marco polo

The Fleeting.

2011-06-01T00:49:00.001-04:00

The window's are open, and the taxi is blaring Britney. The night sky is lit by street lamps and drivers swerve eerily ahead - young kids home from college, reunited by alcohol and the freedom of summer. I have my right elbow hanging in the wind and for a moment I feel a memory-glimmer: It is of the Philippines, of coming home in the dark by tricykad as the wind mingles with ocean-scent. The driver is hunched over the motor, his flip flops floor the gas and his tank top flaps, flag-like. I feel the noisy engine robbing me of stressed shoulders and a tense back. It is all that can be heard. Perhaps I had just had a beer or two with my sitemate, perhaps I had just been whiling away the hours on my laptop at the one coffee shop in town, enjoying the quiet normalcy of air-conditioning and brewed coffee.

In this memory, I know I was happy. Alone, on my own in a self-dug world-niche, my heart is high on freedom and that feeling of oneness with my solid self.

This feeling, right now... it is not the same. Not at all. The rows of suburbia strangle me and the college kids relate only to a former self. Wide streets gape, blinking lights intrude...they seem to say, "Why are you up so late? We timed these signals for you, but we admonish your need for them."

The memory-glimmer makes me sad, but I tell myself that life's next stage will hark the return of that pride, that addictive sense of self.

New Orleans is up next in Julie's stages of life. I hope that the small space I create for myself in the city will bring that fleeting exhilaration back... otherwise I know that I will be craving it forever.

Absentminded and Absent of Mind.

2011-03-02T13:51:00.001-05:00

It's harder to write when you're happy. I got into graduate school - into a program I've been craving - and so I am reluctantly stable and happy. It is far more interesting to be tilted and dangerous.

Today at my internship I find myself remembering Saligumba; one of my first students. It took me a semester to figure out that his name was not Sally Gumba, but Something Forgettable Saligumba. He was short and raw-looking - were he not so scrawny and young, he would probably have been a little bit scary.

All the volunteers at my training site would remember him for one simple reason: Sali was the first student who showed up at school openly drunk. Every day. This school was such a shoddy establishment that it really didn't matter. He offered us alcohol, wandered in and out of classes and regularly hit on the female PCVs. The lack of authority or adult-response in general made us wonder, "Are we ever going to figure this culture out?" - because if that kind of behavior didn't instigate a response beyond a shoulder shrug, what possibly could?

That was such an impossibly long time ago. Sali provided us with months of humor, and even at the end of our service we would fondly reminisce over his antics. Nevermind that his behavior echoed blindingly in the students at our actual sites and in surrounding barangays for the remainder of service: Sali was our first and favorite because, we figured, since we couldn't do anything about him, we may as well enjoy his ridiculousness.

The Philippines was a constant headache, but it always plucked at my thought-strings and made me think, think, think, ponder, think. Think until I thought myself a little bit crazy.

I have a friend here who says I am not quite as serious a person as I like to think.

I forgot how beautiful DC is in the springtime. It is clean, trimmed, immaculate, sunny and colorful. People look so tidy, so well kept and so... matching. I sat down on a crowded bus next to an older, gray-haired woman wearing neon green lipstick. She had her stringy locks braided into pigtails tied with a bow, and her red shoes glittered with Dorothy-envy. She was swinging her feet and humming self-consciously, and I would have been too. On a nearly full-to-capacity bus, every pair of eyes stuck to her outfit. The entire vicinity was absent-mindedly thumbing through her possible mental imbalances. She was just one person, but she was the one person who didn't fit the bill of health. She stuck out.

Try a caravan full of ragtag warriors pummeling its way through unpaved island roads and knocking meandering canines into their next life without hesitation.

Even the definition of a crowded bus has altered in my mind. Crowded means most seats are taken; not that piles of roosters are skittering in feathery cages across the aisles and a family of five has folded itself into a double knot to fit into a double seat.

Maybe here, in the U.S., there is just a lot less for me to be serious about.

"All children, except one, grow up."

2011-02-23T11:05:00.001-05:00

I chew up this blog and spit it out, the words a watermark; a stain providing undeniable proof that, at this pause - spanning this moment in time - I am here.

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The long lines of the metro are peppered with the black, white and gray of the DC uniform. "Doors opening." Three beats. "Doors closing." Ding dong. It's a cyclical morning pattern that tunnels to the workday. My uncle once told me, "People don't really like to float. They like to feel attached to something or somewhere, like they have a purpose." Is this rhythm part of their purpose? Are these people happy to rise and fall when expected, or are they zombies without the creativity to find alternative solutions? I like to think that their jobs are fulfilling, that they enjoy the people around them in their offices, that their work has some underlying personal meaning or, if it doesn't, that their salary does.

But, since I refuse to sign up for a life of resignation, is this the life I sign up for? Will I enjoy it once it's a part of me, sewn into my skin like Peter Pan's shadow? Or will I be constantly trying to escape and dance off somewhere out of reach...

Thoughts spiral and crackle in my head like popcorn. They burst and fizzle and drive me mad, anxiety blooming and cares retracting in swells that are only reassured by counterattacks of hey, r-r-r-relax. This is only temporary. And so I have my answer.

"To live will be a great adventure."

-- J.M. Barrie

Stagnation and Commiseration

2011-02-16T16:18:00.000-05:00

"Living with my grandparents is kind of like the host family experience all over again. You know, refusing food, trying to find time alone... all that." - John

Today I had lunch with three other former Phils volunteers. It was interesting - the last time we'd seen each other had been under very different circumstances, with much different worries and agendas. I came from my internship, another came from USAID training, another was in town for job interviews and the last was in-between grad school classes. It was the most dressed, I think, we'd ever seen each other - schleppy Peace Corps tees and tsinelas not quite fitting in with the black suit and tie DC-vibe.

Turns out, we've all sunk to new lows. Returning from being big shots in a developing world - being handed responsibilities which we hardly deserved, sometimes lived up to and in no way were prepared for to being told we aren't good enough for more than an unpaid internship (and I'm among the lucky ones) is a bit assaulting to the ego.

"Well, I went to the interview and thought, hey Peace Corps and I have tons of experience - I'm a shoe-in! But I totally wasn't," she told me over coffee.

"I'm used to being a respected member of my community!" he whined.

"Oh, yes, I babysit. Ten hour days, five days a week, and one night for this autistic little girl. My parents sold my car. Can you even picture me like this?" she laughed, even as we both grimaced. "They said I was a shoe-in for the job, but they haven't called back in two weeks. They contacted a reference who I know gave me a rave review, but still haven't heard a thing..."

"Is bagging groceries stooping too low? Yes? How about Starbucks?" he asked. I advised, being in a position of power - I waitress at TGI Fridays and intern for free downtown. I kind of lucked out.

Just before I came home, I was looking at facebook pictures of volunteers in my group who had gone home directly. One guy, a rugged-looking coastal resource management volunteer, had posted pictures of his winter job: he was dressed as one of Santa's elves at some commercial event.

I remember laughing, a lot... but now I just kind of get it.

What next? I think we're all in the race for graduate school to start and rescue us from stagnation. Oops, I mean for graduate school to start so we can further ourselves and our careers. Right?

Time and Observations.

2011-02-04T09:40:00.000-05:00

Every day I wake up and take a bus to my job as a waitress. At work, most of my co-servers are single - as I am - but already parents with babymamadrama. I think to myself; okay, Americorps was a good idea, but we should have a mandatory minimum wage law where everyone has to spend a year earning only minimum wage. It's hard to watch how my peers have to struggle. It's not like the Philippines where starvation and homelessness is an actual reality to avoid, but there is the same bleak future and general sort of stagnation - they work hard to run nowhere, the money drains away into pools of ridiculousness. The rent money. The baby daddy doesn't pay up. Lawyers to make him pay up. Food. Kid is sick. Roommate moved out and have to carry the lease alone. Drugs, drugs, and more drugs. Classes at the community college or online. Bail and probation fees.

On the other hand, I am meeting - through friends of friends - a far more successful sect of my peers. Some are in law school, others are going to school, others already have security clearances and work for the government. For them, they are already on a moving walkway towards Life Figured Out. They have apartments, pay bills easily and go out several times a week to bars on the Hill in order to network, network, network. This is the life I was born into, my parents worked hard to make it easy for me to get in. I have a nice home in Bethesda, an education and all the potential towards a future career that I could ask for. The boulder is at the top of the hill - I just have to give it a little push.

Yesterday I had an interview with the State Department. I don't know if I got the job, I don't know if I want the job. Everyday I think about traveling, and every day I think about this guy I met in Thailand. We were at a bar on the beach that specializes in Happy Shakes (I admit to nothing) and he was sleeping on a bench by the bathroom. He'd been lying there undisturbed since the night before.

When he woke up and started chatting with us, a conversation that began with bumming a cigarette off of my friend, we learned that he was Italian, that he had just broken up with his girlfriend, that he hadn't had a cell phone for years and that he was broke with no place to stay. He wasn't trying to get anything out of us - he didn't want a place to stay. He didn't want a cell phone. He seemed very happy, even without sampling the bar's specialties.

Of course, I am not trying to become an Italian hippie. Obviously I know that his lifestyle was not sustainable in the long term, but he was just one of many-a-traveler who worked when money was needed and didn't work when it wasn't. It seems so simple... my parents large Bethesda home, which requires constant upkeep, blows my mind on a daily basis. We have dozens of cleaning products for variations of the same thing. But, and this I know, we are not abnormal. The television advertises more more more more more for homes just like ours and American families of the middle-to-upper class persuasion, just like ours. My parents work all the time, my brother has joined their ranks, and my mother can't fathom why in the mornings I enjoy doing nothing but sitting and doing puzzles for an hour in the mornings - it's not productive. An ad on TV announces a new version of internet that allows you to "get things done" when you would otherwise be wasting time. The example uses a mother waiting for her kid to get out of school so that she can drive her home. The filling of time, all the time, meant to make life more simple and productive seems to me to be simply complicated. More than complicated; unnatural.

This is what I think about in my hour-long puzzle time every morning; I puzzle over where I stand in life, whether what I see is part of being American, part of having a family, or both. I don't feel a connection to it and I doubt I ever will, but my parents maintain that America is the greatest country in the world and, let me tell you, in my twenty-five years of experience they have usually been right... about everything.

It's hard to watch the widening financial and social gap in my peers. This is part of growing up, no doubt. We are no longer the dependents of our parent's financial positions but have, for the last few years, been figuring out our own place in the economic food chain. I've missed the beginning stages of this process by choosing to go abroad and dig my own small dent in the world, but being home has made daily life an onslaught of realizations followed by niggling questions.

Where do I stand in all of this?

Readjust.

2011-01-04T08:06:00.000-05:00

I can't stop staring at the front page of the Health & Science section in this morning's Post. There is a human form with red circles around various body parts and the headline: "What's Replaceable and How Long it Lasts". This, I think to myself, is an interesting way to look at your body... and at the world.

The frigid air cuts through my eyelashes and freezes my brain as I walk around downtown. I'm wearing a heroic number of layers and I still can't feel my toes. This isn't even as cold as it gets - there was an insane snowstorm my first day on American soil as the friends I had only just left continued to send reality exploding into shards of psychadelic ribbons on the island of Koh Phangan, Thailand - the Full Moon reigning supreme; evaporating morality and staining the white beaches with misbegotton fun. I want to be there so badly.

Bethesda is the kind of place where quotes by Indira Gandhi pattern the faux-brick storefront walls alongside Shel Silverstein and Martin Luther King, Jr. It's all bullshit, but it looks good. It's the kind of place where even the high school losers get Masters degrees and every single kid I grew up with is doing something spectacular somewhere Ivy League, but where their current weight is still up for discussion.

I'm glad to be home, in some ways. My parent's new home is eerily silent and echoes with space. Corners hide behind corners, and in unexpected crevices beautiful trinkets purposefully adorn. My bed is huge and comfortable and I wake up every morning, use my own private bathroom and feel like a princess.

My neighbors have come over to update me on neighborhood gossip, to hug me and tell me how glad they are that I'm "home and settling down". Peace Corps, it seems was the unreality.

But is this reality?

Phuket Town.

2010-12-16T03:46:00.000-05:00

"If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves." - John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

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"Oh, I hope we're not staying in a dump tonight!" The girl was a bit larger, with a strong Russian accent. She had heaved herself onto the bus as her pint-sized boyfriend cheerfully loaded three mammoth suitcases and one Gucci handbag onto the back of the van. Everyone else's luggage had to be removed and relocated before it would fit.

"Oh me too! I haven't been here in thirty years and I cannot remember the name of the place we stayed in last time, but it was so lovely," chimed in the Australian woman with tight, gray curls sitting beside the Russian. Her husband patted her lap reassuringly - a gesture she ignored. The small Russian boyfriend twisted his body around from the front seat and began speaking English with noticeable effort. "Yes," he agreed, the words sticking to his throat, jiggling his Adam's apple before emerging, "but you are still alive and still travel, so it's good!" Clearly pleased with himself, he faced forward once again and collapsed into his seat.

The Australian woman stared at him uncertainly for a moment before turned back towards the Russian girl. "Where were you before?" she asked.

"Oh, in China. We don't like, though. Everything is so cold there! Here everything is so warm and friendly!" It was one o'clock in the morning, and other than the the young prostitutes draped on older falang, Phuket Town was dead.

"Yes, yes Thailand is wonderful," the older woman agreed. "So tonight is your first night here?" The Russian couple nodded in unison, the boyfriend with a large smile still plastered to his lower jaw.

"Well then, tomorrow you simply must try the Phat Thai!" cried the Australian husband. His bald head glittered beneath the street lights. "Oh yes," his wife agreed, "it is simply magnifique!" The Russians looked a bit dubious. "What is that?" asked he. "What's inside?" asked she.

They pulled into the Australian couple's hotel, past a smartly-dressed security guard who peered inside the van nervously before allowing them through. The men in the lobby rushed out in mock-native outfits to carry in the duo's baggage. The Russians were left in the van with a non-English speaking Thai driver as they drove away past another security guard; both silently wishing they'd booked a room at this place. The city suddenly looked sinister and, well, dark, and the boyfriend sat up straight, looking soberly in front of him out into the night.

"I hope we are not in a dump," she whispered; a quiet plea to the strangeness outside.

Proper American

2010-11-30T20:48:00.000-05:00

Happy Laos Day. Happy Hannukah.

The sun is shining and my feet are light in Laos. Thanks to the perseverance of the French colonists, I can have cafe latte and croissant every morning for breakfast. The streets curve and wind unto themselves on cobblestone mats, and monks meander between wats in soft, flowing orange garb. Luangprabang's tranquility is a catching vibe, and the back of my neck prickles with craving for soft pillows and rambling books.

Today is Laos Day, but somehow I don't think there will be the crackles of an American Independence Day nor the week long blasting sparking tumbling of the Thai Lights Festival.

The entire town of Luangprabang, in an effort not to mimic the Cancun-like atmosphere of Vang Vieng, has been proclaimed a World Heritage Site. It shuts down at 11pm sharp and only the imported tourists meander the streets in drunken stupors. Options of daily activities include waterfall treks, elephant riding, shopping galore, steeping in the opium den-like riverside cafes and waking up before sunrise to watch the monks receive their alms from the locale

This morning I took my camera with the other clusters of sleepy foreigners to participate in the latter voyeurism. Streams of monks bowed politely and put the food offered into their baskets, while calmly ignoring the flashing cameras of invasive foreigners only steps away. They did not make eye contact nor did they acknowledge our presence, but it was impossible that we were ignored. All in all, I am sure that we are very boring for them to tolerate.

I've managed to find three other former Philippines Peace Corps volunteers in the last three days, and it is interesting to be among those who know me well once again. Among new people I can be who I like, and I meet many new people while traveling. However, though the volunteers may have known me well only months ago, the me they are intimate with is from another time. Peace Corps was six weeks and a lifetime ago. Now I am just another happy backpacker, without the yoke of isolation and bureaucracy that an organization such as the Peace Corps inevitably provides. I will be forever grateful for my experience there, but I cannot go without acknowledging the relief in departure.

In some time I will be home and a Proper American once again. I wonder what knowing me will be like then.

Disneyland.

2010-11-26T22:01:00.000-05:00

"Get ready to come home and go to work at 6am!" my dad says to me. Not that I have a job to get up for as of yet, but he's just hinting - hey, don't have too much fun, you're old enough to be serious.

Serious I am, serious I always will be, but right now there is fun to be had and Southeast Asia has somehow turned into a large, multinational poly-lingual bar crawl. There aren't too many Americans here, but the rest of the under-thirty western world has apparently quit their jobs to bathe in the semi-exotic decadence that caters directly to their interpretation of enjoyment.

Though at first I was a bit taken aback - after the Philippines I had to re-learn the art of having a good time all over again - I am now fully immersed in this tilted, backpacker culture.

Let me be the first to say - it is very fun.

In Cambodia I biked to Angkor Wat, shopped in the night markets and trilled through aptly-named Pub St. In Chiang Mai I trekked, danced and watched the sky twinkle with hovering lanterns in the lights festival. Then, along with the rest of the city, I set off a whole lot of fireworks.

The lights festival crackled and burst for a week straight. Lanterns set off constantly from busy intersections, rivers, waterfronts. Small children lit pint-sized tubes that filled the sky with color and noise. It was all very dangerous, and as usually accompanies such activity, extraordinarily exciting. A Thai next to me lit his lantern and we watched it entangle itself in the electric wires directly overhead. All the foreigners gasped and jumped back, but the Thais shrugged as it caught fire. As it burned up, it floated a little farther away and settled itself in on a third-floor porch. "Putan!" whispered the Frenchman next to me. We held our breath as the whole building verged on burning to the ground.

It was then that a Thai man, presumably the apartment's owner, peeped out the window at his dancing porch. His expression blank, and with a burning cigarette tightly clamped between his lips, he poured a ready-filled bucket of water out onto the fire. Then he went back inside.

Pai was filled with winding roads and French hippies, but more lanterns and my first attempt at riding a motorcycle. I'm not good with cars, either.

Now I'm in Vang Vieng, Laos, which is an Asian-accented Cancun. I'm not sure who was the first to see the beautiful mountains and dirty river here and decide - hey, you know what would make foreigners come spend money here? TUBING! - but they were certainly successful. Tubing it is. Free shots of whiskey abound. The most commonly asked question: "How long have you been traveling for?"

Is this travel, or is this a playground for the not-of-yet grown ups?

Leaving Peace Corps was a bit like breaking up with someone. You know it needs to be done, but it's breathtakingly sad in the immediate thereafter. You spent a few days, weeks or whatnot in mourning. However, time goes by and distance grows in the relationship. After a few months you wake up in the morning and all of the sudden it hits you:

"What did I see in that guy, anyway?"

Paradise Lost.

2010-11-10T01:49:00.000-05:00

Since I've been traveling and meeting other foreigners, I've heard a lot of talk, somewhat hushed, about found "paradises". They are uniformly referring to beautiful beaches with nary a hawker, hostel or other traveler to be found. I just read a book actually that was, among other things, about this. It was creatively called "The Beach" and turned into a Leonardo Dicaprio film. (Not a bad read, actually.) However, these beaches are being encroached upon steadily as quickly as Lonely Planet can put out books. This makes sense: Nobody wants to be on a beach with a ton of people and locals can't make any money off of places without their wares.

Though I used to think such locations were paradise-equivalent, after two years in the Philippines I don't understand what anybody would want with a hot sun and no comfortable chair to read in. Or fun, multi-colored drink to enjoy it with. Or other people to talk to when it pleases.

I'm changing paradise. I haven't decided what it is yet, exactly. Maybe it's near a beach, but eighty meters under water in full scuba gear. I'm thinking, more probably, that it involves a lot of mountains.

a porchtime thought.

2010-11-08T01:17:00.003-05:00

It's not the delicate smoky tail
nor the evaporation of my fingertips
it's just that herewithin,
is silence.

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My parents worry that traveling by oneself is too lonely an endeavor. It is, indisputably, lonely. However, it is not the panging loneliness of being alone, but the quietness of being with yourself. A friend of mine in the Peace Corps would say that loneliness, to volunteers, becomes a normal state of being, and that this is not always a bad thing. It requires that such feeling exist on multiple levels, and the good kind is the friendly loneliness, a comfort in one's own skin that requires only occasional companionship. I look forward to being home in Maryland and the noisiness of a family, but it will require some adjustment. People that love you simply for existing is a comfort in of itself - and being surrounded them a near-luxury. When I am there, it will be good to look back on this time and remember that the only person I really need to take care of is me.

Vietnam was a whirl of pointy hats, museums and incredulity that a country is able rebound after catastrophe in such a relatively short time. I now find myself wandering around Cambodia with its twisting streets and thrilling architecture. The people, like in the Philippines, are absurdly friendly but have managed to hold on tight to a unique and opulent culture all their own. Tomorrow I will visit Angkor Wat at sunrise - perhaps the most touristy experience in the vicinity, but one that I have been looking forward to. Next: A full month in Thailand.

I miss the Peace Corps and the Philippines, but my mother thinks I am just mourning my youth. There is more than one degree of truth to that. I am not sure exactly what it is that I am sad to have left, but working hard for something that you believe in can be addicting and I'm not sure how soon I'll find that for myself again.

On the other hand, I object to calling these two months the "trip of a lifetime" as more than one individual has. Hopefully, there will be many trips in my future and backpacking at twenty-five will not be my culminating attempt at experiencing the world. Graduate school and a career seem a means to do this in the future, not a step towards never wandering again. I am too interested in the world to limit my interaction with it.

