, which was
led by the bishop, everyone headed downstairs to the church's main
hall. Ma'am Rouilla mentioned that this hall was named for her
grandfather, who supplied most of the money to build it. There was
music, both from all the congregation and from the various choirs and
groups present.
This is the brotherhood of St. Andrew
singing as a group.
This is the Holy Guardian Angels choir,
who also performed.
The children's choir and the teen group
also performed, but I didn't take pictures during their performances.
Especially with the children's choir, I was too busy finding it
adorable to remember my camera.
The bishop also enjoyed the music!
After the choirs performed, there was a
lunch provided. I ended up getting moved to sit near the bishop and
several of the higher-ranking members of the congregation, and kept
watching as more and more food was brought out. Even taking just a
small sample of each dish, I ended up full with food still left on my
plate. About the only dish I didn't enjoy was the fermented rice,
and that is more to do with the fact that it tastes extremely
alcoholic and my alcohol tolerance is approximately nil. They told
me there wasn't enough actual alcohol in the dish to get me even
slightly intoxicated, but I wasn't taking any chances, given that my
main response to much more than a half-glass of wine is to fall
asleep.
And after the lunch there was dancing!
Traditional Igorot mountain dancing. After about one song through
they pulled me up along with several of the women in the congregation
and tried to teach me how to do it:
The whole dance is done to the music of
the gongs the men play in the center, so the main trick I found was
just to keep moving to the beat and follow the women in front of me
for a clue as to how to move my hands. I must have been somewhat
successful, people afterward asked me how many times I had done the
dances before and seemed surprised when I said it was my first time.
We left early from the fiesta, as Ma'am
Rouilla had a class she was taking that afternoon that she had to get
to. We stopped briefly past her house and she introduced me to her
parents. Her father decided he was going to tease me by mentioning
he had two sons around my age who were still unmarried and that he
should set me up with one of them, as he needed an American
daughter-in-law.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
There is more that unites us...
While I've been here in the
Philippines, a common question asked of me is, “So how different
are we here from what you know?” Or they will ask me, “So how do
you find Filipinos?” They ask me to explain what I see as being
different about people and cultures between America and the
Philippines.
I often find myself groping for a
response, and stutter something about people here being so welcoming
and open, or coming up with minor responses, like not having hot
water on tap.
The truth is, there are some pretty big
adjustments to make. I will often sit in the faculty room and not
understand more than one word in twenty as the teachers talk among
themselves in either Tagalog or Ilocano. I can get tones of voices
and sometimes enough loaner words from English or Spanish to get a
sense of mood or the general topic, but I'm oftentimes cut out of the
conversation in a way that didn't tend to happen in the US. I have
gotten called a blond more times than I'd thought possible, and have
started pulling up pictures of other YASCers and pointing to, say,
Rachel or Sara and telling people here that that is blond, I'm a
red-head.
I'm getting used to the idiom, “let's
eat!” It means variable: it's a mealtime and you should go get
your food, I've got a snack and you should get one too, I'm eating
now, and finally, I'm eating now and I want to share my food with
you. If you haven't noticed yet, food is very communal here, even
more so than it would be in the US, and there really is the idea that
everyone should come together and eat. And while everyone is eating,
they should eat their fill! One of my first days at the school I
went to the canteen and got what I considered a good lunch: noodles,
veggies, even a bit of meat. I walked back up to the faculty room
and the principal walked by and asked me if all I was eating was a
snack!
So yes, there are differences in
culture and lifestyle here, and I definitely am still not used to
things like the traffic laws.
But what I keep stumbling when I try to
explain it to my questioners is, the more I'm here the more it feels
the same. There's some differences in culture and language, yes, and
they are important to try to understand. But overall, I'm just
reminded that people are still people, no matter where you are.
Schools run on more paperwork than we ever want to think about,
students will push limits en masse, but are really fun and normally
quite sweet one on one, the faculty will alternately cheer one
another on, play pranks on each other, and get irritated when the
others have reserved the equipment that they wanted to use for their
class. Teaching students overall is a mix between elation when
they're doing well and obviously listening to what you have to say,
and wanting to rip your hair out when you watch them ignore
everything you say and set themselves up to fail.
Sitting out in the open and knitting
attracts curious people staring and asking questions across the
world, especially when you are knitting something complicated or
impressive-looking. My sister's Christmas/Birthday present (If I get
it done in time), counts as both, and is a definite magnet for
interested students wanting to touch and look. A little yellow
duckie filled with bubble solution will make one suspicious
five-year-old light up and chatter like no tomorrow. The same bubble
solution is the best cure ever for a bunch of antsy toddler to
pre-school aged children who have traveled all day and are spending
the night in a strange new place.
Weddings are a mix of excitement and
stress for the bride's family until midway through the reception,
which is when everyone has either a let-down or a melt-down,
depending on age and personality. (Yes, the bride's family was
spending the weekend in the other rooms at the hostel where I live.