On a sidenote: the corner nook of southeast asia is surprisingly accustomed to and accommodating towards foreigners. The backpacker loop, it perhaps could be called. Travel works like clockwork and the clothes, bags and jewelry sold is geared towards the foreign taste rather than that of the locale. No nook I find seems surprised to see me, and no individual has taken the time out of their day to gape. More rural areas off the common trek may be different, but this has been my experience thus far.

Eternal Frogger.

2010-10-25T02:59:00.001-04:00

Ho Chi Minh City is a game of frogger. We used to joke that Manila was like that, a balancing act requiring supernatural traffic perception, but nothing compares to the hordes of identical bikers joined together in a messily synced onslaught on the streets and sidewalks of Vietnam.

Frogger aside, being here makes me feel really sorry for the Philippines. Kuwawa na sila gid. As my father says, we bombed the Vietnamese "back to medieval times" a relatively recent few decades ago, and yet it is indisputably much nicer to be a foreigner, or even a local, here.

**A side note on the above: There is an obvious resentment towards the United States "illegal war of aggression in Vietnam" - as written at the War Remnants Museum. As we toured the Cu Chi tunnels yesterday, it was at times a little icky to be the only Americans on the bus. The guide gleefully talked-up the peasants bravery and showcased re-created torture devices hidden within the tunnels. The sentiment was very obviously "America had everything, we had nothing, but we kicked their butts." Not entirely untrue, but the wording is obviously much stronger than what exists in our history books. At the Remnants museum, in particular, were scattered phrases along the lines of "here are pictures of pain and loss in Hanoi during the North Destructive War caused by U.S. troops." As I walked around, the museum echoed with American accents - not something I found in the rest of the city. The pictures were horrifying, but the locales I've spoken with don't seem to mind my nationality at all. In fact, dollars are as welcome as dong as a payment method, and most prices are quoted in dollars first.

In Vietnam, international foods abound, streets are clean, transportation is easy, tourism runs smoothly... The soups are delicious and varied, as is the local cuisine in general. The Philippines was along the spice route, but somehow never decided to use the spices. Beth and I visited the Reunification palace yesterday and bumped into a young British couple who had recently moved here for work. "What do you think of Vietnam compared to the Philippines," they asked. Our response was a chorus of happy, simlutaneous chirps, so much so that they literally stepped away from us; physically repelled and probably determined to never go to Manila.

We bought a one-way ticket from Ho Chi Minh to Hoi An for less than $40 each only one day in advance and in under twenty minutes from one of many tourist-friendly guides down the street from our hostel; a hostel which cost $5 per night for an air-conditioned room. Being here makes me want to re-visit economics and re-think socialism.

Nevertheless, I cried like crazy my last day in the Philippines. It finally hit me as we left pension, our Manila home for the past two years, that I was no longer a Piskor. A whole era in my life had officially come to an end. In twenty-seven months I had spent only one month away from the Philippines; this means I spent twenty-six months adjusting to life there. What I achieved in that time was a comfort that I'm not sure is going to come so easily anywhere else... including in America, where I will be jobless and broke and, at twenty-five, totally dependent on my merciful parents.

In the last three years, I have spent three months in the United States. The rest of the time I have been in Asia. I'm not sure what the point of it all was. I think it's going to take me a couple of years to think it all through.

I was talking to my father last night, who was happy to think of me "bopping around" Vietnam, though he spent the majority of his life "staying out of there!" Feeling sorry for my homesickness of the Philippines, he decided to google Tagalog words (he still hasn't quite figured out that I speak Ilonggo) to cheer me up.

"Kamustika?" he typed. How are you.

If you were my friend, I could ask you "Kamusta na?" he continued.

"Dad, you know of course what that is deriven from..." I asked. He didn't.

"Como estas. It's bastardized Spanish."

Suddenly we were both feeling very sorry for the Philippines.

Namit gid nga tuba. The coconut wine is so tasty.

2010-10-13T01:40:00.001-04:00

Today is my last day as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I don't really know what to do with myself.

Applying to jobs sounds terrifying. When I envision going home, I imagine a big warm comforter and lots of sleep - I choose to delete the sound of my mother prepping me for job interviews. I'm still not totally convinced that I won't be back at site next week, killing roaches and painting buildings.

Actually next week I'll be in Vietnam for a few months of southeast Asia travel. It would be nice to head for a continent that doesn't look like a cousin of the Philippines, but I only own one pair of close-toed shoes and absolutely no long sleeves.

Leaving site was surreal. My despidida was a lot of fun and felt far more like a birthday party than anything else. I kept having to return to school at varied insistence, but at my final departure all of my teachers cried and my students followed me home.

Fourteen students cleaned my house, scrubbing my floor and saying it was just ordinary for them.

Four students slept over. I woke up in the middle of the night and, in true Pinoy fashion, one of the girls was tucked in snugly next to me in bed.

I feel good about Peace Corps. I have acquired an entirely new set of skills, become even more independent than I thought possible, figured out what direction I would like my future career to take, faced loneliness on a daily basis and integrated into a community that I wasn't sure would ever feel like home.

My nine-year old neighbor slept over on my final night after her mom and I made ourselves silly with coconut wine.

It feels good to be done and moving on to more selfish, me-focused things. As my dad said, when I briefly entertained the idea of moving to Korea next, "Julie, don't you just want to be comfortable?"

Well, yes. After a year in China and more than two in the Philippines, I am ready to be an American in America once again. Comfortable sounds just great.

Happy-Sad

2010-09-22T18:11:00.000-04:00

I'm all excited because, certainly by next week, my library will be ALL FINISHED and left in the hands of my hopefully-capable site. I'm not totally optimistic about this, but we will see. Every day crowds of kids try to get into the building and when I do let them in (I'm painting shelves and kids have a tendency to walk on them or write their names in newly-painted things) they crowd around books and engross themselves. A favorite student told me, "Ma'am if we read all these books, our head will be crowded and we won't have time to open our mouths!"

One student discovered a pop-up book and it is definitely the biggest hit so far. They've never seen anything like that before. Nevermind that they are thirteen-plus and should be well beyond the age of pop-up reading.

I was also told yesterday that one of these newly-thirteen year-olds is two months pregnant. I wish she had stuck to pop-up books.

Supposedly this pregnancy was a big secret, her peer rushed to tell me. The boyfriend, another thirteen-year old under five-foot student at our school, was as yet unaware of the situation. Parents didn't know, teachers didn't know and now that I knew I wasn't supposed to tell.

I thought about it, and I told her homeroom teacher. That was the responsible, adult move right? The poor kid needed to be on prenatal vitamins, needed to go to the doctor, the whole nine yards... at least I think.

Homeroom teacher's response: "Well, if that's true then that's their problem."

No sex education. No condoms allowed. No birth control prior to marriage. Abortion is very taboo, and very illegal. And then no help for the kids who get themselves into trouble and screw up their lives at the age of thirteen.

Sorry to offend, but Catholicism is the worst.

In the dark even a bum can look like a face.

2010-09-12T03:37:00.002-04:00

As my mother's father used to say about his wastrel sons, who squandered everything pursuing chimerical 'iskeems', from seeling packaged six-inch datuns that would supplant toothbrushes, to trousers with a back fly so you could crap without needing to pull them off, to force-feeding hens with steroids so they would lay eggs every eight hours (until they bloated like balloons and began to burst), as he would say examining the wreckage of another iskeem, making his big wood-and-brass hookah bubble in anger, In the dark even a bum can look like a face. (52)

The Alchemy of Desire, by Tarjun J. Tejpal
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The show is called Diz Iz It, and it's blaring in the coffee shop where I'm sitting, trying to write graduate school personal statements. Two baklas (effeminte, gay men of a uniquely Filipino genre) are the hosts, and the elaborately coiffed brunnette introduces herself as Michelle O'Bombshell. "Kamustika?" one asks. "Syempre (of course), still beautiful!" The Filipinos around me watch, unblinking and unaffected.

Earlier in the day I had been at school. During our lunchtime teacher's meeting, I suddenly realized that the frailest, oldest teacher at my school was wearing a very interesting shirt. It said, in emblazoned, purple letters: BITCH - it's not just a word, it's an attitude. Oy vey.

Rosh Hashana was this week, and I missed my family. The end of Ramadan was also this week, and we had the day off - there are Muslims around and I hear the call to prayer from the local mosque every morning just before the church bells go off in a tizzy, though I've only seen one woman wearing traditional garb in my entire stint here. She was attending the priest's blessing ceremony of the new Department of Education building.

Often I find myself wishing conversation, activities, television, life focused more on larger world issues. Or else I just wish they spelled the TV show "This is it" so my kids would at least learn to spell a little better. But then life might be inane and boring. Though a lot of the humor might take place only in my head, the absurdities of the day-to-day here are of ceasless interest.

Today I took a gasoline bath in to remove paint from my body.

I am also continuously surprised by the gentle helpfulness of Filipinos. My neighbors and community insert themselves into my life quietly. They laugh at my attempts to carry the water jug home from the store, but drop everything to take it from me and set it up in my house. The couple down the street turn on water for me at school, my students show up on weekends to help paint, the school janitor immediately puts away his garden tools to build me a ladder out of bamboo, and the fan I had given up for dead was fixed within half an hour of my mentioning it...

I am just ridiculously happy. Granted, part of that happiness has to do with the fact that - tugging at the ends of my mind - I know I have one month to go. My beautiful library is going to be built and, it turns out, I'm a little bit handy. I've had a lot of fun building and painting and organizing with students. I've started talking to myself. I realize it mid-sentence and then think, "Who cares? Enjoy! Finish what you want to say!" so I do, and I like it. I've never done that before... I've never been inclined.

I think sometimes it just takes a while to figure out how to keep yourself happy, especially when removing the distractions of which we've become accustomed.

When I arrived at school over the weekend carrying a box of new paints, a boy immediately took them from me and brought them into my library. By his comfort with me I gathered that he was a student, but since I didn't recognize him and he was both shirtless and shoeless, I figured him to be one of the occasional attendees. I tried to engage him in conversation, but all I could get out him was the "Filipino yes" - raised eyebrows. I started painting and he grabbed a brush, doing the same. For hours we worked side by side and in total silence. I teacher walked by a laughed at us, mentioning that she was pleased to see my "guard" hard at work. He didn't react.

Every day he showed up, covered in leftover splotches of paint from the day before, only minutes after me. I would just start painting when he'd appear in the doorway, slouching against the frame and waiting to be moitioned inside. After three days without so much as a goodbye, I forced him to speak. "What color do you want to paint this shelf," I asked. He concentrated on it for a while and then looked at me. "Blue."

My pharmacy lady thinks it's funny that I buy medicine, like tylenol, in advance. When I come to her shop, she always asks, "For the future?" and then giggles hysterically.
I cook, and I smile. I read something funny in a book, and I smile. Family Guy comes on TV, and I smile. A teacher tells me that I'm getting fat, and I smile. Another calls me sexy... smile. It's like nothing can get me down anymore. I am perfectly happy in my own head.

It's weird, but when volunteers get together we often talk about how socially awkward we've become here. Too much time alone. We all have trouble in groups and with new people. It's been a difficult transition to adjust to, and it will just as difficult to transition out of. Every single graduate program (except Maryland) that I'm applying to is in a new, strange place - but I am unconcerned. Friends are nice, and they'll be much closer than they are now, but I would be fine without them too. At least at first.

Peace Corps: The hardest job you'll ever love.
Peace Corps: Learn to exist entirely in your own head.
Peace Corps: Go ahead and go a little nuts - nobody will notice!
Peace Corps: You think you were asocial before...

"I remember you, " says the older lady behind the counter,

2010-08-11T06:35:00.001-04:00

with a sort of strange, knowing look. "Oh yes, I've been here before," my friend, another volunteer replies. Once out of earshot she hisses to me, "Know why she remembers me?" It is a small town in the northern provinces, obviously the kana (American) sticks out. I suggest this, but my friend shakes her head no. "I bought five-hundred condoms from her a year ago." As I double over with laughter she protests vehemently, "It was for an HIV/AIDS seminar!" Doesn't matter to the older lady behind the counter; as far as she's concerned, reputation made.

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The kana crosses the street slowly, weaving between trysikads and motorcycles which, one after the other in an endless, grumpy stream belch their way home for the day. It is the five o'clock rush hour, and Roxas is a gridlocked as it ever gets - which is not to say much. A man sitting on top of a ladder doesn't seem to have been working for a while, yet it leans into the middle of the street. Transport weaves politely around it without complaint.

She crosses sucessfully and walks into a small carenderia. A man slouched casually in front, presumably the owner, has been eyeing her slow journey in his direction. However, once she is inside he loses interest and resumes his mental patrol of the street.

The pretty, young helper, who has been watching the blaring game show on TV, scurries behind the counter and hurriedly shoes the flies away from the food trays with an old rag. She glances worriedly at the kana, unsure of what to expect. The kana glances hungrily at the chicken curry but points at the vegetable dish instead, and then goes to sit down. The helper scoops the vegetables, jackfruit and okra with coconut milk, into a small dish and puts it on the table in front of her. Filipinos would unquestionably eat rice with their meal, but the rumor is that foreigners do not eat rice and she dares not presume. When the kana gestures her back and asks for rice, she is relieved; there is some normalcy in that.

A small boy walks jauntily into the store. He is wearing his school uniform and waving a small book bag like a lasso around his head. After about five steps - and two away from the kana - he suddenly realizes that something is awry. Glancing up, he is momentarily paralyzed to meet the gaze of a strange, color-less woman. Skin as white as sun-bleached laundry but without the pure, clean sheen of all those advertisements. Instead, orange specks interrupt her face and arms. She is utterly lacking any of the warm, brown tones that have filled his life up to this very moment. He sprints into the back.

The street is uniformly gray, but the carenderia is cozy in that Filipino way. Nipa is knotted together to form basket-like patterns across the walls and ceiling. Fake flowers found only in places very foreign to here adorn the walls in little baskets and a sign, near a wall painted with purple bubbles, proudly proclaims "Jessabel Resto".

The small boy re-emerges without his bag and whispers into the ear of the man out front. "There is a kana here!" he says with urgency. They both turn to look at her, and finding her smiling at him, the boy runs out the door and around the corner in fright. The man laughs quietly at his son's behavior. Within seconds the boy peeks around from the side and, finding her still smiling at him, quickly withdraws. When he reappears it is armed with a flimsy rope made of knotted rubber bands. Showing off, he yells nonsense and uses it to skip rope across the front of the store. He goes back and forth a few times, gauging the kana's reaction out of the corner of his eye. When she claps it is the final straw and he runs away again, disappearing for good this time.

The kana pays without incident. In this small shop they are already used to her - but is only when she is gone that everything returns entirely to normal.

What's Your Hobby? Carrying the Baby.

2010-07-28T00:50:00.000-04:00

"Close your book!" my co-teachers tell me. They are referring to my legs, which as far as I am concerned, are crossed primly - one over the other. Filipino skirt etiquette requires that they be crossed at the ankle, and I have made the rookie mistake of wearing a skirt today. "It's closed!" I protest, and dare them to try to look up it. They teasingly dance around, trying to peek before finally admitting that my book is shut tight. "It's okay because your legs are white," they decide. "We Filipinos must be ashamed of our dark color."

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Change has always been difficult for me. It's not so much the before and after as it is the awkward in-between. Any change, big or small, is faced with anxiety and a willful determination to persevere through to the other side. It's like diving into the ocean on those first summer mornings, before the sun-embattled, thicker months heat up the water. You walk in up to your knees and shiver, hugging your arms to your chest and slowly inch forward. Suddenly, your little brother crashes past you and dives straight into the surf. He's going to splash you when he comes up, so it's either lag behind and succumb to humiliation or get over yourself and embrace the salty, frigidness ahead. It's only a moment before you're under the water, swimming to catch up with his thin, spidery legs. As expected, it is miserably cold, but when you surface and gulp fresh air you don't feel relieved so much as vibrantly alive and ready to show-off.

Mundane.

2010-07-27T07:53:00.003-04:00

The lightning cracks the dark sky, announcing the beginning of another drenched night. The teenage girls next door scream and then giggle at the noise, running for cover in the dirty kitchen outside my bedroom. I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling as it begins to leak. My mother thinks the roofing is going to cave in during one of these heavier rainy season nights. That would be kind of interesting.

I am waiting. Any minute now the electricity is going to go out. I just know it.

Another volunteer gets so bored that she plucks her armpit hairs with tweezers. It makes her a little cross-eyed; but, she says, a girl can only read so many books before she goes a little nuts.

I get up to brush my teeth and reach into my cabinet for a cup. A startled roach scuttles away into darker recesses. I am disgusted in a detached, useless way. "Three more months," I think, and head back to bed.

When I got home from school, I deemed the world too hot to be useful and napped. For two hours. I woke up and tried to study for the GRE. Instead, I found myself dreaming busily about studying in a Starbucks, fantasizing briefly about flying to Manila in the coming weekend just for this purpose.

It starts raining and I turnoff my fan, testing the room temperature without its constant growl. It feels almost cold! I eye my lone pair of sweatpants sitting morosely at the bottom of my clothing pile and come up with a plan: I will take a bucket bath and put them on! I will be cold! Oh goody!

Another volunteer texts me: "I half-assed my classes and my students were bored today, but not as bored as I was." I text back, and a SMS conversation takes place regarding the longevity of this particular breed of loneliness. We conclude that such feelings are a part of life and not peculiar to Peace Corps, though they do show up more frequently here.

"Don't worry, there will be good moments to break it up," he messages. I'm not worried, these feelings never last and they do not compare with the internal benefits of this overall experience. However, I flash back to an old childhood anxiety: Whenever I was sad I would say to myself, "Hey, Julie, this won't last." But then I would immediately think, "Yes, I'll be happy again until next time I'm sad." I wished that I could get all the sad over with at once, it scared me to think it would appear again unexpectedly, and perhaps in an even greater degree.

I was always too much of a thinker.

I bucket bath and put on the sweats.

The electricity goes out. The rain stops.

I am hot.

The pants come off.

I turn on a flashlight and open a book, but a girl can only read so much before she goes a little nuts.

October 15th is when I finish. Twenty-four months down; less than three to go.

The stillness of a gargantuan world seeps out of my fingertips, spurting across the page in small, welcoming gasps.

Does writing this down count as productivity?

One Neuron, No Synapse

2010-07-25T02:35:00.000-04:00

I "graduate" from Peace Corps in less than three months. We recently had our Close of Service Conference, and now we are officially in phase-senioritis. Those "taking an extra lap" are perhaps more admired than they were back in high school or college, but the rest of us still feel kind of sorry for them. I have a lot in common, I think, with my cousin who has just entered his post-high school summer- we are both being peppered with exhaustingly grown-up questions.

How does it feel to be in the last three months?
Well, my motivation is already traveling southeast Asia without me.
What are you doing after Peace Corps?
Traveling southeast Asia and going to grad school...
Where? When? Studying what?
September and I'm not really sure yet. But maybe May. Depends on the school I go to.
How was Peace Corps?
(Awkward, self-conscious laugh) It was something... I'm glad I did it (though I know that's not what you asked me, but how else do I sum up what's happened over the last two years??).

One problem: my cousin is eight years my junior.

Eek. Change the subject.

Okay, I turn twenty-five tomorrow. I've done some stuff since college - all productive stuff, though none of which provided me with much of an income. I feel like I have more of a direction than I did three years ago, but the place I'm in is so different than the majority of my peers that I'm starting to think I skipped out on a chunk of my growing-up-hood. Facebook has suddenly turned into EngagementBook soon-to-be MarriageBook soon-to-be BabyBook and it's so scary I'm thinking of taking myself out of it altogether. I'm quite happy in my IgnoringRealityBook.

And what is Twitter? I've looked at the website and everything, but why is it so popular?

Did you know that the iphone has no keypad? How weird is that?

I'm out of it. And I'm nervous about diving back "in" it. My mom visited me for the last two weeks and bathed me in happiness and security. She is a cocoon; I forced her to share hotel beds with me so that I could kick her in the night and make sure she was still there, like a security blanket. When she left the rainy loneliness found me once more. But, in all honesty, you get used it it; soak it up, retain it like a sponge and realize - life goes on. And it's not too bad. One foot in front of the other; the only person in the entire world you have to worry about it yourself... and actually, that can sometimes be a huge, selfish relief.

After all, I've got a lot of things to do before graduation.

NO JEWLASKA, LAWMAKERS PROPOSE.

2010-06-21T04:25:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, I had a major and long-standing crush on the journalist, Peter Hessler. I never googled him, had no idea of his age (okay, I guessed mid-thirties) but I loved his book, River Town. I had just finished a year of teaching English in Shanghai when it was handed to me by a roommate. Hessler's smooth portrayal of two years on the Yangtze as a Peace Corps volunteer crystallized my own smudgy impressions of the People's Republic. It also painted a picture of the Peace Corps experience I hoped I was heading towards. I had applied for Peace Corps Asia with the intent of spending more time in China. Like Hessler, I was going to learn Chinese and have myself a Wild West experience in the Far East.
Peace Corps, stubbornly and, in hindsight, predictably, aimed slightly east and sent me to the Philippines instead.

Nipa huts, small towns and brownouts make for long hours of reading. It's no longer pleasure-reading if you have absolutely no other optional activities. Nevertheless, I've probably read more books in the last two years than at any other period of my life, and that's a bold statement. I read a lot as a kid. My mother would take me to the library on weekends and allow me to take out ten or eleven books. After school, I could be found tucked snugly away under a shelf in my closet where I'd managed to fit my neon green blow-up chair (remember those?) that someone had given to me for my Bat Mitzvah, a blanket and several favorite stuffed animals. It was blissful. Reading in a fan-less, thickly heated world without electricity is not.

Recently, however, I found a new crush: Michael Chabon. The first book I read by him, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, was extraordinary and thoughtful. It was a big, messy book of the best kind. So many authors impress me at first only to reveal, three books later, that they are only capable of re-writing the same story and characters ad nauseum (ahem, John Irving). I was nervous when I picked up The Yiddish Policeman's Union, I foresaw disappointment in my future and I was enjoying my Chabon-admiration. (I read somewhere that he refused People Magazine's invitation to be one of their 50 Most Beautiful People, calling it stupid and akin to giving him an award for living in a place with nice weather. How could I not love this guy?)

I needn't have worried. The Yiddish Policeman's Union is thoroughly different from Kavalier and, impossibly, far more brilliant. In some ways it is a typical detective novel, complete with a hero on the brink of self destruction, a "Bear-Jew" sidekick, and a woman that is sexy, tough and just out of reach for the majority of the plot (though she will ultimately require saving). Cliched lines run rampant, exposing Chabon's love of moviescripts.

"See this sweetness?" Bina has fished out her badge. "I'm like a cash gift. I'm always appropriate!"

However, and this is a big however, it is ultimately a modern Jewish novel, and it is spiked with hilarity at the expense of the Chosen ones in the artful manner only a trule Yid writer could pull off. At one point, our fly-by-the-hip protagonist (who cares for nothing in life with the exception of, of course, justice) is faced with a gang of young bearded Yids in suits and skullcaps. Jewish himself, he snaps, "You're clones right? At the end of the picture, it always turns out to be clones."

In the Yiddish Policeman's Union, Israel failed and Post-Holocaust Jews have found temporary refuge in an Alaskan region known as Sitka. It is, indeed, "Strange times to be a Jew" - a line repeated throughout the novel. Regional food includes cheese blintzes and Chinese-Filipino donuts, everyone living south of Alaska is referred to as "Mexican", and the boundary maven is an important, unpious man responsible for making sure the string surrounding the Orthodox community is entirely intact at the beginning of each Sabbath. As would happen in an entirely Jewish community; the Jews are the good guys, the bad guys and the in-betweens. The only non-Jewish character of any relevance is a midget goy; a smart-aleck who luckily owes our hero a favor.

It is, in many ways a silly book, full of Jewish imagery and words with double meanings. Chabon clearly likes to play. Our hero, the cop, lives "by the book"... as do the Orthodox Jews. Guns are referred to as "sholems" - a word that means "peace" in Hebrew - and phone calls are made via "shoyfer", the word for a ram's horn traditionally blown in synagogue on the Jewish high holidays. Sentences with interesting metaphors, such as "Around the gravesite, black clumps of fir trees sway like grieving Chasids" and "...the blues singer Robert Johnson, whose singing voice sounds as broken and reedy as a Jew saying Kaddish in the rain" run rampant. The "Black Hats" are the terrorists protecting a fat rabbi whose disowned son is the Messiah. This Messiah, however, is a wholly unexpected kind of character: Found dead at the beginning of the novel, he turns out to have been a gay heroin addict who ultimately tied off with a tefillin.

Incredible yet hilarious, no?

Don't worry, it's not only the religious who are the butt of Chabon's humor. Those wealthy American Jews that throw their money at anything related to Judaism (you know the type) have naively furnished a terrorist cell where Jews torture other Jews. Signs around the compound read:

This detainment cell courtesy of the generosity of Neal and Risa Nudelman. Short Hills, New Jersey.

Kitchen equipped through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Lance Pearlstein. Pikesville, Maryland.

Lobby furnishings courtesy of Bonne and Ronald Lederer. Boca Raton, Florida.

The Jews of Sitka are facing tough times. The Americans want them off their property and in Israel so that someday a proper Messiah will come. However, the Holy Land is occupied by those Arab nations who won the Six- Day War. The novel is ripe with conspiracy surrounding the possibility of an ultimate Return, and it plays well for the type of can't-put-it-down suspense a la Da Vinci Code.

Like Kavalier, this novel is a thinker. The detail and imagery is layered to the pit of the novel; it is guaranteed to itch your scalp for days in a way that hasn't happened since you started watching Lost. Halfway through, you begin to worry - how on earth is he going to finish this? He does... and how. In Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon has let his imagination explode. Thank God for that.

Beware when the so-called sagely men come limping into sight. - Salinger

2010-06-09T23:58:00.001-04:00

Just when you get comfortable, just when you think, "Hey, I've got this," Peace Corps goes ahead and changes.

In normal life friendships dissolve, patterns change and people grow up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's a lot weirder when that happens here. The patterns of life stabilize you in an otherwise stressful, boring and ultimately - no matter how well-adjusted you are - foreign environment. When they get torn down and are replaced with... nothing... all that's left is a thick abyss chock-full of absence.

Fortunately I have been especially creative lately in finding places with generators and internet to replace the dead air of the non-stop electric brownouts. Yesterday, my neighbor decided that my apartment was cooler than her own hut and moved her entire family in for the day. It was a tribute to me that she felt comfortable enough to invade without warning or invitation (either that, or she realized what a pushover I am). My usual brown-out strategy involves several hours of napping in a pool of my own sweat - amazingly possible even in extreme weather conditions, but entirely impossible with a one-year old running around eating all your electronics.

I've begun playing soccer in a local league that quietly exists in the background of Roxas society. They're not incredibly skilled, but they're a fun group and happy to let me join. It's my first real interaction with Filipino men; on the whole I've been intimidated by them due to the generally accepted stereotypes regarding the "liberation" of foreign women (basically we're all whores). What I've learned from them: How to curse in dialect.

Still, it gives me a reason to stay awake past 8pm - something I've hardly done for the past twenty months.

Last night I introduced my neighbor to white wine, which she insisted tasted exactly like beer. Hmm. She was pink and hubog hubog and all kinds of giggly after the first glass - which she chugged. Her machismo husband wanted nothing to do with the stuff, so just sat there and laughed at his wife's sudden inability to stop talking.

As we searched the fifteen TV channels for something without drama (at any given time, almost every Filipino station has a close-up of a desperately-sobbing female), my neighbor told me that she and her husband were not actually married. Her college boyfriend had knocked her up, married her, and promptly left - never to be seen again. She waited in Manila for him for two years before coming home. She waited another three years before allowing her current companion to move in and become, for all intents and purposes, her husband. But since Filipino law does not allow for divorce, the two are unable to marry. I would make a comment about what a weird society this is, but there are just as many stupid laws in America (ahem, Don't Ask Don't Tell).

I've also discovered scuba-diving. I got my certificate two weeks ago and have been on six dives since. I'm addicted, and here's my theory why: scuba diving is as close as a human being can get to flying. Hovering around in the water, weightless, as the fish busily go about their lives is a mesmerizing experience. As I learn more names and characteristics, I poke and prod and annoy the world below until I'm Where's Waldo-ed out. Most spectacular so far: the frog fish.

School begins in two days, so of course my school is entirely deserted and not a single teacher is preparing for classes -- after all, that's what the first month of school is for. However, my library is going up quite quickly and I am incredibly proud. The roof and walls are completed and the window panes are being shaped as I type. Books, books and more books are on their way. In another month or so the surfaces will be ready to don the spectacular paint-job I am planning. Several other volunteers are going to come help me out and a world map will span one entire wall. Perhaps best of all - the construction was completed entirely by teachers, students and parents in the community. I'll put pictures up soon.

In two weeks I'll be going to a friend's site to help her collect sea cucumbers, kill crown of thorns starfish (they consume coral), plan an environmental education seminar and scuba... a lot.

It's hard when the world shakes things up on you; it never happens when you expect it. My neighbor keeps telling me to pray, but when I ask her "What for?" she doesn't seem to have an answer. I only have about four months left in the Philippines and, if I were one who readily succumbed to prayer, it would be this: I'd like to successfully go with the flow.

Another Ant Blog... again.

2010-05-05T07:02:00.001-04:00

"By agreeing to attend these fiestas, or any events really, you relinquish all control of your surroundings and of your day. It's exhausting." - John

I don't even know why I was at this fiesta. Something to do with the Peace Corps insinuation that volunteers should take part in all events involving my community... but my community, host aside, bailed in their entirety on the event. I found myself taking a jeepney an hour outside the city all by myself, only to be picked up and carried another further forty-five minutes into the countryside before walking a kilometer or two over rocky roads, dusty with thirst for a rain that's long dissolved into the phenomenon of global warming.

Fiestas are non-stop. It's always time to celebrate some barangy's host saint, but the celebrations themselves are identical, methodical.

I abandoned all hopes of an early escape as the host informed be that I would be accompanied home by her mother and sister. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, the mother and sister of the host are always the last to leave. There is no point in arguing about this stuff; it would just cause more drama and discussion. I resolved myself to spending the day at fate's whim.

I did what one always does at fiesta; ate. And watched TV. And ate again. And played with the kids. And made small talk with the women. Everyone was very interested in me, and one by one they tested my ability in their dialect and then giggled, complaining that English gives them a nosebleed. The heat melted me slowly until the back of my shirt stuck to the benches and my feet were caked in sweat mixed with dust. The young girls accompanied me to a room with mats on the floor and we all napped for two hours while the women chatted noisily. There was no breeze, nor salving rain. There was only a wall of dead air nullifying any attempt by our whiny, delicate fan to stir the atmosphere.

After the nap, my host wanted to take me on a tour of the farm. My entourage of small children accompanied, jumping and bounding joyfully with a ratty ball into the short rice stalks. I took one step beyond the fence and landed directly in a red ant pit. The minuscule monsters pricked their way across my foot and up my leg. I picked them off quickly, trying not to shriek with pain or cause my host great concern. When we went back inside she put some vapor rub on it and we chose to ignore the fact that my foot was gradually swelling to football status. Everyone ate some more food; luckily I'd slept through one of the previous snack times.

In the Philippines they have a saying, "If it's not a vital organ, then it's not a problem."

They also like to say, "Eat until the food is gone, or until you can eat no more."

The next day, after a steady diet of antihistamines made me all the drunker and my foot none the better, I gave the Peace Corps doctors a call. The pressure from the ant bites made my foot feel like a balloon that needed a good pop. They told me to go the emergency room immediately, and I - someone who has never before had an allergic reaction to anything - hobbled in a disoriented fashion towards the hospital; luckily, only a block away.

As I walked, I couldn't stop thinking about World War II. During the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, the Japanese would bury American or Filipino soldiers up to their ears and let the ants swarm them and finish them off. I felt truly sorry for those guys.

The ER was empty and I suddenly found myself center stage in front of a dozen or so nurses and doctors. They all exclaimed over my foot and as another doctor was called, they sat me on a bed and crowded around as I struggled to fill out the forms being handed to me. They tried to sound out my name, made exclamations about my age and single status. I wrote "none" under "religion" just to save the bother. Then I lay down as they busily discussed the possibility of my being a secret spy.

The doctor arrived and injected my shoulder with something involving antihistamines and steroids. She told me that I couldn't go home until I slept. After half an hour, I capitulated and closed my eyes for five minutes - after which I was promptly released to make my hobbled way home. Apparently I had a slurring, messy conversation with John on the phone - one that I don't remember at all. I woke up the next day filled with relief to find an apparently human foot attached to my right leg.

And as I write this blog, I am filled with glee. It was a hilarious and ridiculous experience, but it was all so stereotypical Philippines - down even to the speculations of espionage - that none of it really bothers me at all. I really love it here; I just have an ongoing feud with their ants.

Nose-Bleed.

2010-04-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

For the past few weeks I've been forcibly re-immersed into middle school math. My brain has been repeatedly singed by absurd word problems involving fractions twisted into percentages, percentages knotted into fractions; one round the other in a complex number jungle that makes me grumpy.

As Filipinos say when they find something difficult: "Nose bleed."

I have a nice, young math tutor that I could never expel my grumpiness upon. I have a quiet, appeasing community to whom I would never dare to show my less-appealing side. There are no Peace Corps volunteers in the direct vicinity and my family is only on Skype when the time-difference suits them.

Mr. Michael Pollan: I'm coming after you.

You may have heard of Pollan's books, read about him in newspapers, listened to his interviews on various talk shows, been a student in his classroom at Berkeley, etc. If you're a liberal American from either coast then you know about him and like him. For Foodies - an irksome title which John, another Peace Corps volunteer, refers to as "Food Snobs" - Pollan's a sort of bald, Jewish guru of indiscriminate parental age.

As an east coast liberal come-and-go vegetarian in my mid-twenties who is also Jewish, I predictably enjoyed the first book I read by him; "The Omnivores Dillemma." It armed me with with struts for my basically instinctual beliefs regarding food: Eating meat is natural, but treating animals like plants is unnatural - don't eat unnatural food.

The book digresses into evil corn's various attempts to take over the world, after which - for one long, boring chapter - Pollan literally forages for a meal. As he's searching through the wildly unimpressive forest, the reader can only hope he accidentally eats the much-feared poisonous mushroom for a little shock-and-awe infusion.

Okay, okay I overall really liked that book. I forced it upon John who's only comment as he handed it back to me was, "Well, it helped me understand you better." I read a second book by Pollan - "In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto" - and found myself struggling to stay interested. Here's what I remember from it:

- The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we are.
- If you're eating something that your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, it probably isn't.

That's from the introduction, and that's all you really need to read.

Somewhere around listening to Michael Pollan's episode in TEDTalks and reading an interview in Huffingtonpost.com, I realized something: Michael Pollan is boring. He's right, but he's boring. More than that - all of America is boring in regards to food. The endless discussions, the heaps of facts, the cyclical food fads and muli-million dollar sham of an organic industry leads, like the current political landscape, absolutely nowhere.

The American foodie culture has become so obsessed with itself that it has turned men who claim to "know", like Pollan, into celebrities. He's made himself rich off the fat of America's diets. He's a writer in the sense that he's written books - then again, so has Vanilla Ice. He's an environmental activist - but so is Al Gore. More than anything, he's a pop icon for the new-age, Whole Food buying, label-reading, Wal-mart hating Food Snobs of America today.

Again, I don't want to back-stab my own stereotype. I agree with nearly everything he says. It's just that anyone utilizing the term "fetishism of meat" (Huffington Post) with any semblance of seriousness is, in my book, unforgivably annoying.

You may be off-carbs, but I am officially off-Pollan.

Another Ant Blog

2010-04-10T22:40:00.000-04:00

"Where are you?" I asked.
""Snagged in the wind of an empty jeepney."

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A guy I knew in college had a tattoo of an ant on his stomach. His ant had something to do with the band the Prodigy, but he also admired the insects ability to be small and yet ridiculously tough; they are able to carry over ten times their own body weight.

Perhaps you already knew that - but did you know that ants can infiltrate closed cans of peanut butter? If determined, they can penetrate any kind of sealed wrapper. They smell food from great distances and will find a way to acquire it; no matter how hard you try to hide it, or how many circles you draw using poison chalk around the nail from which it hangs. They can lift Tupperware lids and rob you of precious banana bread. Somehow, they'll get into the Luna bars your grandmother sent you from America. Don't freak out; simply drown them in a faucet and eat as planned. Squash a cockroach on the floor or wall and see how many days it takes the ants to make it disappear. In less than twenty-four hours they'll remove everything but the frail, leafy skeleton.

In my Filipino apartment, I co-exist with over a dozen ant varieties. The smaller and lighter they are, the more vicious. Their bites raise instant welts and they oftentimes are invisible but for a faint rustling in my blond arm hair that unfortunately stings like the dickens.

I also live with a family of field mice that I don't really have the heart to massacre. One of them chewed a hole in my plastic bottle of syrup, spilling liquid sugar across my floor. This was extremely annoying; you'd think they'd at least have the decency to eat it up. "Eh, well," I thought to myself, "I'll let the ants get it." They'd already cleaned up the mosquito I'd smashed against the wall that morning.

Turns out, of all things, ants don't like syrup. I've given them three days. But my apartment smells delicious.

Summer Halo-Halo (Summer Mix-Mix).

2010-04-08T07:55:00.000-04:00

My co-teacher and I ride a trike home together with her little niece. We pass a white man pushing a stroller, of whom I just barely glimpse after she shrieks, "Look! A foreigner!!" at me. I nod; there are a few older men roaming around Roxas - usually with Filipina partners and the odd child.

"Is he American?" she asks me excitedly.

"Well, I don't know, he might have been..."

"But he is your race!"

Because I like this teacher, I give it a try. "Well, there are lots of countries with white people. My race is Ukranian, I guess, because that's where my family is originally from."

"Oh," she thinks for a moment, and that giggles at her self as if she has been making silly assumptions. "And here I thought your race was American!"

"Well, it is..." She looks at me confusedly. "Caitlin's race is French and something else, John's race is German, but we're all American. Nobody is really American..." I trail off as her eyes glaze over. I know her pretty well, and she has her "I'm very polite but definitely not listening" face on. It's not her fault; American-ness is nearly impossible to explain to Filipinos who have never been abroad, and I'm admittedly not doing the best job.

I give up, feigning enthusiasm; "Oh yeah, he was definitely an American!"

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I woke up this morning with a sort of nerdy excitement that has been plaguing me of late. I throw on my glasses and study a little math (taking the GRE next Friday) before hopping into my bucket bath and mentally going over my lesson plan for the day. It's day two of Julie's mish-mash summer school; but this time, she is prepared!

That's right, day one did not go as planned...at all. I had spent several hours the weekend before intricately planning a summer unit. I wanted lessons to tie, make sense and culminate in an ultimate cooperative student-activity. I decided on an overall theme of "Stories from Around the World"; a new story each week would be the base of two lessons and several activities. The summer would build into a play that the students would pick, based on one of the stories, and which their parents would attend.

I e-mailed the lesson plans and first story to myself, planning to print them once I arrived at school. I wore a new dress and packed my bag with chalk and other chatchkes I probably wouldn't need and arrived at school. Class began at 9am. Arriving at school at 8am, the first thing I noticed was that the huge banner advertising "Summer Fun: Free English Classes with Ma'am Julie!" was gone. Sir Nilo, the only other teacher at school that early, told me he thought some graduates had stolen it as a "remembrance" of me. At least they left it up for a few days.

Obviously, the internet wasn't working at school. I had to do a quick lesson re-think. Luckily off-the-cuff is one of my strong points. It's been well-developed over the last two years.

By 9am, I only had one student: Rubbie (pronounced Ruby), my top second-year. I asked her if she'd be willing to have class one-on-one and she shyly agreed.

We began, but I should have known better. Another second year arrived, followed by a graduated senior, followed by two more high school students, followed by a 9 year-old, followed by an 11 year-old. Since their arrivals were at fifteen minute intervals, it was difficult to find a good track for a class of such diverse abilities. I settled on two lessons - an elementary and high school version - and did the best I could. We left the day promising to begin next week with a more organized Korean fairytale.

Well, turns out there aren't really Korean fairy tales online. I found a nice Japanese one, wrote out two lesson plans - elementary and high school - and was determined to be prepared for day two.

This morning I felt very prepared. I was confident the students from last week would return, and I was ready to slot in any new arrivals. Of course, I still needed to print the stories before class. As I bucket-bathed, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be silly if there was a brownout (blackout) right now and I couldn't print anything..."

Guess what.

I got to school frustrated, but armed with new activities for day two. Of course, by 9am there was shy little Rubbie, agreeing for the second day in a row to have a one-on-one class with me.

By 9:30am, five new high school students had arrived, along with a few younger siblings.

By 9:45am, I had a nine-year old and a five year-old.

At 10am there were a few more kids I'd never seen before. Who knows how old they were or where they came from.

By the end of the lesson, there were about fifteen students participating. I specify "participating" because there were an addition ten or so just leaning in through the windows or draped across chairs in the back of the classroom.

By the end, I was exhausted, and the brownout persisted in its evil haze. The dust from the classroom intermingled with the dust from the streets and the exhaust from trikes grinding the bone-dry rubble. I covered my mouth on the ride home, watching the businesses open their doors while workers set-up chairs in shady spots to wait for electricity. Nobody really has air-con, but without fans summer is truly brutal.

I got home and panted at the gate, waiting for someone to open it. Out came my landlady. "We still have brownout," she acknowledged sadly.

I opened all my windows and put on the baggiest, most hideous duster (mumu) I own. I tried to read while my fan perched sulkily over my bed. Roxas seemed deathly still; without energy to stir up its usual cacophony. The only sound was my landlady hacking away at the coconut tree in our courtyard with a bolo. Thwack, thwack, thwack.

At some point, I passed out. For the next four hours I dreamed about inferno-like days and long lines from which there was no shade to escape the sun. It burned deep, abyss-like holes in my head, back and arms even as I cringed behind pieces of paper and broken umbrellas.

How Filipina am I? Dyos ko.

Extreme Free Verse

2010-04-08T03:27:00.000-04:00

I found four giant cockroaches in a single morning and decided it was time for a little cleaning. As I started tossing old papers, I came across a few poems I'd scribbled out in the beginning of Peace Corps, during my first month or two in-country. Since I know next to nothing about poetry, please read them for what they emote rather than how they are structured. It was fun for me to read them - I've come a very long way since then, and I'm no longer in an alien world (though it is still sometimes an irritating one). However, as tends to be my style, I do find it difficult to remember how it felt to be in this state of my mind - I am miles away from it. When I found these poems I wondered for a split second if the notebook they were in was mine at all.