I spent so much time explaining to apologetic parents that I utterly
got two and three year olds having issues with so much going on and
overstimulating them.)
Funerals, even when you don't know the person involved and are coming along out of solidarity with other officials from the school, are sorrowful, and there is no one right thing to say to someone who is grieving.
There is more that unites us and our cultures than divides us. Americans or Filipinos, we're all still just humans.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Intrams = Intramurals
One of the first things I learned about Easter College, specifically the high school, after I arrived was that each month of the school year has a theme which culminates at the end of the month with a celebration of that theme. I arrived at the end of August to find out that it was Filipino language/culture month, and spent the first Monday of classes watching an assembly that was almost entirely done in Tagalog.
I've been in the Philippines now for over a month, as strange as that is to think about, and that means it's nearly the end of another month, with another theme's celebration. For September, the theme was Intramurals, the sports and games. Each grade has been organizing itself into a team that will compete against the other grade levels at various sports and activities, until at the end of the week we will award one class the ultimate winners.
Academic classes were canceled this week as we spent Monday and Tuesday finishing the preparations. Starting Wednesday morning, the games begin with a cheering competition at an assembly, before teams begin to break down into individual players and smaller groups each going for a different sport or activity. And I've been enlisted as a judge for some of the activities, including judging the cheer-leading and modern dance competitions that begin and end the week.
Wednesday:
The intramurals started with a parade from the local Baptist Theological Seminary, a street up and over from Easter College's main entrance. Theoretically, it was supposed to begin at 7:30, so I was in the faculty room at around 7 that morning, making sure I had things together before I walked over to the parade start point with Ma'am Kana, one of my co-teachers in CE classes. Of course, I forgot to include Filipino Standard Time into my calculations, over and above the standard, "it's high school students, add 15 minutes to everything." I think we started marching at around 8:15-8:30ish. And yes, I mean we. I hadn't been expecting to be a part of the parade, but as soon as it started I found myself roped in and walking with the high school principal, Ma'am May, and the school chaplain, Padie Alice. I haven't been in marching band since before high school, when I first learned that a series of late nights is not a good idea for little Margarets who want to stay sane and not sick, but it really is amazing how much stays with you, even after 13 years has passed. The second the drum and lyre team started playing, I was marching. Knees up, toes pointed, back straight, arms flat to the side: the whole works of being in marching band. If someone had handed me a flag there would have been drop spins to the beat the whole way back to the college. As it was, I think I highly amused Ma'am May and Padie Alice.
When our march was over, we were in the gym at Easter college and the students had each processed to their section of the stands. There were introductions, Ma'am May had a short speech about this year's theme (Greek Gods and Heros), and there was an intermission dance number performed by the college cheer/drill team. Then the hardest part of my day began, I had to score everyone's banners and cheers!
And the cheers. Color me very impressed with the complexity of the routines and the level of organization. These are grades with between 100 and 80 students, they've had about a week and a half to rehearse, and they were all impressive. I was glad that I was one of three judges, as I would not have wanted the entire decision resting on my shoulders. The eighth grade class won first place, which was incredibly fun to watch. They realized as soon as we'd called the seniors for second place that they must have won, and there was this almighty shriek of glee from 100 voices all ringing out at once. They'd had these shiny paper plate hats for their cheers, and just like at an American graduation, the second they realized it was over and they'd won that contest, those hats flew.
After the cheers were all done and the winners announced, it was time for the actual games to begin. It started with what the faculty called parlor games; most of them similar to the kinds of relay races and somewhat silly games that get played at school field days or family reunions. Some were familiar, like the three-legged race or the straw-and-ring relay. Others were more Filipino in origin, like Paper Fish race, where the students had to try moving a paper fish by waving/slapping a poster behind it. On the whole, slapping the ground with the poster worked best, but even at their best the paper fishes tended to not move in straight lines. A student might weave back and forth along their line several times before they got the fish to go the correct distance out and then back again.
At the same time as the parlor games were going on, other students were heading outside to try different games or activities. There was tug-of-war, more straightforward races, and other games or adventures.
I spent most of the afternoon not actually watching the games. A group of seventh graders decided they were going to get to know me outside of class, and that it was high time I started learning Tagalog. I now have a list of several different random nouns, a few question words, and two adjectives that I need to memorize. I can also now sing "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" in Tagalog, as long as I cheat and look at my vocab list beforehand.
Thursday
Thursday's games were more of the same. The students were mostly done playing the parlor games, and a good chunk of the day was spent with more formal sports tournaments, like men's and women's basketball and volleyball. I brought my knitting along to keep my hands busy as I watched, and that's probably what led to most of Thursday being spent with more of my seventh grade girls away from the sports activities. You see, about four of them were absolutely fascinated with the whole concept of knitting, and with what I was doing with my project. They were so fascinated that they asked me to teach them how. Luckily, I brought plenty of needles and some extra cotton yarn along, though I hadn't planned on using them quite like this.