Anyway, here goes:

kana, kana, Amerikana - draft 1

As I muck the grime
Eyes stick like glue - and
I stiffen, a doll
A white clown, a sea
of brown.
Do I entertain you?

kana, kana, Amerikana - draft 2

I wade into the grime
of a city that isn't mine
Its eyes are the feathers
and I am covered in tar
I mime indifference; stiffen
a spider in a jar.
Covered in stink, yet
frozen in place.

Busong and busog. (Pregnant and full.)

2010-03-27T02:01:00.003-04:00

I was walking down the street, staring blankly ahead when I realized that a group of small boys were calling out to me. In voices full of of swagger, they shouted "Hey, peace corpse!" over and over again. Confused, I continued on. Obviously, they meant, "Hey, Peace Corps volunteer" but if they knew the organizations name (a rarity, these were not my students), why the mispronunciation? Where was the usual, "Hey, Joe"?

Peace corpse plagued me by a number of strangers over the next couple of days. That is, until someone pointed at my bag.

Made out of old tarpaulin, my "purse" showcased the words "Peace Corps" on one side and "Philippines" on the other - cut outs of a program sign.

The peace corpse bag went home with my brother - to be enjoyed in another time and place.

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In the beginning of service, blogging was compulsive as the frustration of immersion mounted. Adjustment was difficult because, in our minds, everything about American culture made sense and was easy. Why couldn't this culture just do things our way, take the simpler route and make life easier for everyone?

In the first weeks of training, a puppy was hit by a truck - spun around its tires and was left to die by the side of the road as a group of us watched; open-mouthed. I was upset for days. The truck hadn't even bothered to slow down.

Now, Filipino culture just makes a lot more sense. There is still a yo-yo feeling throughout the week: One day my library project has more than enough money. The next day, I find out we need a foreman. I find a foreman. He's charging more money than we have. We're going to build anyway, and hope to raise the money later; it won't be a "photo finish", and the building might be left a gutted beast - a gaping hole where the roof should be - but "at least we will have tried".

A dog lies in the street; beheaded. A neck leads to an inflated body, but where the head should have been, there is simply a smattering of blood. It looks like a quick death and so I am happy.

The next day someone tells me our security guard could be a foreman. I am slightly surprised - there are eleven other adults at the school, why didn't someone think of this? - but after nineteen months in service, the feeling is like an inner murmur.

My principal fires the old foreman - with some difficulty due to a "verbal contract" agreed upon the afternoon before - and hires our security guard. Now we have enough money. For now.

A teacher approaches me to tell me that the check from the mayor has arrived and we now have the pesos we'd originally requested plus an additional amount for "other school expenses". God bless elections and bribery. Within days we have gone from a large amount under budget to an equivalent amount over...

I mentally rush the building process to take some of that money for painting, more books, etc before it's used up. After all, the school already stole a good chunk of money designated to me for the computer lab completion. (Five years after they were initially promised, the eleven computers finally arrived last week.)

I'm glad that I only told the school about 90% of our budget - that extra bit is our cushion money.

Time is the old watched pot, but I'm no longer concerned. Culturally, it's comfortable here. I find my tongue is tied when talking to wealthy Filipinos and other foreigners - they move in a different world than I do.

My teachers make me iced tea in the sink, send the students out for bananas and ice, fuss over me. Wear this, cover up your shoulders, put on some makeup, you are beautiful like a mannequin, you are getting fat, you are so sexy, here please take my bracelet, have you eaten your breakfast, sit and talk with us, come to fiesta with us... all in a day. They fuss out of affection. It's nice.

"You want to eat our house?" they ask. I laugh, and after a moment so do they.

"Who is the hostess?" I ask. They are hysterical. This is better than the time I accidentally said "pregnant" instead of "full" (busong and busog). "Hostess" is another word for "prostitute".

I am happy, but there is always a curveball at the pinnacle of contentment.

A man broke a puppy's leg in the middle of a crowded walk. Unable to pass, I stop and get upset with him. He tries to sell it to me, but it is a Sunday and no veterinary office would be open. I offer to buy it anyway for a small amount of money and he yells at me, calling me "disprespectful" with alcoholic breath. The puppy limps under a stool. Other men crowd around and explain to me that he is sick, and that it is his puppy so there is nothing to be done.

I am very upset. I see an Badjao (minority group) grandmother and three small girls, babies really, crouched low and dirty in front of a drugstore. I bring the oldest girl, who is about eight years old, into the store and let her pick out whatever she wants - a small attempt to combat my guilt over the puppy. It doesn't work.

I find out that the family doesn't speak Ilonggo, the local dialect, because they are from Mindanao - the southern province. In other words, they are broke and mute, living on foreign streets. They have no chance at all. I buy them some extra treats, and the sales lady gets mad at me for spending too much on them. She's probably right in the sense that it only encourages them to continue begging the next day and the next. I whisper to myself in a tone that is both a little bit bitter and a little bit helpless; "Typical American, see a problem and throw money at it." Hey, it wasn't a perfect day.

The next afternoon, my students asked me to please teach them summer classes. I was very pleased with myself (look what an awesome teacher and inspiration I am!) but I felt, much more strongly, an intense admiration for these kids. I was never the kid who would have volunteered to attend school when I didn't have to, but there they were; jumping up and down with excitement. The word spread and I now have adults and elementary school kids asking to attend my free summer school, meaning that it will be me facing a classroom of varied-age and multilevel students. A terrible Filipino habit I seem to have picked up; the inability to say "no".

Some things make sense, others don't, and I float on in my peace corps bubble. I have eight months of service left, but I wish that pot would simmer until I'm ready. Eight months hardly seems long enough.

Aica, my first goddaughter, is baptized. She cried the whole time, but was still very tiny and cute.

May the Sun Shine Bright....

2010-03-23T03:00:00.000-04:00

It's the stinky towel time of year.

It's so hot I can hardly breathe. The floor beneath my bucket is stained brown with dirt running off my body... I am too muggy to clean it. I feel pretty good that I summoned the energy to scrub my feet this morning. I am having trouble getting out of bed to pour myself another liter of water, but the oomph to be jealous of the eastern side of the country - which is about to be pounded by a typhoon - is easily accessed. We haven't seen rain in months.

And I stink. Or my towel doesn't dry quickly enough between my baths to stop stinking. Or the air stinks. Something is going on, because using that thing makes me feel dirty again. I air dry and put on the deodorant my mom sent - Secret, shower fresh flavor - and I feel awake, temporarily. I'm averaging three bucket baths a day, but I mostly wish I could fit inside my bucket and sit there reading all day.

My friend, who spent a lot of time in Africa, signed off an e-mail to me: "May the sun shine bright today and you make it home before your bucket water cools." She's so sweet, but I was laughing. The best time to bucket bath is at six am; the well has spent the whole night cooling itself to lukewarm degree, and it's nowhere near cold. Does this mean that Africa has better weather?

Protocol mandates that I wear pants and sleeves to work. They are trying to choke me; my body gasps for air. Thanks so much, Spain, for bringing us Catholicism, which requires modest, sleeved dress of all women while allowing men to walk around with their beer bellies swinging 'round beneath the open sky. And thanks America, for making jeans into nationally accepted formal wear - I enjoy wearing them in the summer Filipino furnace.

I haven't blogged in ages, I'm working my way back up to it. My brother visited. My friend visited. It was amazing to see them. Being in the Peace Corps and then having people travel halfway around the world to see you, just because they love you, is indescribable. I think I was high for six weeks.

Now I'm working very hard. The money to build my library came through and we're searching for a foreman. Some of the books have arrived, but we need many more. Graduation is next week and summer classes - which my students asked me to teach, as a sort of English club idea, and now even some elementary students are asking to attend - begin in two weeks. I'm studying for the GRE and it's difficult to find somewhere cool enough and quiet enough to concentrate.

But most of the time, I'm just hot.

Single, pero indi available. (Single, but not available.)

2009-12-01T06:08:00.010-05:00

I woke up from my nap today to find tiny fire ants crawling around in my hair, down my cheeks. They trickled down my arm and seemed to settle in a confused bunch behind my knee. I screamed, jumped up and drowned the majority of them in a bucket shower. It was too late: my left earlobe had swollen into a marble-sized ball of fire, my leg was getting thicker by the second and my scalp felt as though a colony of lice were hiding behind my hair follicles.

Nobody likes fire ants, but since coming to the Philippines I have figured out that I am particularly allergic to their bites. Definitely more than your average bear.

I believe it was Paul Theroux who referred to Peace Corps as a "sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity." Actually, if I remember the story correctly, he was thrown out of Peace Corps for smuggling some wanted African friends across national borders, after which he proceeded to bungle around the continent for a time. Nevertheless, the man understood the state of mind many volunteers find themselves in during their two years of service - especially those volunteers in their mid-twenties... like me.

I remember being nine years old and going to the doctor for some form of preventative injection. We moved around a lot and were constantly being vaccinated against the various diseases in this continent or that region. My mother, an unusually capable woman under normal circumstances, seemed unable to keep tabs on her kids' medical records. Her records seemed to stick, my dad's records may have been tucked away safely in some top-secret government files or something; but my brother and I... we got jabbed a lot. For example, I know for a fact that I had the hepatitis series at least twice. Apparently a kid's memory means nothing without recorded proof signed by a doctor, and my mother remained unconvinced by my reasoning that the multiple injections would cancel each other out.

After a particularly painful needle had prodded my arm in search of nearly invisible veins (notoriously difficult to "find" according to every nurse tasked with injecting one), I remember the nurse turning to me with a big smile on her face. She had braces. "All done till you're twelve!" she glittered. As a nine-year old I remember feeling a huge sense of relief. "I'm never going to be twelve!"

Well, it's been twelve years since I was twelve, and I am stuck in a Howard Johnson's. Peace Corps has a way of making you feel as though you're just a little kid pretending to be a grown-up. Who on earth thought it would be appropriate to let me teach Filipino high schoolers? More than teach, because I suppose speaking fluent English qualifies me to teach it on some level; who decided that I was qualified to teach teachers? I have absolutely no formal training in education. Here, I let my Filipino counterparts think that I was a teacher in America because that is what makes sense. I've discovered that the best answer here is always "yes".

Do you have a TEFL certificate? - Yes

Are you a teacher in America? - Yes

Can you take over a class by yourself until mid-January? - Yes

Were you a girl scout in America? - Yes

Can you tell our 400 girl scouts about what that was like compared to here? - Yes

Can you also give an inspirational speech - Yes

Can you give a half hour talk to 700 high schoolers about HIV/AIDS before our assembly? - Yes

Will you give a full day teacher training about whatever you want to? - Yes

Okay, we know we didn't tell you this, but can you input a session about classroom management during your seminar that starts in five minutes? - Yes

Can you build us a library? - Yes

And fill it with books? - Sure.
Are you still single (unmarried)? - Yes, pero indi available.

I was never a girl scout, I've hardly even been camping (do nipa huts count?), I'm not a teacher, I don't have a TEFL certificate, etc. The odd thing is, after diving right into it all I realized something - I can, and do, all of this... no problem. Well, some problems; usually having more to do with the Filipino incapacity to plan ahead than a lack of pretend or newly acquired knowledge on my part. As John said the other day, "You know what I have learned about myself while being here? I can learn anything I need to know in about 24 hours." It's quite amazing what you can memorize from the internet or steal from other volunteers' projects in a tight spot. He also said, quite rightly, "I think after two years of Piskor we'll be much calmer adults."

Ah, so we're not adults. When I'm in front of a huge crowd teaching, I do feel like a grown-up. When I'm in the classroom doling out punishments and rewards, grades and thoughts of the day, I definitely feel like a grown-up. But are grown-ups allowed to use the word "grown-up" in a blog? I think they'd prefer a consistent "adult".

I had a very adult moment the other day. My foot was wounded by a naughty chair bolted to the bus floor in the same week that my belly button was struck by some unnoticed force that nevertheless left a nasty infection. I dutifully applied my handy antibiotic ointment twice daily, cleansing the areas thoroughly and feeling like "Hey, look at me, taking care of myself all by myself!" I was slighlty confused when the infections worsened each day. I started thinking, "Oh boy, Jules, you managed to get yourself some nasty parasite." Well, actually, I didn't. My antibiotic ointment had simply expired in April of 2005. I'd been carrying that tube around from college to home for vacations to India to China to Peace Corps without a thought in my head, and somewhere along that road I'm old enough to have had it expire on me.

I think I was particularly clobbered by this because my father still carries around aspirin that expired in the eighties; prying it out of his little travel case and sneaking it into the garbage bin is no easy feat. When I visited my parents this past June my mother and I were in near hysterics sifting through his zippered, black leather case and picking out all things old and moldy. It was terribly funny and, though he grumbled good-naturedly, he didn't appreciate seeing himself in an older, sloppier light.

Dad, if you're reading this, I take it all back: I went through my medicine cabinet after the expired ointment discovery and produced an entire bagful of items that I have apparently been carrying around since high school. I'd like to blame it on you and say I stole the medicine from your cabinet before going into the Peace Corps, but I can't: half of it was prescribed to me for various skin ailments and other random encounters with minor diseases across the years. Some of it I actually remember buying. Eek.

Only an adult can possess expired medicine. Perhaps I really am a grown-up.

The other night I felt extremely itchy lying in bed, as tends to happen here by the end of another sweaty, buggy day. Usually the feeling goes away after a proper bucket bath, but sometimes not. Having already bucket bathed I decided to ignore the feeling, strip to my skivvies and carry on with my sleep.

Big mistake. The next morning I woke up covered in itchy red polka-dot hell. Upon further examination, a colony of red ants was discovered to be utilizing my mattress as their headquarters of operation. They were tumbling down one window, crossing a curtain and marching across the clothing line that I use as a closet before spilling through my hanging clothes and onto my bed. So I did the only sane thing a grown-up could do: I sprayed poisonous insect-killer all over my bed, curtains and shelves, opened my windows and left for four days of Thanksgiving vacation.

As I spread the venom quite venomously, I heard my mother whispering in my ear about the dangers of insect spray. I ignored her, because I'm an adult and I can do that. (Being halfway around the world helps.) Besides, without the spray I feel helpless, child-like without proper combatant or a plan for fixing a very uncomfortable situation.

Back from my weekend, I was relieved to find that my bedroom was a ghost town: no ants anywhere. That was yesterday. During nap time today they were marching down the length of my body and I awoke to three of them attempting to dig a tunnel in my ear. I screamed, sprayed the room again and ran away to an internet cafe where I sit here simultaneously typing and itching my scalp, hoping I didn't throw away the last of my expired benadryl.

Don't worry, mom: I washed my hands.

Thank goodness for earwax.

This means war.

A Peace Corps Misadventure

2009-10-28T00:16:00.001-04:00

We'd been looking forward to it all week. Caitlin had strategically planned her teacher training on a Friday so that the five assisting volunteers could stay the weekend and have a little fun; wine, fresh fish on the beach and a pumpboat trip to a deserted offshore island said to be brimming with white sand beaches and - most precious to every peace corps volunteer - a little privacy.

The training had passed over quite well. Several hundred teachers appeared to undergo our four sessions which included a never-before utilized strategy at teacher conferences in Roxas City; breakaway sessions, where the teachers diverged by individual subject groups and devised practical applications for the lecture-concepts. Of course, having never been asked to actually participate in a teacher's seminar themselves, half of them hadn't been listening at all and a mad panic of note-copying and cloying for time ensued. It was remarkably reminiscent of their own students.

By the end of a very exhausting day filled with consistent prodding, cajoling and eye-rolling on our own behalf and time-checking, gossiping, belly-aching and perhaps a little learning on theirs, we were ready for a few drinks.

Just kidding. Peace Corps volunteers never drink. In fact, we were thrilled to wake up early the next morning and let loose our inner beach bums in the Pinoy-free privacy of a deserted island. Cait's school had been quite nervous about having five additional Americans under what they viewed as their own responsibility. All week they'd been fussing to Caitlin; convincing the local police to post guard outside of our apartments at night - and idea we immediately nixed - and seemingly most prominently worried about what we could possibly find to eat, prompting Caitlin to ask, "I've been here a year. What do you think I eat?"

Though Caitlin drew the line at their accompanying us to the island, she allowed them to call the supposedly very-rich barangay captain of the island and agreed that her co-teacher's father-in-law could bring us on his own boat. I should mention that Caitlin is my site-mate, and my own teachers were thrilled and envious that I was visiting this mysterious, rural island within view of our own brown, dirty beach. "It is so beautiful!" they cried. "Have you been there?" I asked. "No, not yet," they demurred.

To our relief, blue skies and sunshine greeted us Saturday morning. We set off in the co-teacher's trysikad to a barangay about twenty minutes from the city. At her house we met Caitlin's goddaughter, Caitlin, who was very wrinkly and new and was, as the Filipinos fawned, far more beautiful than her older sister because of her pinkish-white skin. This was coo-ed within the sister's earshot, of course, and one got the feeling that it was not exactly a spontaneous exclamation. "Of course her skin is white," Caitlin muttered to us, "she hasn't seen been exposed to a drop of sunlight yet!"

And so we set off. The boat was going to make two trips: one volunteer had to head back early because the floodwaters from recent typhoons had managed to creep into his house. As we started off on the small boat, I noted what seemed to be a great deal of patchwork done to the floor and sides. I said nothing because, hey, it's the Philippines. As my student's cultural book notes, "Filipinos are very creative and will make do with whatever materials are available in order to survive."

Sitting cozily but not comfily afloat, we started taking pictures of the beautiful shoreline. We were thrilled to be having an adventure, to lie on the beach and eat junk food, to be alone to gossip and catch-up with one another. As we passed one beautiful white sand stretch after another, we finally pulled into a port that was anything but unoccupied. About fifty small bodies had been apparently on the lookout for us and went racing to the right into what looked like a school. "We're just meeting with the barangay captain, and then we'll go to another beach, right?" we queried our navigator anxiously. He nodded and smiled. "I hope he doesn't make us sit down to a big meal..." one volunteer fussed. "Whatever, we'll just get out as soon as possible," someone else said. With our beach bags and bikinis beneath sloppily applied casual clothing, we headed ashore for what we assumed was another formality in Filipino culture.

The barangay captain belly swayed towards us before he shook each of our hands heartily as he deigned to make small talk for only a few moments before asking, "So, shall you start your program now?"

Grooaaan. We'd been getting slightly suspicious as a surrounding of over a hundred tiny children had been running around to gather small wooden chairs in front of a stage. They clustered in groups of grimy hands and snotty noses, pulling down ratty shirts and staring up at us with wide-brown eyes. A few had flip-flops but most were barefoot and unkempt. They were beautiful. I'd asked a teacher standing by only moments before, "The students have school on Saturday?" What a great community, I thought, the kids need it. She smiled. "No, this is especially for you."

Uh oh. Caitlin took charge. "No, sight-seeing. We are here on vacation." The school teachers got it before the barangay captain did. What confusion! Unaccustomed to being told "no", I suppose, as many self-important members of the Filipino upper-caste are, he just stared at us expectantly until someone said, "Well, I guess we could sing a few songs..."

After a few rounds of heads, shoulders, knees and toes we tried the hokey pokey... and then we were at a loss. We had no materials, no preparation, the kids didn't speak English and it seemed like there was an endless sea of them. So we took a few photos and awkwardly said our goodbyes, wracked with guilt as we literally walked backwards onto our craft, all the while grinning stupidly and waving heartily at the tiny, faces. Glints of their white smiles reflected the noonday sun.

Another half hour boatride, past a few more beautiful but clearly inhabited beaches, we arrived at ours. As we pullled closer to shore, our boat hit a large piece of coral reef and the engine broke. We waded the rest of the way, backpacks on our heads and stumbling left and right. We'd been thoroughly doused by the time we reached shore and were promptly greeted by a band of starving dogs. Much to my peers disgust, I started feeding them and as a result they were our companions for the rest of the day. Sorry, guys.

As our guide rushed off into the jungle to find spare parts to fix the engine, we settled onto the tiny stretch of beach. We'd only managed to just barely break into the junk food when we noticed we were being watched - every bikini-clad foreigners worst nightmare in a modest, Catholic country. Several scrawny men were sprawled out in front of a tiny nipa hut, smoking stinky cigarettes and drinking rum. Eventually one of them sauntered over to tell us we were on the wrong half of the sand; the left half was private. We picked up our things, walked the twenty feet necessary to cross the invisible line, and plopped down crossly. We didn't feel comfortable stripping down while grumpy, sleepy and drunky lazed mere meters away. There was nowhere else to escape to, we were enclosed by large boulders and a vast, bushy jungle.

When I was little, my family lived in Davao, Mindanao. Knowing how disappointing things could be in the Philippines, my mother had me trained to shrug my baby shoulders and sigh "Oh, well!" with a smile on my face.

Luckily, twenty years later I still remember how to do that. We made the best of the situation and arranged ourselves in a semi-comfortable cluster in the farthest corner from the men.

And then the rain began.

Have you been in a downpour without shelter? Without a tree or overhang to hide beneath? For hours on end? Well, I have. One tree leaned heavily across the beach and we tucked our bags as close as possible to its stump. As for us, we got wet. Very wet. There was nowhere to go. A few leaves clung to the branches miserably as we huddled beneath with our knees to our chest. The bony animals dripped wretchedly, accepting their penance with downcast eyes. We endured. After a while, we migrated to the water because it was warmer to sit in its shallow embrace than freeze on shore. The dogs stole our food, and we no longer cared.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the rain stopped. Just kidding. It didn't even subside; but the boat was fixed and we gathered our soggy belonings to be further belted by pellets of water out on the open seas with at least the hope of a future shelter in our horizon.

We got to shore and knocked on Caitlin's co-teachers door. No answer. So we waited beneath a leaky overhang and waited for a trike to pass. The streets were completely flooded and none came. We walked until we found a few trikes parked alongside the road and begged them to drive us back to town. "It's raining! Too wet!" they said, staring at us in dismay. One volunteer left his belongings and went walking on the road ahead to see if he could find us a trike, saying he would return. The rest of us waited.

After an hour of this, I started stepping in the middle of the street and stopped every car that passed. On the third try, a pickup truck agreed to give us a lift part of the way. He took our belongings in the front seat with him, and the waterlogged rats we were got in the open back. Still missing the volunteer who had gone ahead, we started shouting his name as the truck waded through the mud. We found him standing under a sari-sari store overhang a half mile down the road. Laughing hysterically at us, he hopped into the back and we were finally on our way home - to heat up our kettles and take the closest thing available to a hot shower.

This was two weeks ago. I'm laughing now, but only because if this sort of thing doesn't occasionally happen to you in Peace Corps, you're not in it.

Roxas City: The Fish Capital of the Philippines

2009-10-27T03:53:00.010-04:00

The other day I took a trip to the local market and entered a section I nearly always avoid; the gaping, slippery, suffocating fish section. I bypass it for a number of reasons. First of all, once must pass through the meat section to get there and the pseudo-vegetarian in me throws a tantrum. Second of all, I've discovered since my arrival in the Philippines that fish bleed a whole lot when you kill them; they are actually not composed entirely of scales and white flesh. However, if I ever want to learn how to cook a fish (since I do enjoy eating them so very much) I figured a look around would do me good. All the vegetables hang out in the outskirts of the main building and I've been quite the chicken about entering it's depths. Well, here's the proof that I yanked out my inner shark, skirted through the innermost aisles and... plan never to return.

Ay, dios ko. Oh my god.

2009-10-11T01:03:00.004-04:00

Every once in a while, it happens: You look around and think, hey, this is great. I am happy right where I am.

My Peace Corps service just passed the midway point, but I feel, overwhelmingly, that I have just begun. Requesting a site transfer was one of the best things I have ever done for myself; though as such things usually go, it was also one of the hardest. I am at a new school that is imperfect in all new ways. The students (and therefore school) is poor, the education is lackadaisical at best, there is little consistency in rules and expectations... in short, I love it.

I know, it makes no sense, but let me try to explain: the teachers are willing to work hard and veer outside of the (appalling) Department of Education curriculum, the principal is dedicated enough to his students to teach five extra-learning classes himself and - most importantly of all - they all encourage me to work and work hard. My principal already asked me if he could apply to Peace Corps and have me extend for an additional year.

It seems that's all I needed. A new library is already in the works. My principal supports my discipline, he listens when I say I need things done immediately and not on Pinoy-time (never never time) and he encourages my efforts. We met with the mayor last week and he has already pledged 25% of the total library building costs to our project. I spent the rest of the day on cloud nine.

My co-teachers seem to enjoy having me around. They visited me at my new apartment and often call on me for extra visits into their classrooms - they say having me around encourages the students to attend. A few volunteers put on an all-day teacher training for the city public and private schools. There were over 200 attendees, but my school sat directly behind me and made sure to show up on time for my session (I reminded them all week that I was going to speak first). They all stayed through my seminar, only to quietly disappear immediately afterward. I'm going to go ahead and say that I was flattered.

I'm incredibly busy! Hiv/aids seminars, teacher trainings, a new library building, getting books for that library, a girl's leadership camp, sneaky little vacations... this is the Peace Corps I always imagined. Better late than never.

I suppose a year in, I'm also far more adjusted to Filipino culture. I am successful in interaction and communication . I can push food around my plate and get them to stop feeding me. Birthday parties no longer baffle, fiestas no longer overwhelm, long ceremonies don't try my patience... quite as much. I have figured out how to make them laugh, how to make them stop talking, how to tell them they've been rude. I say "they" because the cultural emphasis is communal rather than individual and overall, the same tactics seem to be acceptable to everyone.

One frustration that continues is with the heavy cultural emphasis placed on emotion rather than logic. My students will never ask to go get a snack at the canteen; they will grasp their stomachs in agony and pretend to faint from hunger pains. Beggars do not respond to a simple "no" or "sorry" but only to a very pitiful and whiny "walaaaaaaaaa" - I am without.

My principal had to leave early one day due to "stomach revolutions." Information I could have done without, but that's not how it's done here.

In our Filipino culture lesson, the fourth year DepEd book had the following to say about Filipino emotions:

"The Filipino... is sensitive to people's feelings, very trusting to the point of naivete... This very quality makes the Filipino tend to interpret personally any praise or criticism regarding business or work relationships. He has difficulty viewing things objectively."

That is all the students have to read - stuff like this in textbooks that are wretched according to any standard. See why they need a library?

I tell the principal that my older students like to skip class or, if attending, simply stare at me blankly from their seats in the back of the room. My co-teachers slip into their woebegone Pinoy voices and say, "Ah, perhaps the students do not have such good English as to understand you. You are speaking too quickly." A frown creases between their eyes and they are filled with pity for their helpless students - that is, until I point out their behavior extends to every other classroom.

"Want to know what phrase I have recently learned from Ma'am Dela Cruz?" I ask them. "Ay, dios ko! Indi ko kabalo... " Ay, oh my god. I don't know what to do.

I imitate her exactly. The room bursts into a sparks of hearty laughter, and I am smiling too.

Good Morning! Mabuhay! Praise Jesus Christ!

2009-09-06T23:47:00.003-04:00

People like to ask, "How's the new site?!" They want me to have an ebullient response prepared; they expect grateful happiness to have been given another opportunity to make Peace Corps work for me. They love me, they want so badly for me to be happy, and I want so badly to make them happy and so I try to describe the changes that the last month has brought.

I arrived at my new site just in time for the ruckus test circus, in which the teachers are the clowns and the students the acrobats. The chairs were spread apart the day before in an attempt to set a serious stage, and the principal reminded the entire student body (or all ten percent of it that attends the mandatory flag ceremony at seven am) that the exams would begin precisely at seven-thirty the following morning. The female saints (each homeroom is assigned a patron saint) would take their exams in the morning, the male saints would take the afternoon exams.

The next morning it is nine o'clock and the exams are finally beginning. Those that have shown up stand, and in lieu of a simple good morning, shout in unison, "Good Morning! Mabuhay! Praise Jesus Christ!" The majority of the students attending are female - my co-teacher informs me that the students thought the girls had to take the morning exams and the boys would go in the afternoon. I don't even ask how that is going to work itself out... I've been in the Philippines long enough to know that things have a way of working themselves out - or they just get brushed under the table.

As my co-teacher chats with me, the students chat with one another. They have scooted their chairs into tiny huddles and are comparing answers with small giggles and absolutely no pretense of doing otherwise. I point this out, but my counterpart laughs and says that they will just all get the same wrong answer this way. She is young - in her early thirties - and explains to me that if she gets upset at the students every time they cheat, don't listen or don't follow instructions she will give herself a mental breakdown. "The students are really bad here, they lack motivation," she says.

A few girls in the front row quietly pour over their papers, and their soft brown hair falls in their eyes. One boy is enthralled by this feminine magic. He scoots his chair over to the girl next to him, closer and closer until he is practically sitting on her desk. As is usual for this age, she is practically twice his size and seems vastly older. He leans his face in and I brace myself for a child-like kiss, but he merely begins brushing her hair with his fingers. Unnoticed by him, his test has fluttered to the floor.

Boys are outside the gates, milling about and smoking. An older students leaves the exam to join them. Students are squatting in the bushes and thick brush forming the campus perimeter. They seem contented, and I know that I am the only one worrying about whether or not they are skipping their test. Passing this exam is mandatory for graduation.

"Hush! You are getting too noisy!" admonishes my co-teacher as the low roar swells momentarily into a thick din before yielding to her anger and subsiding momentarily. A few of the littlest girls turn around and tell their classmates to hush.

I'd been in the classroom the day before when this same teacher had announced the test answers to the students. Even I knew, without looking at the test, that number one was "A", two was "C" and so on. I'd also noticed that none of the students were proactive enough to write down the answers, they'd just nodded their heads in acquiescence; yes, these were the correct answers, they understood. I don't understand.

The truth is, this site is wonderful. I have a supportive principal, a small faculty that doesn't thrive upon bringing one another down. They aren't rumormongers, they understand that I am a volunteer and I think they will take advantage of me rather than resent me, my whiteness, my American-ness.

How do I feel? I feel as though a crater has been lifted off my shoulders, it feels as though I can smile without being judged for it. It as though someone took me off a leash and let me run around a park; inside I am barking for joy.

But that doesn't mean that everything is perfect.

"All right, St. Jude, do not make noise!" There are supposed to be forty-some students taking this exam, but only twenty are present. This is partly because of the 150p exam fee (approximately three dollars, a good amount of money here) required, and partly because many students don't attend class at all.

Four boys have their heads bowed together in discussion, another gets up and walks out. I ask him where he is going. "Pamahow," he replies with a shy smile. Snack. My co-teacher leaves the room to begin a test in another room. A girl stands and begins fixing her hair in the mirror. The bell tolls and nobody moves, but a cow munching on the schoolyard grass gives a low moan in response. Three goats tied to a grassy knoll twitch their tails uncomfortably. Two girls sitting to the side are staring dreamily... at me. All they see is white skin and "true American" features. I motion for them to turn around and they giggle.

Yes, this chance to start anew is a good one. I made a good choice to transfer. But now, with the anxiety of false rumors and vindictive co-workers gone, my loneliness is palpable. The drama of the past few months erased this feeling temporarily, creating a fuzzy world lens in which there was only time for reactions and no time to waste on feeling feelings.

This is test day, and I expected nothing better from it. I armed myself with a giant Paul Theoroux novel; something I would never have thought of a year ago. In fact, a year ago everything about this absurd excuse for an education would have jarred and upset me. Today, it only makes me feel lonely; a sharp loneliness that comes with knowing you are the only person in the whole room - probably the whole city - that can understand what is wrong here.

But loneliness isn't the worst thing in the world; in fact, I'm pretty sure it is expected from Peace Corps volunteers. I know this; so I smile to myself as I take it all in and, in my ever-handy notebook, jot it down. Things are on their way up.

Roxas City, Panay Island.

2009-08-08T06:08:00.013-04:00

When I first arrived on Guimaras nine months ago, the only road leading from the port through the main island was what is locally known as lubak lubak - rocky, bumpy, unpaved and rough. Oh geez, I thought to myself as I was bounced into Tom, the other volunteer being deposited on the island, and into the flimsy "native" door. My forehead quickly turned red: roof-burn. My grandma called to see how my move into the new site was going and about five minutes into the phone call (during which I could hardly hear her) we lost reception. My supervisor was busily explaining that the island had only had electricity for fifteen years and even now, many residents were without. I found myself desperately trying to remember why I'd requested a rural high school.

Slowly, the road was repaired. As I got more comfortable at site and eased into my community, transportation to the port gradually became easier. First one side of the road was laid down. As two-way traffic squeezed onto the other half of what was already a narrow thoroughfare, I watched the laborers melt into the asphalt. Bare-chested and golden, sweat dripped down their ragged jean shorts and into their rubber flip-flops. Their shirts were universally tied around their heads, turban-like, and oftentimes they had little boys - no more than ten years old - helping them to lift, lay, sweat, squat. The asphalt soaked up the tropical heat and the burnt smell permeated the air, making it difficult to see straight. At least it was progress.

And so I progressed. The community got to know me, and I no longer suffered inane questions regarding where I was from, what I was doing, if I was married to a Filipino, if I ate rice and so on. My Ilonggo was finally passable and even the trike drivers enjoyed chatting to me on the way home from town. Just like a local, I no longer needed to call out my stop - the drivers all knew where I lived.

Around the time they were laying down the second half of the road, I began having trouble at school. First the principal took offense to something I said and, this being an indirect culture, she didn't tell me. This being an indirect culture, I couldn't ask. We were in a stalemate. I felt helpless and asked Peace Corps for advice. They gave it to me. It didn't work. I was both upset and annoyed, but life at school went on.

Soon after, my main co-teacher decided she no longer wanted to work with me. I suppose there must have been something somewhere that went wrong, but even now I'm not sure what it was. She is known locally as ningas kugon - a fire in grass that is bright and looming, but only for a moment before it goes out. In English I suppose we'd just say she makes a good first impression but lacks the skills or ability to back it up. Nonetheless, she is Filipino and a member of the large community families and I am neither - I will always be the outsider.

When I started to hear that she was maguba - out to destroy me - I was confused and rendered even more helpless. I asked Peace Corps for advice. Again, it didn't work. My Filipino friends and co-teachers told me "bahala siya sa buhay niya" - her life and her behavior is up to her, try to ignore it. So I did. But it didn't cease and it was stressing me out. More than that, she'd scared some of the other teachers I worked with in regards to cooperating with me and I began to feel unsupported and ineffectual - the last things you want to be when you're a Peace Corps volunteer alone on a rural island.

I waited a long time before I asked for a site transfer. Months, even. My mother rightly told me that I wasn't in the Peace Corps to be happy, and so I waited until I was no longer feeling personally attacked and upset. I waited until been in the situation long enough to look at it cleanly from an analytical, detached point of view. When I did, I realized that I was thriving and making an impact in one classroom out of four and that, in terms of the school as a whole, I was entirely superfluous. I called up Peace Corps, and as I traveled to the city to meet with my supervisor I noted that the road had finally been finished. The trip off the island took half the time.

My supervisor came down to my school and met with my co-teachers and principal herself. She went back to Manila, discussed the situation with the rest of Peace Corps staff, and they all came to the same conclusion that I had - it was time to transfer. We visited two different school on the next island over - Panay - and I chose a high school in Roxas City, about three hours north of Iloilo, as my new site.

I like to think that I exited my site gracefully. I met with each of my co-teachers and ensured that we were all on amicable terms. My supervisor at school was so distraught at the prospect of my departure that she took me out for pizza and a long chat during which she was nearly in tears. Through her, I received a culturally appropriate, semi-apology from my principal - who I managed to hug goodbye. My ningas kugon co-teacher actually apologized to me herself. The classroom that I was closest to arranged a goodbye party during which the boys each gave me a bright little flower, the girls cried hysterically and the students presented me with cards, gifts and a tearful song about friendship. Everyone knows how fond I am of dogs, and so total of three darling, ragged little puppies were proffered to me as I walked down the street the day before I left. Members of the community were sending over "remembrances" - little gifts - even at six am on the morning of my final departure.

Everyone seemed to think I was being promoted and that another volunteer would soon arrive to take my place. I had to carefully explain that, no, I was their volunteer and though I would be back to visit, I was going to finish out my contract in another city. This left them perplexed for a moment before they broke into a grin and exclaimed, "Ah, you are going to be near Antique!" Antique is my boyfriend's site, as they well know. "No," I had to tell them, "I am going much farther away from Antique, the other direction." They seemed doubtful until another community member knew enough geography to break into the conversation and back me up. Even the barangay captain needed a geography lesson. "Forget world maps," I thought, "I should have brought this school a map of the Philippines..."

It was overall the kind of goodbye that makes you remember a place, or a person, with a kind of fondness that is only achievable through an ending. As we approached the main road to the port, I was dismayed to find it... gone. It had been totally ripped out. In its place was a muddier, wetter version of the lubak lubak we had started with. "What happened here?!" I exclaimed to Jasmin, my landlord's daughter who was accompanying me to the port. "Ah, the contracting company used inferior materials to construct the road, so they will have to make it again. They will wait for the rainy season to end."

And all I could think to myself was, "What a waste."

Let me make that metaphor a little better. How about, all I could think to myself was, "Well, the second go-round should be much smoother."

I am inclined to end my blog there, but I will try to talk myself and my readers out of that kind of negativity. My mother insists that I've learned a great deal in terms of interpersonal relations and self-reliance. I agree, though I am still disappointed that I was unable to dig myself out of the school calumny-racket. Regardless, I made some good friends in the community, I did a lot of HIV/AIDS work in the township, I greatly impacted many of my students and certainly left a good impression of American women in my wake. I feel ten times more prepared for my next site, where I start Monday. My mother called me this afternoon and, to quote her for the umpteenth time I know, said, "Last time you started about four-hundred steps behind. Now you're starting a hundred steps ahead." As usual, she's right, and I can't wait for Monday. I am thrilled to work hard and be useful rather than bored at site... I will be much happier a month from now, I know for sure, and I am pledging myself to review this last year as a huge, important learning experience and a building block for my upcoming successes.

And now, for humors sake, a sneakily snapped photo of my ningas kugon co-teacher (yes she is sleeping and not, as my grandmother thought, deeply in prayer):

Paraligoy. (Cutting class.)

2009-07-16T02:42:00.004-04:00

When my father was a diplomat posted to Davao, Mindanao in the 80s, he worked very hard to find books to donate to local public schools. Once they arrived, however, he had an even harder time finding schools that would accept the literary donations. He obviously did not undergo Peace Corps training - you're supposed to assess community wants and needs before acting - but I can understand what he was thinking: What educational system would not value books?

Officially, the Filipino education system does value books. Very much so. In fact, one of the early units in first year of high school, according to the Department of Education curriculum, is about card cataloging. This unit - dare I call more than one lesson on the same subject a unit?- is cushioned by numerous essays encouraging travel through books and other like-minded messages. "Reading is very important!" exclaimed my co-teacher just before she had me tackle the poem "There is No Frigate Like a Book" by Emily Dickinson. The poem begins, "There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away..."

During Peace Corps training, along with being taught to do needs-assessment, we were warned about the kinds of libraries - or lack thereof - we would probably encounter at site. They would be run down, washed out by hurricanes and flooding, locked at all times, manned by scary librarians, fallen to disuse... that is, if they even existed at all.

Upon arrival at site, imagine my shock to discover a library already stacked with books, surrounded by cleanly scrubbed desks and a very friendly, harmless-looking librarian. The books were tagged with a number and the first three letters of the author's last name. I scoured the titles, and my heart was warmed to find some very optimistic and varied titles:

Readers Digest Condensed Books Volume 2: 1976
In the Name of Hope and Sorrow by Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof (Yitzhak Rabin's granddaughter)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (two copies)
Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (six copies)
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
The World According to Garp by John Irving

Of course, there were a sufficient number of religiously oriented Christian texts for a highly religious country, including I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris (Reorder your life in the light of God's order) and Almost Armageddon; the fiery cover of which depicts a black man being burned alive in the fiery depths of hell. No author is to be found. Overall, though, I was thrilled. I should really have looked more closely.

My first wake up call was when I held the first spelling bee of the year. The word to be spelt was "quiet" - a word they were well-acquainted with. In both first year classes, four out of the five students racing to spell the word correctly at the board wrote "kwiet". The fifth managed "queit". I chalked this up to living in a culture that uses an oral language in which grammar and spelling are superfluous and phonetically-based.

The following day we began the card cataloging unit. During the introduction my co-teacher drew a picture of a card catalogue on the board and struggled to teach the students. She failed and was getting very frustrated, so I stepped in. I began by explaining the importance of the card catalogue in terms of finding the library book, or the type of library book, you want. Then I did my best to explain card catalogue usage. "Do you understand?" I asked. "Yes, ma'am" they all replied in unison. As they began answering the lesson-related questions, however, it became glaringly obvious that no, in fact, they did not understand at all.

A few quick questions determined the underlying problem: the students did not know their alphabet. So I wrote it on the board. The students didn't understand how to alphabetize. Two days later, a few of them understood this part of the lesson well while the rest were more confused than ever. Finally, I suggested to my co-teacher that we actually go to the library and, through hands-on learning, practice using that card catalogue ourselves! (This co-teacher is exceptional in that she allowed me to spend more than one day on a lesson. Usually the teacher doesn't care whether the students understand or not, so long as the lesson is logged in their planning book.) She was enthusiastic; "What a great idea," she said, "but we have no card catalogue at this school... but you may do another lesson if you like!" I sighed, wondering what the purpose of all those little tags on the books were.

I decided to have the students practice their alphabetizing skills. In groups, I gave them a tag from the back of one book and they had to find it, locate the title and author, and turn all three in on a sheet of paper. All they had to do was find the book - they are all in alphabetical order. It took the whole class period. In the end, each group had finally found their book but most - will I never learn to start at the very basics? - did not understand what a title and author was or where they could be found in a book.

Sigh.

How can anyone be expected to teach students that don't know how to read - or how to properly approach a book - that "there is no frigate like a book"? Why are they being taught something that contains the word "frigate" when they cannot spell the word "quiet"? First, of course, they must be taught to read. But what to do when the government curriculum that all the Filipino teachers are told must be religiously attended-to is far, far over student's heads? Perhaps the teachers understand that something is wrong with this picture. I believe that a few of them do and wouldn't be surprised if others did not. It is Filipino culture to say "yes, yes" and agree to everything said, so it's difficult to know for sure. I believe that this is the way it's always been here. Explaining that things should be different is so theoretical as to be fantastical.