The afternoon was spent with my seventh graders in my little kitchen, teaching four girls how to knit themselves bracelets using the garter stitch. It was also spent just relaxing and getting to know my students, and letting them get to know me as a person, instead of as the somewhat intimidating teacher who comes in to their Friday English-Speaking class to tell them that they are pronouncing words wrong. I loved it, loved getting to relax and let them ask questions in their own time, about things they really wanted to know about me and where I came from.
Friday
Friday was the last day of intramurals, which meant wrapping up the last few games, double-checking scores, and then one last hurrah of an assembly, with the modern dance competition as the last bit of earning points before they announced which grade level would win overall.
As with Thursday, I didn't end up watching much of the sports activities. I sat with the seventh graders, this time braiding hair as much or more than knitting, and chatting with a few of the boys about books and history (their choice of topics, not that I was going to argue much about a chance to geek out on those subjects).
The final ceremony started out with a laugh, as Sir Bastian, the school biology teacher, gave us his version of a modern dance routine. It takes a brave, brave man to be that willing to go all out and embrace the ridiculousness, to bring us all into the joke that he was making, and he earned every single cheer and laugh he got in the process.
After Sir Bastian relaxed all of us, it was time for the Modern Dance routines. And I thought judging the cheering competition was bad. The dancers were all incredible, and all very different. Some were telling more of a story within the song, while others were just incredible uses of their bodies to convey a general emotion or theme. I have no idea how I managed to objectively score any of it.
The rest of the assembly was about announcing the winners from every game, and then announcing the overall winner. The students enjoyed at least the last part, but for me the fun really had been more in the experience of the week, of letting myself relax and get to know the students without having to always be Teacher Margaret. I think it was good for them as well to get to see me like that.
More to come in later blog posts, as some very cool things have been happening with and around me this week, but I think this post was long enough just talking about Intramurals.
I've been in the Philippines now for over a month, as strange as that is to think about, and that means it's nearly the end of another month, with another theme's celebration. For September, the theme was Intramurals, the sports and games. Each grade has been organizing itself into a team that will compete against the other grade levels at various sports and activities, until at the end of the week we will award one class the ultimate winners.
Academic classes were canceled this week as we spent Monday and Tuesday finishing the preparations. Starting Wednesday morning, the games begin with a cheering competition at an assembly, before teams begin to break down into individual players and smaller groups each going for a different sport or activity. And I've been enlisted as a judge for some of the activities, including judging the cheer-leading and modern dance competitions that begin and end the week.
Wednesday:
The intramurals started with a parade from the local Baptist Theological Seminary, a street up and over from Easter College's main entrance. Theoretically, it was supposed to begin at 7:30, so I was in the faculty room at around 7 that morning, making sure I had things together before I walked over to the parade start point with Ma'am Kana, one of my co-teachers in CE classes. Of course, I forgot to include Filipino Standard Time into my calculations, over and above the standard, "it's high school students, add 15 minutes to everything." I think we started marching at around 8:15-8:30ish. And yes, I mean we. I hadn't been expecting to be a part of the parade, but as soon as it started I found myself roped in and walking with the high school principal, Ma'am May, and the school chaplain, Padie Alice. I haven't been in marching band since before high school, when I first learned that a series of late nights is not a good idea for little Margarets who want to stay sane and not sick, but it really is amazing how much stays with you, even after 13 years has passed. The second the drum and lyre team started playing, I was marching. Knees up, toes pointed, back straight, arms flat to the side: the whole works of being in marching band. If someone had handed me a flag there would have been drop spins to the beat the whole way back to the college. As it was, I think I highly amused Ma'am May and Padie Alice.
When our march was over, we were in the gym at Easter college and the students had each processed to their section of the stands. There were introductions, Ma'am May had a short speech about this year's theme (Greek Gods and Heros), and there was an intermission dance number performed by the college cheer/drill team. Then the hardest part of my day began, I had to score everyone's banners and cheers!
And the cheers. Color me very impressed with the complexity of the routines and the level of organization. These are grades with between 100 and 80 students, they've had about a week and a half to rehearse, and they were all impressive. I was glad that I was one of three judges, as I would not have wanted the entire decision resting on my shoulders. The eighth grade class won first place, which was incredibly fun to watch. They realized as soon as we'd called the seniors for second place that they must have won, and there was this almighty shriek of glee from 100 voices all ringing out at once. They'd had these shiny paper plate hats for their cheers, and just like at an American graduation, the second they realized it was over and they'd won that contest, those hats flew.
After the cheers were all done and the winners announced, it was time for the actual games to begin. It started with what the faculty called parlor games; most of them similar to the kinds of relay races and somewhat silly games that get played at school field days or family reunions. Some were familiar, like the three-legged race or the straw-and-ring relay. Others were more Filipino in origin, like Paper Fish race, where the students had to try moving a paper fish by waving/slapping a poster behind it. On the whole, slapping the ground with the poster worked best, but even at their best the paper fishes tended to not move in straight lines. A student might weave back and forth along their line several times before they got the fish to go the correct distance out and then back again.