The library is pretty. Students come and go freely, but mostly they are just working on homework or chatting. I suppose that books are a good aura for both. As in so many cultures, appearances are deceiving at first. In any case, all those books listed above - those wonderful books - will at least have one reader: me.

On an entirely different note: I have finally begun working on HIV/AIDS education with a degree of seriousness. In a few weeks I am working with the island's Department of Health to host a seminar on the disease for hospice workers. Perhaps the fact that this is necessary - despite the fact that there is already at least one confirmed case on Guimaras - explains why Peace Corps told me that if I should require hospital care at any point during service, I am to get on a boat and head for the hospital in Iloilo. In any case, I am thrilled to be doing something besides teaching.

For now, as one of my first year students absurdly says at the end of every class; "Au revoir to all."

Mabalik ko. (I return.)

2009-06-23T23:19:00.010-04:00

I did not sense in the Philippines anything comparable to the kind of stately legacy that the British, for example, had bequeathed to India. India seemed to have gained, as a colony, a sense of ritual solemnity, a feeling for the language of Shakespeare, a polished civil service, a belief in democracy and a sonorous faith in upstanding legal or educational institutions; it had, in some respects, been steadied by the chin-up British presence. By contrast, the most conspicuous institutions that America had bequeathed to the Philippines seemed to be the disco, the variety show and the beauty pageant. Perhaps the ideas and ideals of American had proved too weighty to be shipped across the seas, or perhaps they were just too fragile. Whatever, the nobility of the world’s youngest power and the great principles on which it had been founded were scarcely in evidence here, except in a democratic system that seemed to parody the chicanery of the Nixon years. In the Philippines I found no sign of Lincoln or Thoreau or Sojourner Truth; just Dick Clark, Ronald McDonald and Madonna.” (Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer)

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“Something something something-hey, something something hey, Delhi-hey.”

This is all I understood of the stewardess’ Hindi announcement. I glanced around, seeking clues from my fellow Air India passengers, and quickly realized my naivety in assuming that anybody cared what the flight attendant had to say. We were mid-air, mid-day and everyone was geared up for India.

Two female backpackers were perched on the armrests of a nearby Indian family, posing for pictures and chatting in that loud, over-friendly American way. The Indian children basked in their attention, batting their eyelashes and rumbling with giggles. Other passengers slept while others watched a new Bollywood flick playing on old-fashioned airplane projector screens. In fact, the whole plane was a relic of my childhood – down to the double-plug headphone set and laminated airplane map in the seat pocket. I half expected a stewardess to walk down the aisle, offering captain’s wings pins to all the children on board.

A chubby boy walked by and poked the screen, sparking a ripple across the gyrating actress’ midsection. He glanced around, checking for reprimands. None forthcoming, he poked it again – harder. Half the plane was watching that screen, but nobody seemed bothered by his antics. Encouraged, he giggled and shoved the screen again. Too hard. It shot up and disappeared into the roof. I sighed. The end of my entertainment.

After ten months in the Philippines, the spicy air and flash of saris was already teasing the corners of my lips into a smile. More than a break from island-life, I was also going to see my parents – who live in Delhi – for the first time in almost a year. I couldn’t wait to be spoiled rotten.

We landed rickety-split, as befitted our antique vehicle. The stewardess warned that we would remain on the runway a while before disembarking and asked that everyone please be seated. No matter. Almost every Indian was already up; chatting, stretching, reaching, itching to breathe in that thick Delhi air. A German wearing a shirt with the Tibetan ohm printed across the center glanced around wildly. Unable to remain passive any longer, he leaned over to a wizened Indian gentleman standing in the aisle next to him. “Uh?” the Indian smiled, offering to acquire the German’s baggage from the overhead bin. “No!” the German said, with frustration, and tapped loudly on the lit seat belt sign above him. “But we are here,” the gentleman reasoned, scratching his white beard with one hand and pointing to the now-visible airport out the window. “No,” the German repeated, “we’re supposed to remain seated until this light goes out.” A look of surprise and the elderly Indian was chastened, springing back into his assigned seat and bolting himself in with the seat belt. The Indian family that had been so friendly with the American girls watched him return to his seat, snorted with contempt and carried on with their picture-taking glee and unruly merriment. I am terrified of the infamous runways collisions at Indian airports, and so remained happily seated until we were tucked in safely at the gate. However, I can tell you with assurance that I was one of exactly three.

Perhaps because this was my fourth trip to India, I felt a bit in limbo at first. The Delhi routines are both familiar and strange to me, and this trip was both a visit “home” to my parents and a chance to experience anew one of the most titillating countries in the world. My parents offered to take me to one of the cooler hill stations – pre-monsoon temperatures running at about 115 degrees Fahrenheit – but my Peace Corps life is rural enough; I demanded city.

My mother took one look at my clothes, saw the lackluster colors marred with loose threads, and assured me that we’d go shopping in the morning. I took a hot shower and watched my feet turn a friendly pink that I hadn’t seen in months. I scrubbed with the “Degunkify” brand of Herbal Essences shampoo placed in my bathroom and smiled with a sigh of relief. It felt great to be taken care of. Before I knew it - after a whirlwind cleaning, shopping, packing twenty-four hours in Delhi – we were off to celebrate my mother’s birthday in Mumbai.

The city of Mumbai is famous around the world for its slums. As we careened towards the Mumbai airstrip, I began to notice them peeking out from under trees, in-between houses, encroaching on construction sites and even heaving onto the runway. Although they were often in fenced off areas, it appeared as though they were attached to the rest of the city via wires. Hundreds of wires hung between the individual tinny roofs and the outer Mumbai circuit; defying disassociation and asserting an air of permanence.

We were driven by air-conditioned taxi to our lovely hotel, in which our persons were promptly searched and our bags dissected. This was to be the entrance routine nearly everywhere. Since 26/11 – the terrorist attacks upon Mumbai this past November 26th – sites frequented by foreigners or tourists take security very seriously. In his book Maximum City, author Suketu Mehta wrote that entering the glamorous Taj Hotel required one to overcome the self-doubt and feeling of unworthiness within. The hotel’s doors were open, glimmering and white, for anyone to walk in and use the restroom or order a drink by the pool. However, in order to waltz into a palace one must feel as though they have every right to its privileges.

Not so any longer.

About twenty feet outside of the hotel there is now a heavily secured entryway with big bellied Sikh guards and several metal detectors. At Café Leopold, made famous by Gregory David Roberts in his incredible book, Shantaram, the bullet holes are jagged scars in the roof, walls and window panes. Outside, Indian security guards hold Israeli-made metal detectors with Hebrew lettering down the side. When my mother and I walked into an old synagogue, the elderly guard and one of the workers chased us down to make sure that we were “Shewish”. And one lively, chatty taxi driver was visibly disturbed as our casual conversation veered towards the recent attacks. He assured us, his face contorted in emotion, that those men were not good Muslims; his Koran, he said, condemned murder and as well as the 26/11 terrorist attacks.

Is there a more complicated city than Mumbai? I’m not sure. The waterfront is beautiful, and the walkway along it is filled with couples in chaste embrace, talking quietly or just watching the afternoon sunset. However, the wind comes in and suddenly the air is saturated with the scent of shit. The sun's golden light is bathing one of the world’s largest public toilets.

Contrast has never been difficult to find in India. Some of the poorest people in the world live next door to the Taj Mahal. A wealthy Indian is famously constructing an entire apartment building in Mumbai’s wealthier districts to house his family – and only his family – while the streets outside are filled with begging children; children left alone to play in the traffic medians, children with big brown eyes and helpless brown bellies.

Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that a city once racked with religious riots and massacres, a city that was recently held hostage by religiously-motivated terrorists… is also one of the most tolerant cities in the world.

The Parsis, a religion stemming from Persia, traditionally leave their dead out in the open on “Towers of Silence” for consumption by scavengers – especially vultures. Burying or burning dead bodies, which they believe are polluted, is considered to be harmful for the pure elements of nature. However, Mumbai’s Tower of Silence is located on a hill very close to the waterfront. As the bodies began to disintegrate, vultures would fly off with various parts – sometimes dropping bits of their load in the city drinking water supply. Rather than asking the Parsis to find another more rural location or forcing them to halt altogether, the Indian government built a protective covering over the water so that their religious practices – a minority's religious practices – could continue to practice their faith, unhindered.

We returned from Mumbai for a few more delightful Delhi days. I accompanied my father on a few of his ping-pong diplomatic responsibilities. After Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, he ceremoniously handed a copy to the Muslim caretaker of a Sufi shrine amidst Urdu prayers for peace. The shrine dripped and stank as befit an ancient tomb. Limbs attached to sleeping bodies filled the corners; pushed aside by families squatting on the filthy floor, reaching into bags of food and stuffing each other’s mouths with unwashed fingers. Beggars, their bones nearly puncturing the skin, lined the corridors. However, the complex was surrounded by a little natural spring. The woman, who covered their heads with colorful dupattas, looked like bright splashes of paint against the otherwise-grey background. The children, eyes underlines with kohl, were all giggles and bounces and the men, dressed in white and joyfully pounding Urdu prayers for peace on their drums, were exceptionally beautiful. The contrast itself was exceptionally India.

It wasn’t that I dreaded going back to the Philippines, but I was disappointed that I didn’t feel any excitement at all. My resolve is such that I've never considered quitting. However, the hardest part of my Peace Corps is probably not what you think. It is not the living conditions and the “doing without” that I find difficult. That part is not so easy, but it’s amazing what one can become used to. The hardest part of my Peace Corps has been the reluctance of my site to work with me: a reluctance to get excited about new projects, to implement new projects - even to agree to discuss the implementation of exciting new projects.

I am now in the Philippines, but I am not back at my site. When I landed in Manila last Sunday, I was immediately barraged by texts from my regional manager. “Call me! Don’t go back to site,” they beeped. Confused, I gave her a call. Apparently, my tiny island has decided to take a personal stand against the Swine Flu. The congressman decided that anyone who’d left the country since the epidemic began must undergo a ten-day self-imposed quarantine before setting foot on Guimaras’ shores. I cannot simply pretend as though I was traveling in-country because one of the decision-making committee members was the daughter of my landlord. “Does anyone have a family member or friend who is returning from overseas in the upcoming weeks?” asked the governor. “I know someone,” said my landlord’s daughter, “Our Piskor is overseas right now!” Peace Corps thought it would be awkward for me to disregard their new law... so I'm stuck.

It was difficult not to laugh as my regional manager relayed this story to me. “Why Guimaras?” I asked her. Manila has a health form to fill out. Panay, the island you must fly into if you would like to take a boat to Guimaras, has nothing. But Guimaras has a quarantine that exceeds even the World Health Organization’s recommendation.

“Well,” she replied, “Guimaras is very proactive. They also require you to wear life jackets on the pump boats.”

Life jackets, H1N1... not quite equal issues in my mind.

At John’s site, his co-teacher had another suggestion; “Maybe they’re protecting the mangoes.”

Kamustika to Namaskaar

2009-06-11T01:18:00.004-04:00

Spending a day in transit is like wading through a dream. You don't talk - there's is only cursory conversation to be had. This is the ultimate writer setup. If I were to write a book, I would write it in airports; in a space designated for shifters.

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I am at the Hong Kong airport, stranded in purgatory. Passengers elbow one another in the fight to be first in the customs line and speedily tap dance towards the exits. Passengers with boarding passes for transfer flights find that they have passes into the luxurious restaurants and plush seating arrangements of the upstairs waiting area. I can just glimpse the bright lights and tantalizing, western food from where I stand: on a grimly carpeted transit area far, far below. Although I already know that my stay in purgatory will lead upstairs, arriving for a flight six hours early apparently means your airline desk is not required to be open and you are free to enjoy an extensive stay in no-man's land.

Luckily, even purgatory has a Starbucks. I wait in line and listen as the familiar sounds of ordinary Mandarin drift around me. We are, after all, in the People's Republic; where I spent a year teaching before joining the Peace Corps. Since I understand the gist of what the other customers are saying, I unconsciously begin to think that I can understand everything that everyone is saying. I spin around when a woman behind me says, "I don't know" in Hebrew - but she is obviously Chinese, and I am obviously confused. Someone else says "that's not possible" in Filipino. I look behind me and find, to my surprise, that there is indeed a group of female Pinoy overseas workers standing in a wide-eyed circle. They seem unsteady, scared; like cornered deer before a mad dash for safety. They glance uncertainly at the Chinese masses walking by with face masks hung upon their ears - I assume in response to the swine flu epidemic. At Ninoy Aquino airport in Manila I counted a total of two passengers with face masks: both Korean.

A woman is loudly orienting the Filipinos and I feel inclined to whisper some sort of reassurance into their ears. I stop myself from stepping out of line and approaching the group - a white woman speaking Filipino in a Chinese airport is just going to cause confusion all around.

It is my turn in line and I have mentally prepped myself to order my sandwich and green tea latte in Chinese. At the last second I falter; unsure if I'm about to speak Mandarin, Hebrew or Filipino... or any combination thereof. Instead I ask the barista, in English, if they accept credit cards. He looks at me like I'm some kind of stupid. It's Starbucks, in Hong Kong. Of course they accept credit cards. I sheepishly hand over my dad's card (I'm broke, pesos are about as spendable as Monopoly money here) and nervously sign the receipt in the wrong place. He points out my error nicely, but the people in line behind me are staring in amazement. A second barista asks if I would like my sandwich heated and I respond by instinctively raising my eyebrows at her - the Filipino signal for "yes". She looks a little confused and asks again. I raise my eyebrows again. There is a long moment of awkward silence before I realize my error and bark an embarrassed "yes!" at the poor girl. They hand me my order, and I triumphantly thank them Chinese. Nobody seems impressed. I feel slightly redeemed and mostly deflated. (Thanks for lunch, Dad.)

Who am I and what am I doing here? I am on my way to visit my parents in Delhi for the fourth time. An elderly white man in the booth behind me is speaking fairly good Mandarin into a cell phone, and it makes me feel hollow. A year ago I was convinced that that was what I wanted: a life spent learning Chinese sounded fulfilling and intellectually glamorous. Now I think that I'd like to go back to grad school, but I also find myself increasingly drawn toward Africa (probably thanks in part to my best friend, Elise, who is a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania). I have given myself anxiety attacks by thinking about all the places I have yet to visit... I want badly to go everywhere. I quickly change my mental subject.

I am a cultural creeper; I scuttle on the outskirts and snatch up whatever nuggets of information are tossed to me, clutching them to my chest. My cluttered brain is basic-conversationally capable in three very different languages. I listen to the "hao de"s and "yao bu yao"s swirling around me among the Chinese Starbucks customers and I ache for my former life in Shanghai. Moments earlier, I'd almost forgotten my own identity in attempt to comfort my Filipina countrywomen. I may have not heard a natural Hebrew speaker in years, but it zips through my head at regular intervals regardless of my setting and I feel a sense of longing for the desert I left almost ten years ago. When the Chinese kid behind the front desk tells me "Go that way. Wait for a while," I find him rude. I have become softened by the lolling, sing-song and ever-apologetic Filipino English which is always, and I mean always, followed by a very sympathetic pout.

I have the traveler's itch. There's no doubt about that. But I am loathe to become a lifelong tourist - two weeks here, ten days there is in my mind kind of like that saying "always the bridesmaid, never the bride". However, a wandering soul without a job stops being cute at some point. In any case, I know that my current mode of existence is not sustainable in the long run.

I have no tidy, circular ending to this post, but I will close with a quote that struck me this morning. It is from the book I am currently reading: Mating by Norman Rush. Incidentally, it is about Africa.

"...I did feel slight irritation at their interposing themselves between me and one of the great unalloyed solitary pleasures joys in life - being up at first light and setting out on empty roads to go someplace difficult and significant. I think this is best enjoyed alone but I don't know why I say that."

Tudlo Mindanano (Teach Mindanao)

2009-05-30T21:15:00.009-04:00

Yesterday I returned from the USAID sponsored Tudlo Mindanao English Language Camp (ELC). Many volunteers who participate in this camp say that it is the highlight of their Peace Corps experience. I’m only ten months in, but so far I would have to agree.

The camp, which is literally called "Teach Mindanao" brings elementary education teachers up from the southern region of the Philippines - a "black" area for foreign travelers - to the Visayan island of Cebu. For ten days, over one hundred Filipino teachers are deluged in teaching methodology, computer classes and English reading, writing, public speaking, listening and conversational skills. My classroom covered conversational English class and the seven other volunteers dispersed among the rest.

For facilitators, such as myself, the camp is a fantastic break from Peace Corps reality. We had air-conditioned classrooms with plenty of space to move around and an unlimited supply of materials. We had a captive, prompt audience that was required to attend each session or fail to receive teaching credits for the seminar. Participants had to adhere to an English-only speaking policy from 8am - 6pm; something that even I had trouble following. I had previously failed to realize the extent to which my English has been inundated by walas, indis, kuwawas, gustos - the everyday Ilonggo expressions. Failure to follow the stick-to-English resulted in the taking of team stickers (ah, get it?) which were posted on a whiteboard – in front of everybody – at the afternoon plenary.

Repeated trials have proven that American volunteers work best w

ith younger Filipino teachers, because the younger teachers seem to be the most willing to change their teaching styles and try new things. Although a few fifty-ups squeezed in, the camp invited only teachers below forty. The majority of my classroom was young, enthusiastic and open-minded. Tudlo also targets schools that are already benefiting from the Equalls2 Project (http://equalls.edc.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=118), so the teachers already have a leg up – in terms of resources and trainings – over the average public school.

The camp is about boosting English skills and improving participants’ confidence in speaking, but it is also about cross-cultural communication. An important party of Filipino culture is the avoidance of conflict. This means that if Sheila is angry with Maria for something she said, she will tell a third party, Janine about it. Janine will then know it is her responsibility to let Maria know that she has done something wrong. There will be no confrontation or awkwardness about it. And this is at the most basic level.

Mindanao is the second largest island in the Philippines and more than thirty percent of its inhabitants are Muslim. Despite the terrorism (http://www.cfr.org/publication/9365/), conflict and deadly skirmishes, there is very little cross-cultural communication going on - even among teachers working together.

In my classroom, the most interesting day was debate day. We started small – how to express your opinions and preferences in regards to foods, animals, colors, etc – and quickly moved to slightly heftier topics, such as bisexuality and women’s rights. Ultimately, we found ourselves in a heated group debate about the legalization of divorce and usage of contraceptives (within a marriage).

In Cebu, days of travel away from their homes and families, the discussions were quick, intense, and emotional. After class, the women tended to reassure one another that they were still friends. Men were a minority at the camp in general, but they consistently tended to stay on the outskirts of

our group debates. I was always trying to draw them in, but when I did I noticed that few women would take on the task of arguing with them.

Some teachers, while violently opposed to one topic, adamantly su

pported another. Religion and gender seemed to have some sway, but not nearly as much as I’d expected. A few women desired divorce because their husbands had been beating them and, although they were separated, wanted something more permanent and final. Others were still with their husbands that beat them because they had been married under God in the church and they were following through on that commitment. The Muslim men had multiple wives and everyone agreed that divorce was acceptable in the case of arranged marriages. Many argued for the “calendar method” or “spacing” as a means of birth control. “If we only have discipline within ourselves,” one pious Christian cried… repeatedly. However, she had no answer for the young Christian married to a seafarer who was only able to see her husband a few weeks a year. One man said that he was opposed to divorce because he felt sorry for women. “When they get old,” he cried, “nobody will want them anymore, they get fat! But the man can easily find someone else!” I felt like I needed to step in and defend my gender at that point, but for the most part I remained an impartial facilitator whose only job was to make sure that everyone got a chance to speak and nobody was dominating the conversation.

The most exciting part of the whole experience was watching the participants (who in the beginning of camp were trembling with nerves) turn into individuals bursting with laughter, jokes and requests – in English and to me, an American. Although the camp was exhausting, it was also difficult to c

omplain about. My homeroom gave me a giant Garfield pillow as a “remembrance” (because I’d told them that my favorite color is yellow and because I’d be forced to think of them as I slept every night). They didn’t believe me when I told them that, even without the pillow, they’ll be hard to forget.

I am currently in India visiting my parents until June 14^th. Summer vacation is just ending now, and when I return to site my principal has promised to let me teach the upper level, older students – some of whom I worked with this last semester. This means that I will be focusing on individuals who have a shot at future careers and a university education. I feel guilty for abandoning the lower levels, but working with them was like trying to bail out a sinking ship. Teaching the top 10%, who will undoubtedly end up supporting dozens of relatives for the rest of their lives, feels right – at least for this year.

Tudlo Mindanao both wrung me out and rejuvenated me for the upcoming school year. I feel great – I feel like I have more direction at site and like my footing is slightly less unsteady. There is a reason that Peace Corps requires such a long commitment – because sometimes it just takes a little while to wake up, shake off the drowsy remnants of sleep, and get moving.

Read about Tudlo Mindanao here.

Ang tuko. (The gecko.)

2009-04-27T04:30:00.006-04:00

The smallest thump in the world is the thump of a moth so small that I can smush it with my thumb as it flings itself repeatedly against the page I'm reading. My flashlight provides a thin beam of light against a dark hut squatting beneath a looming, blanketed universe. Flecked stars unroll in sheets across the sky's canvas. I look up through the open nipa slats in my ceiling and just a moment's reflection is enough to send my heart spinning. In dismay, I realize that a fluttery feathery graveyard has begun to accrue on my chest. My human body is hardly much larger or less fragile. I hurriedly flick brush the carcasses onto the floor and unroll my mosquito net, tucking it around me and snuggling into its prism of safety.