At the same time as the parlor games were going on, other students were heading outside to try different games or activities. There was tug-of-war, more straightforward races, and other games or adventures.
I spent most of the afternoon not actually watching the games. A group of seventh graders decided they were going to get to know me outside of class, and that it was high time I started learning Tagalog. I now have a list of several different random nouns, a few question words, and two adjectives that I need to memorize. I can also now sing "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" in Tagalog, as long as I cheat and look at my vocab list beforehand.
Thursday
Thursday's games were more of the same. The students were mostly done playing the parlor games, and a good chunk of the day was spent with more formal sports tournaments, like men's and women's basketball and volleyball. I brought my knitting along to keep my hands busy as I watched, and that's probably what led to most of Thursday being spent with more of my seventh grade girls away from the sports activities. You see, about four of them were absolutely fascinated with the whole concept of knitting, and with what I was doing with my project. They were so fascinated that they asked me to teach them how. Luckily, I brought plenty of needles and some extra cotton yarn along, though I hadn't planned on using them quite like this.
The afternoon was spent with my seventh graders in my little kitchen, teaching four girls how to knit themselves bracelets using the garter stitch. It was also spent just relaxing and getting to know my students, and letting them get to know me as a person, instead of as the somewhat intimidating teacher who comes in to their Friday English-Speaking class to tell them that they are pronouncing words wrong. I loved it, loved getting to relax and let them ask questions in their own time, about things they really wanted to know about me and where I came from.
Friday
Friday was the last day of intramurals, which meant wrapping up the last few games, double-checking scores, and then one last hurrah of an assembly, with the modern dance competition as the last bit of earning points before they announced which grade level would win overall.
As with Thursday, I didn't end up watching much of the sports activities. I sat with the seventh graders, this time braiding hair as much or more than knitting, and chatting with a few of the boys about books and history (their choice of topics, not that I was going to argue much about a chance to geek out on those subjects).
The final ceremony started out with a laugh, as Sir Bastian, the school biology teacher, gave us his version of a modern dance routine. It takes a brave, brave man to be that willing to go all out and embrace the ridiculousness, to bring us all into the joke that he was making, and he earned every single cheer and laugh he got in the process.
After Sir Bastian relaxed all of us, it was time for the Modern Dance routines. And I thought judging the cheering competition was bad. The dancers were all incredible, and all very different. Some were telling more of a story within the song, while others were just incredible uses of their bodies to convey a general emotion or theme. I have no idea how I managed to objectively score any of it.
The rest of the assembly was about announcing the winners from every game, and then announcing the overall winner. The students enjoyed at least the last part, but for me the fun really had been more in the experience of the week, of letting myself relax and get to know the students without having to always be Teacher Margaret. I think it was good for them as well to get to see me like that.
More to come in later blog posts, as some very cool things have been happening with and around me this week, but I think this post was long enough just talking about Intramurals.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Weekend Adventures
Earlier this past week, I got a text from Ashley, the other YASCer from my year here, telling me that she was coming up to Baguio for the weekend with some of the people she worked with in Santiago. She wanted to hang out, and the people she was coming up with wanted to tour around Baguio for a bit. I put my Friday afternoon into Saturday at her disposal, and off we went.
Living and working in such a small portion of Baguio, I'd lost track of my first thoughts when I was driven into the city only a few weeks ago. I'd been so awed and thrilled by what I was seeing as we drove in that my first thoughts had been how lucky I was to get to live here for a year. Touring around this weekend with Ashley, I rediscovered my awe and joy in Baguio, in the beauty I'm surrounded with in this city in the mountains. She was as astounded by the views as I had been when I first arrived.
The first place we visited was Lourdes Grotto, a shrine to Mary built by the Spanish before the American takeover of the Philippines. It's a shrine up at the top of one of the mountains Baguio is built on, and from bottom to top there are 252 steps up. Ashley and I both made it all the way up, and we were very glad that we were climbing that amount of steps in Baguio's cooler climate, because we would probably have collapsed mid-way up if Baguio was as hot as Santiago can get. As it is, the mid-60 degree weather in Baguio didn't stop us from working up a bit of a sweat as we walked up and down.
From Lourdes we headed onwards to the BenCab museum. Ben Cab was a modern Filipino artist, and the BenCab museum hosts his work as well as other Filipino artwork. The museum included traditional wood-work and household gods of the mountain provinces, two more temporary exhibits, two rooms full of modern Filipino art, and a room dedicated to Ben Cab's work. I'm sad to say I'd never heard of the man or his art before this past weekend, but that will have to change. His work was exquisite, powerful, and had a story inside each painting, a personality within each face portrayed.
We had just about finished with the museum when the rain started falling. It would not stop falling for the rest of the day and on throughout the night, which did wipe out some of our planned stops. When the rains wash through Baguio the mist comes along before them. In a matter of minutes the other mountainsides are gone. A few more minutes pass, and the rest of Baguio itself, the opposite side of the street even, is out of sight. The rest of the world drops away, lost below the clouds that float around you. It's beautiful, as long as you did not have plans to see anything other than clouds and rain.
After a long lunch of Chinese and more conversation, we decided that the rains still had not cleared enough to see the sights they had originally been planning to take us to, so we instead headed to SM, the mall here in Baguio. To give a perspective on malls here, this isn't the two-story mall like Beavercreek or the Dayton Mall in Ohio. This is instead a four-story mall, and it is considered small compared to the malls in Manilla. I narrowly avoided getting lost in it. The only way the SM in Baguio could be considered smaller than US malls is that there is only one big department store in the mall: the SM store from which the mall takes its name. Ashley and I quickly decided that we weren't all that interested in a long mall-wander, and after a brief look around we settled in Starbucks for drinks and a chance to rest somewhere that wasn't moving.
The rain still had not cleared, but we tried going up to Mining View, high up on one of the mountains, it is supposed to have the best view of the whole city of Baguio. At least, it does when the mist and rain are not obscuring all sights more than 100 feet away.
Instead we drove back down to Easter College, and I showed Ashley the Easter Weaving room in all its beauty and activity. Several people were working on the looms even on a Saturday afternoon, and we had a lovely time watching the fabrics be created before we went upstairs and looked at the goods produced.
By the time we finished looking around the Weaving Room it was late enough that we simply grabbed dinner and dropped me off back at Easter College. Ashley and her Santiago compatriots were heading back to Santiago early on Sunday, and I'd been invited to go to Epiphany church with the president of Easter College, Ma'am Brigid.
Sunday morning stayed wet and rainy. A driver knocked on my door at around 8:30 to take me the 6k from Easter College into central Trinidad, where Epiphany church is located. The church service, like most of the ones I've attended here in the Philippines, was lovely, and very high-church, complete with incense and a mostly sung service. The priest singled me out to welcome to the Philippines and his church at the beginning of the service, explaining that I was here for a year to assist at Easter College.
After the service, Ma'am Brigid took me out to lunch with members of her family: her husband, her son, and her granddaughter. Her granddaughter was initially a bit shy around me, and didn't know what to think about someone with such strange hair (bright red!). Luckily, I've spent enough time doing childcare that I always carry around a bit of bubble solution in my purse. A few times blowing bubbles with her and she was relaxed and playful around me. After lunch, it was back to SM, there's a children's area with bouncy trampolines and ball pits, and the granddaughter, at three years old, was just the right age for this to be the perfect after-lunch treat. I talked more with Ma'am Brigid and her husband while we were watching her granddaughter play, mostly about my own family and a little about the rest of my background. Their youngest child is my age, and living away from the family, so they could sympathize a lot with my parents missing me and wanting to keep in good contact while I'm gone for the year.
They invited me to go grocery shopping with them, but at that point I had not had a chance to write out my own grocery list and plan for the week ahead, so I headed home instead. Ma'am Brigid packed me into the taxi and gave the driver the instructions back to Easter College, but it was my first taxi on my own through Baguio.
Quite a weekend, huh? I was trying to wait on this post until I had pictures, but my camera is not behaving itself, and the BenCab museum's website is down, so I can't link. Do yourselves a favor, and do a google image search for BenCab paintings, you will not be disappointed.
Living and working in such a small portion of Baguio, I'd lost track of my first thoughts when I was driven into the city only a few weeks ago. I'd been so awed and thrilled by what I was seeing as we drove in that my first thoughts had been how lucky I was to get to live here for a year. Touring around this weekend with Ashley, I rediscovered my awe and joy in Baguio, in the beauty I'm surrounded with in this city in the mountains. She was as astounded by the views as I had been when I first arrived.
The first place we visited was Lourdes Grotto, a shrine to Mary built by the Spanish before the American takeover of the Philippines. It's a shrine up at the top of one of the mountains Baguio is built on, and from bottom to top there are 252 steps up. Ashley and I both made it all the way up, and we were very glad that we were climbing that amount of steps in Baguio's cooler climate, because we would probably have collapsed mid-way up if Baguio was as hot as Santiago can get. As it is, the mid-60 degree weather in Baguio didn't stop us from working up a bit of a sweat as we walked up and down.
From Lourdes we headed onwards to the BenCab museum. Ben Cab was a modern Filipino artist, and the BenCab museum hosts his work as well as other Filipino artwork. The museum included traditional wood-work and household gods of the mountain provinces, two more temporary exhibits, two rooms full of modern Filipino art, and a room dedicated to Ben Cab's work. I'm sad to say I'd never heard of the man or his art before this past weekend, but that will have to change. His work was exquisite, powerful, and had a story inside each painting, a personality within each face portrayed.
We had just about finished with the museum when the rain started falling. It would not stop falling for the rest of the day and on throughout the night, which did wipe out some of our planned stops. When the rains wash through Baguio the mist comes along before them. In a matter of minutes the other mountainsides are gone. A few more minutes pass, and the rest of Baguio itself, the opposite side of the street even, is out of sight. The rest of the world drops away, lost below the clouds that float around you. It's beautiful, as long as you did not have plans to see anything other than clouds and rain.