I am hardly reading again before an enormous THWAP rings in my right ear. I point the flashlight towards the noise and discover the world's largest beetle cozily settling itself into the mosquito net next to my pillow. Tiny brown icicle formations jut out of its spindly legs and it uses these to better latch onto my netting. In one smooth motion, I swing my heavy book at its bulbous form. Miraculously, it lets go and, unruffled, lands smoothly on the floor-length curtain that suffices as a door to my bedroom. Whatever.

I read a while longer before climbing out of bed to use the bathroom. I climb out of bed and immediately trip over my dozing puppy. His yelp is a sharp rebuke, though his specialty is sleeping wherever I am planning on walking. I flick on the bathroom light to no avail; the darkness perseveres. I flick it a few more times before I realize that (come on, Julie, you've been living here for almost nine months) it's just another brownout. I light a candle, kept handy for such emergency, and the light flickers against a scattering of gecko droppings. I reluctantly pick a few up and, as a do so, a cockroach scrambles down one wall, across the kitchen floor, and back out into the yard. Such are the pros and cons of living as one with the great outdoors: creatures come in, but creatures go out just as nonchalantly.

I debate taking another bucket shower before bed. A brownout means that my fan has quit its whirring Pinoy air-conditioning for a while. As I wait for the bucket to fill, I see that another giant snail has crawled up my drain and is working its slow, wet way up the wall. This is no great feat: my "drain" is a hole in the cement through which water can escape and, apparently, snails can enter. I know that the plastic wallpaper higher up will melt its sticky body, and that it will slowly decay for about twenty-four hours before some invisible creature carries its remains back outdoors. This has happened before. I shrug. Circle of life and whatnot.

I have just returned from a week of Peace Corps conferences in Cebu City. Talking, entertaining, drinking, joking with the staff and all the other volunteers is wonderful and yet a huge mental strain all at once. Having become accustomed to this quiet barrio, having lived according to the rise and fall of the sun for so many months now, makes chatter and interaction and staying awake into the night incredibly tiring.

As I walked into my compound my landlady rushed over to inform me that family members had been staying in my hut the past few nights. That's Filipino culture: If you're not using it, why shouldn't we? Fine, fine, I mumbled, a vision of my bed already at the forefront of my thoughts. They cleaned up the dust too, she added, because they were all sneezing. I wasn't particularly surprised; my nipa roof shrugs off a thick lacquer of dust when nobody is looking.

I opened the door and promptly tripped over my ecstatic, bumbling puppy. As I unpacked, I noticed some black grime on the wall. Trying to rub it off, I recognized it for what it was: mold. I looked up, down, next to, beneath. It had taken advantage of my weeks absence to multiply and expand, to creep into every dark corner and every roof panel that I could never, ever, even with my great American gift of height, possibly reach. No wonder they'd been sneezing. Good thing I'm already taking Sudafed for the swollen red ant bite on my foot.

My mother often calls and reminds me about my younger self. At our home in Bethesda, a ferocious species of cricket plagued our ground floor. All of the bedrooms were upstairs, but being as determined as I was to live up to the very stereotype of a preteen, I insisted on occupying a closet-less office space on the ground floor. I was terrified of these large, bouncy, thwapping creatures and used to pay my younger brother a penny a kill. My mother has asked several times now if I still feel the same way about those "creepy crawly crickets".

This morning, as I packed for another trip to Cebu for Tudlo Mindanao planning, a fat, lazy gecko refused to get out of my backpack. I gave the bag a little shove, but it merely crawled in deeper and belched TUKO at me.

The answer, my dear mother, is no.

Montage

2009-04-03T01:23:00.012-04:00

Graduation was yesterday and so my summer schedule - which lasts until June - has officially begun. I will be attending a Passover Seder in Romblon, a few weeks of Peace Corps meetings in Cebu City and, in May, I will participate in the Tudlo Mindanao program. Peace Corps, due to safety reasons, is no longer active on the island of Mindanao (somewhat ironically, that is where my family and I were posted by the foreign service for two years when I was a toddler). USAID began Tudlo Mindanao as a means of reaching out to teachers and communities in the south. For two weeks, teachers from Mindanao will work and train with Peace Corps volunteers on the island of Cebu. I am lucky enough to be able to participate.

In any case, since I recently posted, I won't feel guilty as I lazily tack up a few photos.

Laura, John and I hiked up Itang-Itang; a mountain near their home in Antique province. I was shocked by how incredibly different the vegetation and natural layout of their site was from my own. Although only three hours away, I suppose they are on an entirely different island...

We went to the Paraw Regatta with a Filipino family. It is the biggest sailing event in the Philippines (whatever that means) and it was right in my backyard! The contestants sail from Iloilo (where this photo was taken) to some point on Guimaras (my island) and back. Motorboat ambulances were released for contestants that tipped over and couldn't swim.

My puppy, Simba, seems to grow on a daily basis. He only eats the leftover food from my host families' meals. That is; fish and rice. As a result, he usually smells like milkfish but he looks pretty healthy. Take that Iams. He still cries every time I leave the house. "Ah, Simba, better start applying for your VISA!" jokes my host mother.

I moved into a new nipa hut. It is smaller but on a much larger compound (guarded by three very angry mutts and a wannabe vicious Simba tagging along). The main house is only ten feet away and is inhabited by around ten or eleven people - depending on so many things I won't even go into right now. Madonna and child clay figurines dwell inside the stone cave you see on the right. They were free with the hut. And the country.

John came to my site for a visit. This is on the port in Iloilo, before I take one of those boats you see behind me (glorified jeepneys, really) back to my island. You can see Guimaras in the background.

Tapos na. This is the end. To Romblon I go...

Maytiriring ka. (You are crazy like a spinning fan.)

2009-03-31T23:48:00.005-04:00

"Scuse, are you Piskor?" called out a fellow on a bench as I passed by. He was average build; small and typically Filipino with dark shades and jeans. I'd noticed him a few moments before; he'd been staring at me quizzically in the shade as he waited for a trisikad. "Hmph," I thought to myself, even as I composed my friendly American face and paused for a chat.

I had been in a bad mood all morning. As the daughter of a public school special education teacher, I was no stranger to petty teacher-gossip in school communities. However, after bouncing around for a week and worrying that my reputation was shot and my future work at site jeopardized only to find out that the entire melodrama had been brewed, stirred and dished directly from the mind of my favorite counterpart (a realization that at once overwhelmed me with relief; I wasn't going to have to transfer sites after all, and disappointment; there goes one of the few relationships I would have considered a friendship), I was in no mood for small talk. I wanted a cold bucket bath and some quiet reading time. Then again, I've been reminding myself lately that a part of my volunteer mission here is to establish good relations between my country and my host country at the most basic ground level. As do-gooder and cheesy as I realize that sounds, it is a part of Peace Corps mentality that I believe is worthwhile and, oftentimes, the most successful part of an individual's service. I paused the cranky, griping whirlwind in my head, stepped into the shade and introduced myself.

Okay, I didn't introduce myself. I stood in the sun and hoped that all he wanted from me was to determine who I was. No such luck.

"Ah, that is good. I know a Piskor," He scratched his head for a second before continuing, "Barbara Alta from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Do you know her?"

"No, I'm sorry." I replied. I've been in the "Piskor" long enough to know what questions to ask. "When was she here?"

"1984!" He declared proudly, "I have a picture!"

"Oh, that's wonderful!" I said. He stared at me expectantly. I caught on. "Do you have it with you?" I asked. He nodded. "May I see it?"

He whipped out his wallet and handed me a thumbed-over, water stained photograph of a garden. I stepped into the shade. In the picture, a thirtyish white woman is eating dinner behind a rock in the background. She is smiling at the camera in a surprised sort of way. I realized that I was smiling at him in a surprised sort of way. He waited for my reaction.

"She is very pretty." I said. Obviously pleased, he smiled shyly in agreement. I know he probably hasn't spoken with this volunteer since she left the Philippines, but the amount of times that I've been through this type of situation is deeply gratifying. As we continued with the more standard and formal introductory small talk - I happen to stay on his wife's cousin's compound (no surprise on an island of interconnected, massive families) which, in Pinoy culture, directly connected us in an indirect way and placed the two of us within a circle of trust and friendship - I began daydreaming about a Piskor volunteer of the future meeting one of my grown-up students.

The year is 2025. They meet in the main town on Guimaras, Alibhon. It is only five kilometers from my barrio and a foreigner is hard to miss. A Filipina accosts the Piskor as they pass by and says, "Ah, a Piskor was my teacher in 2009. Here is a keepsake." I see one of my former first year girls taking out a picture she took of me in March, 2009 (okay, yesterday) in which I am sticking out my tongue and making a face. The Piskor with whom she is speaking chuckles in a surprised sort of way.

And I vow to take more attractive pictures.

Diin ka? (Where are you?)

2009-03-03T01:38:00.009-05:00

"You can tell who has enemies by the size of their fence," my host mother informed me. "As you can see, we have no locks on our doors. But look you have seen the protection around ****'s place; it's because they are in politics."

The three months mandatory host family stay seemed to wash over me like a wave. I feel so waterlogged that to look at me wandering around in my teacher's uniform, one might think I've been here forever... And yet, as I carried my things across the street to a nipa hut built by a former Peace Corps volunteer I found myself staring blankly at a calendar, trying to figure out where the time had gone. I've been here for over six months.

To be honest, I wasn't especially happy at site this last month. There was a nice interruption when a friend from teaching in China came to visit for ten days, but otherwise I found myself feeling very much like a girl stranded on a random island. As I've mentioned before, my community is largely composed of women and children. Young people that have managed to remain single by my age are usually in Iloilo - the nearest city - trying to find work and the men are almost entirely seafarers or OFWs (overseas foreign workers). And yet, though my interactions are largely with women above the age of thirty, I often feel like the oldest person in my village. Day to day life can be isolating in a way that has nothing to do with my site's rural location.

It's funny how life goes. I know it's cliche, but someone knew what they were taking about when they said that things get worse before they get better. These last ten days have been extremely, well, difficult. I'll try to explain how time - time that has been sifting through my fingers all along - suddenly seemed to cram, squish, fold unto itself in order to make the last ten days as long as possible.

I'd only been sleeping in my nipa hut for three nights when my puppy woke me up, growling. I checked my cell phone and it was around midnight. I reached down to soothe him when I heard what had probably woken him up - footsteps circling the hut; someone scratching on the walls. He barked and I flipped the lights on and off. I assumed a burglar, but the person wasn't trying to get inside. I was reluctant to leave the lights on because, while whoever it was would be able to see in perfectly, there was nothing I could do to make them visible. I wished I was in politics and had a fence. My hut is on a wide open property that random villagers walk through by day searching for coconut tree branches to use as kindling. Of course, nobody is out at night - period. There are no streetlights and Filipinos - though we volunteers scoff - are afraid of the roaming night spirits.

I lay awake for hours and listened to the person walk around... they didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere nor did they seem to care that I was awake. They never tried to actually enter the hut. I was terrified, but mostly because I had no idea what to do. Peace Corps - all the way in Manila - couldn't help me, and the fiercest people I know are Filipina mothers. I put the puppy in my bed and shut my eyes tightly.

The next morning I tried to tell my host mother (now landlord) about what I'd heard. She convinced me that it had probably been some kind of animal. Too tired to argue, I let it go. I should have known better - I've been in-country for almost half a year and no animals have bothered me with their night roaming yet. That night, again around midnight, the person returned and did exactly the same thing. My host mother considered believing me. It was a Thursday and John, who had been planning on visiting the next day, decided to come a night early. Again, around midnight, he woke me up because he'd heard the footsteps. We both lay terrified beneath the mosquito net, whispering about what we should do. My puppy growled. It's amazing how much more intense everything feels in the pitch black of night. Grabbing the bamboo pole barricading the doors to the hut from the inside, he walked out onto the porch and started shouting in his deepest voice. "Who's there," he yelled, "We can hear you! Diin ka?" Where are you.

As he walked around the house banging the bamboo stick on the walls, I sat on the couch; terrified and on the verge of tears. He heard the intruder run off down the road and came back inside. We thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't; he was back about two hours later. We called my landlord, she brought over a machete and looked around the property for him - to no avail. The land sprawls in all directions; studded by tall coconut trees and thick banana trees, and with only the meekest of wire fences to mark its boundaries.

Of course, by the next day the entire barangay knew that the kana (American girl) had a ling ling (peeping tom). People approached me left and right inquiring politely as to how I'd slept. Quite a few suggested that perhaps an aswang was to blame for my nighttime disturbances, but nobody could figure out why a Filipino ghost would bother a foreigner. My principal called a meeting of her "trusted advisers" - the barangay captain, a few teachers, the school security guard, John and me. It was decided that either a very tall barbed wire fence would have to be built by the students and faculty in order to protect me in my hut, or I was going to have to move. My new home was already picked out for me - the richest family in the barrio offered to build me a new nipa hut on their compound (behind a very high fence guarded by several big, biting dogs... they're in politics). I agreed to move.

John and I tried to stay in the nipa hut one last night. The tanod - community watchers - planned to stake out the property and try to catch the ling ling. Of course, they weren't coming until midnight and the intruder had the audacity to come at 10.30pm. Nobody got any sleep. We spent the next few nights hiding out at a hotel in Iloilo.

My new nipa hut isn't quite finished, but my "new family" has me staying in a spare bedroom until it's ready to be lived in. I've loved my past host families, but it's admittedly a relief to be living with people that aren't forced to count every peso and halfheartedly begrudge you every bite of food you eat. I'd been there all of one day when one of the daughters insisted I get on the back of her motorcycle and allow her to show me the nearby river. It was fabulous - as a solo foreigner without a map (no detailed map of Guimaras exists... very few paved roads exist) and no real means of transportation, it's difficult to explore alone. All of the sudden a whole world of possibilities seemed to be opening up. They invited me to their beach hut that weekend and touted me around on their pump boat, allowing me my first in-depth look at Guimaras' coastline.

At the same time, I've become closer with one of my quieter co-teachers. I'd been spending the majority of my time with another woman, but I've found myself drawn to this other co-teacher more and more as of late. She was one of the only ones to take me seriously about the ling ling right from the beginning. She never suggested that aswang were the possible culprits of my sleeplessness and she pampered me with hot chocolate (it's nearly summer, but never mind it was lovely) and pudding bread. Most importantly, she and her best friend (another teacher) really and truly listened to me voice my anxieties. My principal blubbered all over me and wailed about the lack of sleep her "adopted daughter" was getting, Peace Corps fumbled for the best solution, my old host family was reluctant to believe me at all... I found myself in her classroom more and more. And I realized something. You really have to befriend the right people in a community to integrate into that community. All of the sudden I am being invited to birthday parties, on trips, into people's homes...

My former host family wasn't exactly disliked, but they did largely remove themselves from the community. My host mother worked for Peace Corps for over ten years and her neighbors generally regard her as "outside" the barrio. She tried to tell Peace Corps that when they assigned me to live with her, but they didn't have time to find me another home. She is busy with her store and had no time, or desire to be honest, to show me around in any capacity. She never left the house (the store is in front) and so never had anywhere to invite me to. She has few friends and so had no one to introduce me to.

Similarly, the co-teacher I'd found myself so drawn to in the beginning had upset a number of community members with her outspokenness. She is a city girl (from Iloilo) and doesn't let anyone forget it. While this particular characteristic made her particularly easy for me to connect with, it did nothing to increase my barrio popularity.

Now that I live with the movers and shakers, so to speak, and in a safe, protected area, I'm feeling much better. Now that I'm friends with a community member that has a large family and numerous friends, I feel like my presence outside the classroom is both desired and welcomed. My Peace Corps life has taken a significant turn for the better. As I sat at a birthday party Sunday night eating a mango float (cooked specially for me, everyone in the community knows it's my favorite Filipino food, ha) and attempting to digest the mango cheese ice cream (gross) I found myself texting, "I love my site!"

Things always get worse before they get better. How else could you recognize the better?

In retrospect, I wonder why I didn't see this sort of ling ling situation coming. A youngish kana living in a rural region, in an unprotected home, alone. Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of my life, even to non-stalkers, must be that I was living utterly alone. Living alone, for anyone, is unacceptable in Filipino culture. Even the oldest members of society have grandchildren sleeping in their beds, parents sleep with children; a single mattress accommodates three or four people on a regular basis. Poverty is obviously the biggest reason behind this, but there is an entire culture built around it to the point that "helpers" are paid to sleep on bedroom floors. They are meant to sleep lightly and, in a way, keep watch for their employers in the bed. I'm not sure what they're really supposed to do - they're usually young girls, and I haven't figured out how a family with two young women and two children is any safer than a single woman living alone, but there are some things, I suppose, that I will never quite understand.

Whoever this person was, I made myself an easy target. Quite a few community members voiced their concern about me moving into that nipa hut - most outspokenly, my bearish principal. I misinterpreted them and discounted their opinion, thinking that they were fussing about the "alone" aspect - if I'd listened more closely, I would have heard them on a deeper level of meaning. They were worried about the place. They knew my set-up was not, well, safe.

-- To be honest, can you blame me? They say the same things about my running in the mornings... and about my afternoon bike riding... and about walking across the street... oh, just go read back a few blogs; you'll see what I mean. --

Now that I'm having a hut built on a compound, technically speaking I am still living alone. I have managed to retain that necessary American independence. However, the community chirpers can't seem to help repeatedly, incessantly assuring me of how very safe I will be now. And I believe them.

In any case, next time I will remind myself to take all those suffocatingly nosy women asking me, "Alone?! Are you not afraid?" more seriously. After all, it's their culture, they know it better than anyone, and, even when the waterlogged parts of me feel otherwise, I'm the permanent stranger in its midst.

Pwede ko kapangluyag simo? (Can I court you?)

2009-01-29T02:23:00.005-05:00

An unexpected topic turned up in third year English class last week: the Holocaust. We were doing a lesson on gathering information from titles and subtitles and, somehow, the brilliant Department of Education thought that the title "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl" would be make a supreme focal point. I suppose it would have if they later on offered a few diary entries or any historical explanation. No chance. What they did have was a brief blurb of her family history and a few quotes from the diary portraying her admirable optimism. The lesson became "here's a lesson on life, look how optimistic this girl was" - would be great if the class had ever heard the terms "concentration camp", "Holocaust" or "Nazi" before. They hadn't. Not even in Ilonggo. The terms probably don't exist in Ilonggo, now that I think about it.

Thanks to my ever-inquisitive co-teacher (a Comparative Religions major that also had never been taught any of this, or anything about Jews for that matter) our little "Titles" lesson turned into three days of WWII historical summation. The students were shocked by most of it; an appropriate reaction to learning that the human imagination is cruel enough to create gas chambers. They have learned about WWII, of course, but only in terms of the Japanese and Americans duking it out all over their country.

As an American and as a Jew myself, it was really interesting to watch people discover this particular world history for the first time. The Holocaust is something that I suppose I've always known; it's something that everyone I've ever known has also known about. I found myself appalled and a little emotional as I described the yellow star Jews were forced to wear, the ghetto, the camps, the medical experiments...

The discussion wound itself around to the history of Israel. Most of my students were at least somewhat aware of the conflict taking place between the Palestinians and Israelis, although their background information was non-existent. As I explained that many Jews went to America after the war and many others went to Israel, a few of the smarter girls asked me if I was Jewish. An honest question deserves and honest answer, so I told them the truth.

I'd been wary until this point because of the number of essays turned in with assumptions about the universality of Christianity and, more to the point, belief in "Our lord and saviour Jesus Christ." I didn't want them to know that I'm different before they trust me as a good teacher (and more importantly, before their parents trust me as a provider of knowledge to their children). I figured the fact that I don't share one of their most fundamental beliefs would probably cause a few ripples.

After the first class, my co-teacher had quite a few questions for me. I always enjoy her curiosity, so we chatted for about half an hour. She was really interested in the idea of Israel and we talked about how the Jews have been a popular target of persecution since, well, ever. She told me that if she ever could leave the Philippines the first place that she would visit is Jerusalem. "On Guimaras, you are the only Jew!" she realized suddenly, and we both laughed. She worried a little as we talked about the recent targeting of Jews in Mumbai, but I mentioned that they also targeted Westerners. "Screwed on both accounts," I said. She responded with a nervous chuckle.

Another third year class that I don't usually teach requested that I attend that afternoon. I did, and my co-teacher had me provide an even briefer synopsis of WWII. As we touched upon Israel, I thought, "eh, whatever" and "outed" myself as Jew. Almost just as I said it, my phone rang. It was a call from America and I excused myself for a moment. As I walked by the classroom for a little privacy further down the hall, I overheard my co-teacher telling the class, "Please don't tell anyone that she's Jewish!" I paused and listened in more closely. "There are always people out looking for Jews, and if you tell them they might come after her!" Thinking that she was joking, I called into the class, "Yeah, if you see Hitler don't tell him where I am, okay?" But she wasn't having it. "No, no!" she insisted, "Secret lang! Don't tell anyone, then anyone who comes to the island will know where to find our Jew!"

Although the students were bewildered and I was trying to withhold laughter, overall I think it was kind of sweet.

Now we're showing Schindler's List during lunch for the next three school days. Attendance was optional, but a huge number of students showed up. Even more impressively, most of them were on time! (Filipinos are about an hour later than they say they will be, on average.) I had to pause and explain quite a bit, but they were quiet and extremely attentive. I'm optimistic.