After a long lunch of Chinese and more conversation, we decided that the rains still had not cleared enough to see the sights they had originally been planning to take us to, so we instead headed to SM, the mall here in Baguio. To give a perspective on malls here, this isn't the two-story mall like Beavercreek or the Dayton Mall in Ohio. This is instead a four-story mall, and it is considered small compared to the malls in Manilla. I narrowly avoided getting lost in it. The only way the SM in Baguio could be considered smaller than US malls is that there is only one big department store in the mall: the SM store from which the mall takes its name. Ashley and I quickly decided that we weren't all that interested in a long mall-wander, and after a brief look around we settled in Starbucks for drinks and a chance to rest somewhere that wasn't moving.
The rain still had not cleared, but we tried going up to Mining View, high up on one of the mountains, it is supposed to have the best view of the whole city of Baguio. At least, it does when the mist and rain are not obscuring all sights more than 100 feet away.
Instead we drove back down to Easter College, and I showed Ashley the Easter Weaving room in all its beauty and activity. Several people were working on the looms even on a Saturday afternoon, and we had a lovely time watching the fabrics be created before we went upstairs and looked at the goods produced.
By the time we finished looking around the Weaving Room it was late enough that we simply grabbed dinner and dropped me off back at Easter College. Ashley and her Santiago compatriots were heading back to Santiago early on Sunday, and I'd been invited to go to Epiphany church with the president of Easter College, Ma'am Brigid.
Sunday morning stayed wet and rainy. A driver knocked on my door at around 8:30 to take me the 6k from Easter College into central Trinidad, where Epiphany church is located. The church service, like most of the ones I've attended here in the Philippines, was lovely, and very high-church, complete with incense and a mostly sung service. The priest singled me out to welcome to the Philippines and his church at the beginning of the service, explaining that I was here for a year to assist at Easter College.
After the service, Ma'am Brigid took me out to lunch with members of her family: her husband, her son, and her granddaughter. Her granddaughter was initially a bit shy around me, and didn't know what to think about someone with such strange hair (bright red!). Luckily, I've spent enough time doing childcare that I always carry around a bit of bubble solution in my purse. A few times blowing bubbles with her and she was relaxed and playful around me. After lunch, it was back to SM, there's a children's area with bouncy trampolines and ball pits, and the granddaughter, at three years old, was just the right age for this to be the perfect after-lunch treat. I talked more with Ma'am Brigid and her husband while we were watching her granddaughter play, mostly about my own family and a little about the rest of my background. Their youngest child is my age, and living away from the family, so they could sympathize a lot with my parents missing me and wanting to keep in good contact while I'm gone for the year.
They invited me to go grocery shopping with them, but at that point I had not had a chance to write out my own grocery list and plan for the week ahead, so I headed home instead. Ma'am Brigid packed me into the taxi and gave the driver the instructions back to Easter College, but it was my first taxi on my own through Baguio.
Quite a weekend, huh? I was trying to wait on this post until I had pictures, but my camera is not behaving itself, and the BenCab museum's website is down, so I can't link. Do yourselves a favor, and do a google image search for BenCab paintings, you will not be disappointed.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Classes
What is it like at my new school? What
am I teaching? How are my students?
Those are the questions I've been
getting the most often, and, according to my parents, the ones they
have been getting the most often from people at church.
My new school is Easter High School, on
the Easter College campus. I mentioned in my last entry that I had
come to tour the school and had found out a bit of my schedule. I
thought for this entry I'd walk you through a week of my classes, and
explain what will be covered in each class.
Broadly speaking, I will be helping to
teach three levels of Christian Education, which is normally referred
to as CE classes. The high school has four class levels: 7th
and 8th grades, third and fourth year students. The
dichotomy in what the student levels are called points to the
differences in education systems. The third and fourth year students
are part of the old curriculum, while the 7th and 8th
grade students are part of the new curriculum. In a few years time
the high school will be continuing on to 12th grade to
better match up with other Asian countries.
I help out in teaching CE to the upper
three years. Each year has classes twice a week, and I get to
participate in most, but not all, of the class sessions. Currently
my schedule is Mondays and Wednesdays I have CE with third years.
Tuesday and Thursday I have eighth grade. Friday I see fourth years.
Their other class is on Wednesdays and conflicts with the third year
classes, so that is the class I only see once a week.
In eighth grade the students are
studying the Bible; Old and New Testament, learning a bit about the
structure of the Bible and studying stories for moral values. I'm
getting a bit of a workout remembering my Old Testament right now and
plotting out a coursework to get through the majority of it before
the fourth quarter, when we have to switch into the New Testament.
It's been a while since I have had to think about the Bible on a
high school level, I keep having to scale myself back from my college
coursework. Currently in the course we have just finished Jacob and
will work through Joseph in the next class. We finally exit Genesis
and head on to Exodus on Thursday!
In third year, the students are
studying church history. This is not my strongest area, and
unfortunately this is also the course I have observed the least, as
afternoon classes were canceled last Monday for the end of Filipino
language month celebrations. I will be talking with the course
teacher in a bit to see what will be covered and how he wants to
co-teach the class.
Fourth year students are studying
Christian Living, which looks at applying values learned from the
Bible into their modern lives. The past week and a half we spent on
the Ten Commandments, and this was one of the first classes where I
started helping plan lessons and teach. Last Friday I had the
students re-write the commandments in their own words to make sure
they understood them, and then led a bit of a discussion to see what
they had come up with. I found that a large group didn't know what
adultery actually was, though some of them knew it had something to
do with sex. I really enjoyed a chance at a more
debate/participatory style for this course, as this is a subject that
cannot simply be taught by lectures.
The other class I'm helping out with so
far is Practical Spoken English. The teacher for this class was
rejoicing over having an actual native speaker at hand to show how
words are pronounced in American English. Last Friday's class was
about the th sound, which is not part of the local Ilocano dialect.
I had a silly moment or two in front of the class showing exactly how
you moved your tongue in your mouth to form the sound: flicking the
tip of the tongue off of the back of your top front teeth.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Andrew,
the YASCer currently in the Philippines, picked us up from the airport
and we drove a bit through metro Manilla to where the Cathedral and the
national church offices were. They poured us into bed at the guest
house. I think I got a few hours of sleep, but me and transitions are
not exactly friendly. I woke up a few hours before dawn and watched as
the sky gradually brightened and birds and roosters woke up first.
Our days in Manilla were pretty unscheduled. We met a few of the people in the National Office, we got cells that would work in the Philippines, and on Sunday we went to the second services at the Cathedral and tried to go and visit Taal volcano. I say tried, because the rainy season means that when we got out to the volcano and went to a restaurant that was supposed to have a good view it was so foggy we couldn't see much of anything. Really, the best thing about that restaurant, since we didn't have much of a view, was that there was a live band of the semi-Mariachi strain playing "The Tennessee Waltz" at us.
That's been one of my other big surprises about the Philippines. Especially in Baguio the most popular genres of music are folk and 90/early 2000s era country. Seriously, everything I grew up listening to when the country music station was the only one we could get clearly in the basement of my house is on the radio and mp3 players here.
Monday morning we did visa work with the national office, and then I was driven up to Baguio. With Lloyd and Andrew driving it was about a five hour drive with low levels of traffic. Apparently on a bus it's closer to seven hours or longer. Traffic and driving in the Philippines is rather terrifying. Most of the time the highway was a two-lane road, so whenever Lloyd wanted to overtake a slower type of vehicle he would switch into the lane of oncoming traffic. Everyone does it here, so every so often as you drive you are suddenly confronted by someone driving straight at you and hoping that the correct lane lets you or them back in in time to avoid a collision.
I'm going to post a few pictures of the drive up, once we entered the mountains. They were so beautiful, and my pictures are somewhat blurry, so you'll only get a bit of a taste for it, but imagine driving through these for two hours to get into the city:
Currently I'm living on the cathedral compound in Baguio, at a combination restaurant/inn run by the diocese of the North Central Philippines. That's temporary, in a while I will be moving to a set of rooms on the college campus that are maintained by the Hospitality students in the college. When I'm set there I will finally have my physical and mailing addresses figured out and will let everyone who has asked me know.
I've spent part of this week talking with the President of Easter College and the principal of the high school. Currently the plan is that I will help co-teach three levels of Christian Ed, and assist with a course on practical spoken English. Yesterday was Friday, and I spent it at the high school observing some classes, including two of the ones I will be assisting in. Looking at the schedule, I believe I'm going to be working with all four grades in the high school in one class or another.
Once I'm more integrated into the school and have my rhythm of classes figured out, I'll post something more of a day in the life of a teacher.
Our days in Manilla were pretty unscheduled. We met a few of the people in the National Office, we got cells that would work in the Philippines, and on Sunday we went to the second services at the Cathedral and tried to go and visit Taal volcano. I say tried, because the rainy season means that when we got out to the volcano and went to a restaurant that was supposed to have a good view it was so foggy we couldn't see much of anything. Really, the best thing about that restaurant, since we didn't have much of a view, was that there was a live band of the semi-Mariachi strain playing "The Tennessee Waltz" at us.
That's been one of my other big surprises about the Philippines. Especially in Baguio the most popular genres of music are folk and 90/early 2000s era country. Seriously, everything I grew up listening to when the country music station was the only one we could get clearly in the basement of my house is on the radio and mp3 players here.
Monday morning we did visa work with the national office, and then I was driven up to Baguio. With Lloyd and Andrew driving it was about a five hour drive with low levels of traffic. Apparently on a bus it's closer to seven hours or longer. Traffic and driving in the Philippines is rather terrifying. Most of the time the highway was a two-lane road, so whenever Lloyd wanted to overtake a slower type of vehicle he would switch into the lane of oncoming traffic. Everyone does it here, so every so often as you drive you are suddenly confronted by someone driving straight at you and hoping that the correct lane lets you or them back in in time to avoid a collision.
I'm going to post a few pictures of the drive up, once we entered the mountains. They were so beautiful, and my pictures are somewhat blurry, so you'll only get a bit of a taste for it, but imagine driving through these for two hours to get into the city:
Currently I'm living on the cathedral compound in Baguio, at a combination restaurant/inn run by the diocese of the North Central Philippines. That's temporary, in a while I will be moving to a set of rooms on the college campus that are maintained by the Hospitality students in the college. When I'm set there I will finally have my physical and mailing addresses figured out and will let everyone who has asked me know.
I've spent part of this week talking with the President of Easter College and the principal of the high school. Currently the plan is that I will help co-teach three levels of Christian Ed, and assist with a course on practical spoken English. Yesterday was Friday, and I spent it at the high school observing some classes, including two of the ones I will be assisting in. Looking at the schedule, I believe I'm going to be working with all four grades in the high school in one class or another.
Once I'm more integrated into the school and have my rhythm of classes figured out, I'll post something more of a day in the life of a teacher.
Friday, August 23, 2013
I have landed
Part of me woke up the morning I was leaving feeling like Bilbo in that scene from The Hobbit. I wanted to run around yelling that I was going on an adventure!
That part was quickly overridden when I arrived at the Dayton airport and was promptly told that there was an issue with my visa and they didn't think they could let me on the plane to go on to Detroit and from there to the Philippines. A rather frantic phone call to Elizabeth Boe ensued, in addition to making the people at the Delta desk call their supervisors to find the clause that would let me onboard. Aside from stressing me out, I am thankful to the people working the desk at Delta, as they did try very hard to find the way to let me on the plane, and went the extra mile calling their supervisors to find the exemption I needed.
Meeting up with Ashley Cameron in Detroit also helped, as she'd gone through the same issues with Delta that morning. We were on the same flight from Detroit to Nagoya to Manilla, though since it was a 747, once we were on the flight we never saw each other. I had never understood how big one of those planes really was until I was getting off in Manilla. The plane had seemed so empty, with most people having at least one or two spare seats around them, unlike what we'd had flying between Detroit and Nagoya. But I got off about midway through disembarkation and waited for Ashley so that we could go through immigration and customs together, and I just kept seeing more and more people getting off the plane. It was a flood of people.
After over 24 hours of travel time, Ashley and I were so relieved to see Andrew and Lloyd ready to pick us up. We got a bit of an introduction to late-night Manilla traffic patterns, which might have scared me more had Lloyd not so obviously had it handled, or if I'd actually been all the way awake. I hadn't done more than doze for an hour or so on the flights, so I think at that point I was going on five or six hours of rest in the past 36.
I'm typing this now from Horeb House at the Episcopal center in Quezon. I woke this morning to the sounds of roosters crowing and a couple of birds who thought my room's AC vent was the perfect place to sit and sing for a bit. Ashley and I found the wi-fi access code and cheerfully dug in to wade through our built-up e-mails. More as I find out what I'll be doing the next few days in Manilla!
That part was quickly overridden when I arrived at the Dayton airport and was promptly told that there was an issue with my visa and they didn't think they could let me on the plane to go on to Detroit and from there to the Philippines. A rather frantic phone call to Elizabeth Boe ensued, in addition to making the people at the Delta desk call their supervisors to find the clause that would let me onboard. Aside from stressing me out, I am thankful to the people working the desk at Delta, as they did try very hard to find the way to let me on the plane, and went the extra mile calling their supervisors to find the exemption I needed.
Meeting up with Ashley Cameron in Detroit also helped, as she'd gone through the same issues with Delta that morning. We were on the same flight from Detroit to Nagoya to Manilla, though since it was a 747, once we were on the flight we never saw each other. I had never understood how big one of those planes really was until I was getting off in Manilla. The plane had seemed so empty, with most people having at least one or two spare seats around them, unlike what we'd had flying between Detroit and Nagoya. But I got off about midway through disembarkation and waited for Ashley so that we could go through immigration and customs together, and I just kept seeing more and more people getting off the plane. It was a flood of people.
After over 24 hours of travel time, Ashley and I were so relieved to see Andrew and Lloyd ready to pick us up. We got a bit of an introduction to late-night Manilla traffic patterns, which might have scared me more had Lloyd not so obviously had it handled, or if I'd actually been all the way awake. I hadn't done more than doze for an hour or so on the flights, so I think at that point I was going on five or six hours of rest in the past 36.
I'm typing this now from Horeb House at the Episcopal center in Quezon. I woke this morning to the sounds of roosters crowing and a couple of birds who thought my room's AC vent was the perfect place to sit and sing for a bit. Ashley and I found the wi-fi access code and cheerfully dug in to wade through our built-up e-mails. More as I find out what I'll be doing the next few days in Manilla!
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