In other news: I am performing a hip hop and cha cha dance with a group of other teachers tonight for Foundation Day (whatever that means). As one teacher put it, "Julie, you will be the feature presentation!" Hooray! Did you hear the dripping sarcasm?

Also, my principal sent over a puppy. I'd mentioned, months ago, that I was planning on getting one when I moved into my nipa hut. Well, she remembered and sent a woman to bring it to me. His tail is partially burnt off and he was covered in fleas. Once I got over the momentary shock of being spontaneously handed a dog to keep, I took him out back and gave him a thorough washing (luckily my host family had flea soap I'd convinced them to buy for their dog). It also turns out, luckily, that hydrocortisone works on people and animals. He's pretty happy and very cute. My host sister named him Simba.

Finally, I'm moving into my nipa hut this weekend. It's only across the street, so physically it's not really a big move - mentally, it's huge. I'm not sure if it's the fact that my roof is a tarp or that after putting up with more than five months of Filipino familial chikachika I've (gasp) actually grown to like it, but I'm breathing deeply and getting it done either way. My friend Lauren is stopping by for a visit on her way back to the States from Shanghai, so she'll be there for my initial adjustment at least. Anyway, I can't wait to see her!

My first HIV/AIDS seminar will be on Tuesday. Lauren's going to help, although she doesn't know it yet. It's going to be part of three-day, women-only workshop at the local barangay (community? township?) hall. Wish me luck.

And now, I'm off to get ready for the dance. I know you all wish you could see this.

Sley! ("Shoo" for a dog.)

2009-01-26T01:56:00.002-05:00

A story from quite a while ago...

It was the first month at site and Tom and I had just gone to Iloilo to purchase bicycles. We had to go all the way to Iloilo - a city on another island - to buy the bikes and we had to take them on a small pumpboat from that island to Jordan, our port city. We'd planned on riding them home, but forgot that bikes here must be constructed according to the price range that you order - a process that takes a few hours - and by the time we were wobbling to the port in Iloilo the sun was already setting. As we looked out on our island from the pumpboat, Tom said, "Guimaras is partying tonight!" A few port lights were all that stood out in the utter darkness of the island night. We were forced to ride the jeepney - strapping down the bikes on the roof (alongside dozens of other passengers).

The jeepney ride was only a minor fiasco compared to my next attempt: getting home from the nearest town to my site. At this point it was already around 8.30pm, but it felt more like 3am. There are no jeepneys to my barrio; only trycicads. The trikes stop running at around 7pm, after which you're stuck with either a motorcyle taxi or a lengthy walk on a winding road. I couldn't even begin to imagine how to fit my bike on a motorcycle (and Peace Corps doesn't allow us to ride them, of course, anyway... ahem ahem), so I gritted my teeth and started biking home. That was what it was for anyway, right?

Yes, but it was dark. And pitch black - it's amazing how dark an island (without much electricity in which everyone goes to bed early, anyway) can become. I almost ran off the road and into the bush on the side several times. Finally, after about a kilometer, a passing motorcycle spotted me and, taking pity on me, drove alongside - headlights on - until I'd made it safely home. It was too dark to see who my rescuer was, but I shouted an enthusiastic "Salamat gid!" as they drove off.

Unfortunately, it was the principal's daughter on the motorcycle. Unfortunately she'd told on me (biking alone AND in the dark, gasp! Okay, perhaps she was right about the dark...) to her mother and the next day I had to face a serious "talking to" at school. I hung my head shamefully and apologized profusely. In the end, I know I was lucky...

Saturday morning I woke up, jubilant about the new bike that promised, in my mind, untold freedom. As John pointed out at the time, getting a bike here is akin to buying a car in America. Places are too far to walk and often inaccessible by other modes of transportation - a fact that, without a bike, leaves you stuck at site. Tom was coming over in the afternoon, but I was too excited to wait. I decided I'd go find the beach (which my host mother assured me was only a quick ride down a nearby road) and return to pick up Tom at around 1pm.

I started down the road and saw a neighbor biking along it slowly, carefully. This neighbor is one of about ten boys around my age (the girls are mostly married off by now) in the barrio. I met him as he carried his father, one of several neighborhood alcoholics, home was early morning. Waving hello, I sped past him; enthusiastically showing off (It was all I could do to keep myself from raising my arms and shouting, "No hands!"). After another ten seconds I saw a big hill ahead. In America, when my brother and I rode around our hilly Bethesda neighborhood, we always scooted down the first hill as fast as possible in order to ride up the next hill with the least amount of effort. Sigh. I forgot that THOSE roads had been paved.

Yes; I fell. On my face. Without an ounce of grace. And of course, my neighbor was off his bike and helping me up in what felt like no time at all, as if he anticipated my crash. He probably did.

He asked me if I was okay, and as I stood up again I saw that my elbows, knees and the palms of my hands were all bleeding profusely. I held them out helplessly, trying not to cry (I didn't!). He whipped around and ripped some leaves off a nearby bush. He scrunched them up in his hands and began mopping up the blood around my scrapes; I was too surprised to react. "Medicinal..." was all he said.

To make a long story short, never listen to a Filipino's directions. They're terrible. That road, I would soon find out, was one of the least-paved roads on the island. The beach was only about five miles away, but the path was straight up and down. My neighbor accompanied me there - after repeatedly trying to dissuade me from going further down that road - I think I'd made him nervous about my skills on a bicycle. I should have listened. In any case, although we ended up walking a good amount of the way, we had a pleasant morning together. He taught me some Ilonggo and we ignored people shouting "Good for you, the Americana probably has millions!" along the way.

I asked my host mother about the medicinal plants; turns out that the ones he'd grabbed are well-known for their healing agents... but, as it also turns out, my principal has a lot of family in the barrio...

Guess who her beloved, single nephew is. Sigh.

Ginhulog niya ang spageti. (She dropped the spaghetti... on purpose.)

2009-01-20T02:31:00.006-05:00

Lubi is coconut

Mani is peanut

Ang paghigugma sang libat

Paagi sa pasiplat.

(The love of a cross-eyed

Is gained by a flirt)

A few days ago my batch passed the five-month mark. Although the inital training period felt like a lifetime in of itself, my time at site seems to slip steadily through my fingers...

To tell the truth, I've been feeling very frustrated recently. Part of the reason behind this is that I just don't love teaching (to put it mildly). Part of the reason is that the Filipino Department of Education is weighed down in unbelievable bullsh- (nobody is going to argue with that). Part of the reason is that my site is extremely rural, and I'm having trouble finding people to connect with. The island is extremely insular, and if another student writes "without Jesus I am nothing" accompanied by "I feel sorry for those who don't love Jesus because they can never have happiness in their lives" in fifty different ways stretched over three paragraphs and calls it an essay I'm going to scream.

There was also the essay I had to correct about how listening to rock music "awakens your sexuality and gives an out-of-body experience" and is therefore satanic. I interviewed this girl, who sprinkled quotes from her local pastor throughout the paper. Apparently, according to his research, "87% of premarital sex is the direct result of having listened to rock music." Further, if you play certain rock music backwards in a process known as "backward masking" you can hear satanic messages. My student was shocked to hear for herself last Saturday night. How does one argue with any of this? Where to even begin? I started with the reliability of sources...

Needless to say, I haven't enlightened them as to my own religion just yet. A few co-teachers know, but they agreed that perhaps that was a discussion for a different day.

A friend reminded me that it's a normal experience for Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide to feel a little down in the dumps at this point in service. When I asked him, "Says who?" he replied that he'd actually read all those pamphlets and manuals they'd given us at the beginning. Oops.

I think what I've been more frustrated about is that, after attending an HIV/AIDS conference in Manila last week, I don't feel like I'll be able to get many secondary projects up and running. First of all, although HIV/AIDS is increasing exponentially in the Philippines, it is not seen as an issue on Guimaras because, as I've been told several times now, "there have only been two cases". For a tiny island reached only by boat that contains, really, nothing, (have I mentioned that Guimaras is in the Book of World Records for having the smallest plaza? Yes, I've seen it with my own eyes... there is a big sign in the middle of it that proclaims, "SMALL PLAZA") I'd say two cases is a lot. Especially since they've both been in the last year. Especially since one of the cases was a seafarer's wife and the second (reported) case was not her husband (yeah, so there are most likely at least three cases on the island). Especially since absolutely no HIV/AIDS education exists. In December, the Department of Health reported an 84% increase in the number of cases since it began monitoring in 1984.

The overwhelming influence of the Church, however, means that in educating people about HIV/AIDS, we must use the "A-B" approach. That is the "Absitinence, Be Faithful" approach. In most countries there is a "C" tagged on there but a Christian nation dares not broach the subject of "condom-use". Like the recent outbreak of gonorrhea in my community; some things are just not talked about. Sigh. I swear, one more essay about the dangers of adolescence and how girls get pregnant because they don't listen to their parents and women turn to prostitution because they are "lazy"...

The problem with HIV/AIDS education is actually not only in terms of logistics. It shares a lot of the same frustrations I've been having in trying to find people to connect with. There are just no young people around. There are high schoolers and there are their parents, and that's it. The young people who managed to do well enough for college are far away at school. The others are married with a few kids of their own, already. This is not a motivated community - the day is filled with school, cooking meals and making pesos stretch as far as possible. My suggestion to create a club of seafarer's wives for once-monthly discussions about common issues (ahem, HIV/AIDS, anyone?) was met with a snort (or the Filipino snort, which is saying, "yes, yes" and nodding fervently so as not to affend the idealistic young foreigner all the while meaning "no, no, none of us want to do that at all").

In any case, the trolls have been removed and my nipa hut is nearly ready for me. I can see through the floors, the roof is a tarp, but it's my space for me and only me. I also have managed to convince another teacher to let me into her classes. I walked into the fourth year classroom (about sixteen or seventeen years old) for the first time this morning and the only question they had for me was, "Ma'am, are you still single?" accompanied by titters. Ah, never gets old.

I'll leave you all with this quote from another student essay:

"Emos have long bangs for hiding their tears because they don't want other people to see them cry..."

2009

2009-01-02T00:42:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year from Boracay (the Filipino answer to Cancun); one of the most popular tourist meccas, and located only two islands over from my own permanent site. A group of the PCVs have gathered here to celebrate and party together for the week. It's been rainy and windy (another volunteer's breakfast burrito was tossed off his plate) nearly the entire time, but the weather hasn't affected the pleasure we've taken in eating western food, using flushing toilets equipped with TP, drinking something other than San Mig, speaking English and, perhaps most of all, blending in with the hordes of other foreigners vacationing here. There has also been at least one celebrity sighting (Anne Curtis from Dyosa) and we've heard a rumor that some of the hotels have hot water for showers - though our facility is Peace-Corps-appropriately lacking (half of us are on the floor). The brewing storm has cancelled all boats for the day. I'm hoping it lasts through tomorrow so I have an excuse to stay on a little longer...

As I write, I'm also climbing out of my little bubble and catching up on the world news. Terrible. Reading about the Israeli offensive made my stomach turn a little - it might have been the New York Times photo of a dead child being carried out of the rubble. Then again, one of the bombs successfully hit a senior Hamas official; a man influential in advocating increased suicide attacks against Israel and who had sent his own son in one such mission against Jewish settlers. Sigh.

Nobody expects optimism out of newspapers, but there is something jolting about having gone days without hearing anything at all only to read about it all at once.

My grandmother mentioned the sad state of affairs in an e-mail:

At home in the USA times are very stressful, and in Illinois we are becoming the laughing stock of the country because of our governor's actions... So many places in the world where people are suffering - Obama will certainly have his hands full.

And indeed, I would have to agree that our President-elect offers a blip of optimism in a fairly bleak landscape. For Hannukah, Ryan sent me t-shirt with Obama's face emblazoned across the front. (He jokingly offered to send more for the other volunteers, saying we could start a small army out here.) I wore it as I walked along the beach yesterday. A Filipino saw it and said, "Nice Obama shirt, ma'am. Rock on!" I thought to myself, ah, there is hope. An hour later, a guy practically ran out of a restaurant, intercepting me as I walked by with the cry, "Hey, great shirt! Are you American?" before a fairly admirable pick-up attempt.

When I studied abroad in London a few years ago, guys would use my nationality as a chance to rant against our president and our stupidity as a people in electing him - not once, but twice. My fervent agreement did nothing to dissuade the onslaught of words.

And so - having given this guy a fake name, e-mail address and phone number - I wandered home. This is what I was thinking: When an American president is well enough liked to be used as a pick-up line; that, my friends, is hope.

Happy 2009.

Nasinda Sya. (She was cursed by nature.)

2008-12-28T04:26:00.006-05:00

“Pesos! Pesos!” they yell as they shake their fists at the screen. Years ago, Filipino movie theaters would stop films mid-reel and demand more money from viewers before showing the conclusion. At the Gange Family Reunion 2008, as the slideshow of deceased relatives shudders to a halt, all eighty-some living members echo the same frustration. What has been interrupted for them, however, is a walk down memory lane.

Early on in our Peace Corps service, another volunteer’s host family held a full-blown birthday party for a long-deceased host father. Admittedly, we all had a good chuckle over this. Treating the dead as though they walk among us is generally considered to be an outmoded manner of thinking in our culture. Later on we would be surprised to find that on All Saint’s Day, Filipino families throw parties complete with food, mah jong and videoke atop relative’s graves. “You will come with us to the graveyard tomorrow,” one host mother told her volunteer, “I want to introduce you to my husband.”

Dinner tonight was held at the local Catholic Church: the only space in town big enough to host the large gathering. As I sat eating, the cousins behind me were mashing rice together with their hands and feeding it to a younger relative. A young boy was pushing wheelchair-bound uncle outside to wash the mud off of his feet. Boys were throwing handheld fireworks outside and a slew of younger children ran zigging and zagging underfoot. Eight people were standing on blue and red pieces of tarp, trying to figure out my host mom’s favorite team-building exercise (they failed; she finally told them how to do it after half an hour).

Earlier that day they’d divided into teams for the various games, and whispers of their group cheers still echoed in the aisles and under the pews. Boom tanan tanan, boom tanan tanan. As at family reunions everywhere, there were glares, giggles, grimaces and gossip galore. The chaos stopped abruptly as the lights dimmed. Everyone leaned forward in their seats; excited to see the faces of their past. As various photographs appeared on-screen, family members let loose squawks of glee often accompanied by an exclamation of “My grandmother!” or “My aunt!”.

I was entertaining myself by keeping a mental tally of details that I picked out in the photographs. Look; a jeepney. Look; rice. Look; a dog with fleas. I was somewhere around “Look; a guy with his white tank top hiked up over his potbelly.” when the young girl sitting in front of me turned around and asked, “Don’t you miss your relatives?” Out of nowhere, I felt a pang of homesickness in my stomach.

I’ve been asked this question before, of course, but it’s never been followed by that pang. I do miss my family, but I’m making my own way in the world – as any good American must. My family is so extremely scattered, in any case, that to miss them as a whole would touch on at least three continents. Most of the time I am happy to be happily alone. But every once in a while, I think that a community of relatives - a lifelong, generation-spanning support system - isn't such a bad idea. I know that if I have to be put in a grave someday, I hope that my grandchildren party in a tent all night with me.

As I leave to walk to the fifty yards to my house, I hear someone call out to me, “Are you not afraid?” I absentmindedly assure them that, no no, I’ll be fine walking home alone. It is the pervasive question asked of Peace Corps Volunteers who, in that isolating American way, tend to go off by themselves. At first we would respond, “No, but should I be?” We wondered if there were villains around that nobody had yet warned us about. “No,” they would admit, and off we would go. At some point it finally dawned on us: what they are afraid of is not alive. The various creatures of the night, the ghosts of our ancestors and we, the living, all inhabit one, very complex world. To live that way seems terribly frightening and deeply comforting all at once.

The answer no, I am not afraid. But maybe I wish that I was.

----------------------------------------------------------------

On another note, I would like to say this: You think you live somewhere rural, and then your host family takes you to visit the farm. When they said "farm" you envisioned livestock and a few scattered crops, perhaps. It turns out that there are a few recently planted coconut trees; mere sprigs at the moment, and that is it. Big whoop; you can't spit on this island without hitting a coconut. As you look around at the absolute nothingness in every direction, you say, "Well, compared to this our cows seem positively cosmopolitan."

In reference to my title: One of my host family's relations was found to have a large mass in her brain. I was very sad to hear it. What was interesting, however, is that her family went immediately to the witch doctor for an explanation. Nasinda sya; she was cursed by nature. I inquired further and, it turns out, there are all kinds of ways to fall under this curse. If you see a falling star, for example, you have been cursed. The witch doctor was pretty sure, anyway; it was either that or because she'd been sitting too close to the television.

And finally: My nipa hut has termites and I have been informed that I may need to look elsewhere for housing. I wondered why the termites couldn't simply be terminated. My host mother giggled a little and then said that she'd been having trouble finding someone to remove them. Filipinos believe that trolls live beneath termite nests and if you destroy the nest, you destroy their home. Guess what happens next. Yes, of course. You're cursed.

Palihog dasiga pagdrive. (Please drive faster.)

2008-12-11T04:09:00.004-05:00

I don't have any earth-shattering news. Suffice to say that since a near-perfect Thanksgiving reunion two weekends ago with the majority of the Bacolod volunteers, I have fallen into a classroom routine that I really enjoy. In particular, one of my first year classes had ceased all pretenses of shyness and turned themselves into my thirteen-man shadow. One steals my phone every day and hides it somewhere clever in the room (I rely heavily on text message alerts to find it again) another makes it his personal duty to lock the classroom door in the afternoon so that I will hang out a little bit longer (I actually do have to be sneaky about getting past him) and this afternoon two of the girls followed me to the internet cafe (okay, not so thrilling, but impressive considering they had to hop on another trike and track me through a market). I suppose it sounds (and is) a little intense, but it makes me happy to be able to relax and laugh with other people - even if they are only thirteen years old.

This week, we've been learning how to write letters. The whole concept is new to them and some are grasping it more quickly than others. We began by listening to Ma'am Julie (uhm, me) tell the story of Hansel and Gretel, after which each student wrote a letter to one of the characters.

Dear Witch,
My name is Ariel G Tahum. Why do you eat the children. How can you fly. You can teach me to fly. How many children you eat. You can give me many candies but you can not eat me Because i am a powerfull boy.
Your friend,
Ariel G. Tahum

Dear Gretel,
My name is Dan John, I am the boy who very want to meet you because you so strong and helpful. I heard about you. You are the sister of Hansel the boy who are in the cage. What did you do to the witch? You know, I'm so afriad to a died people. One more questions. Do you love your stepmother. You know Im so many questions for you but I know that you can't answer it because you only farytal.
From,
Dan John Faulve

After storybook characters, I figured they were ready for the big time: American pen-pals. I contacted a friend that is teaching 9-11 year olds in Massachusetts and arranged a correspondence. Tomorrow I am sending her a stack of sixty-some letters. I'm very interested to see what the American students think of my (frequently misty-eyed and daydreaming about their future American sweethearts) island children and the trinkets they included in their end of the correspondence (shells, photos, bracelets and more). My solo twenty year-old student found this all very embarassing, but he was a good sport and participated regardless. I think this was my favorite:

Dear Friend,
Before of all I would like to greet you a plesant day. Hi! My name is John John Ambo and I am 13 years old. I live in Guimaras, a small but tereble country. My hobbies is playing and watching TV. I am small cute and a lovely boy and my birthday is on October 30, 1995. My faborite food is fride chicken and batchoy. I like a girl that has a beautiful smile killer eyes and a long hair we are six in our family I am the only boy and my father also. My motto in life is try and try until you die Because me I'll try everything to approach my goal in life.
What is your name? Where are you studying? What is your appearance, your favorite food, your motto in life. What is your dislike/likes How many are you in your family? What is your Hobbies I hope that you will reply my letters and I want you to know that you are the first person that I gave a letter. And once again I'm John John the cute boy of Guimaras.
Your,
Penpal

I'm hoping I can continue with this class next year. Blog to come: How I was Rescued by a Handsome Pinoy with Knowledge of Medicinal Plants. Tuod. True story.

Nonsense.

2008-12-04T02:29:00.010-05:00

A final thought-hiccup before wilting into slumber's embrace...

My days are filled with books. Books to distract, books to appear distracted with, books to disengage, books to dawdle; books to depend upon when mentally detaching or physically disappearing from the shilly-shally of the day-to-day in the darkened corner between the window’s edge and the desk in which exactly one daring girl fits should she decide the price of detection - being driven to re-surface and deposited beneath a spotlight newly sharpened and directed like an upside-down cone-shaped prism forming a disconnect between two very different definitions of normalcy - is inconsequential surface dust easily dissipated in the wake of a choking swelling dizzying sandstorm desire to drown her consciousness in someone else’s diction.

---------------------------- * * * ----------------------------

I completed Salman Rushdie's most recent work, Shalimar the Clown, with a flourish of impatience. My first true attempt at reading him had actually gone more smoothly than expected. Rushdie's writing style is of the sort in which one must willfully immerse themselves if they are to melt into the proper current and float on undisturbed; successfully avoiding the strategically placed rocks and undertows. He infuses his writing with magic until the reader feels inflated with the joy of reading his prose and then - sharply - pricks the balloon and sends them crashing to the ground with a barely perceptible snicker. Read the book; you'll understand what I mean.

I dove into the rollicking current of his words headfirst. It helped that the subject matter, Kashmir, is an issue that I am both aware of and interested in. It helped that I have visited in India in the past, that I have lived in Pakistan in the past, and that my parents are residents of New Delhi, currently. It also helped that I enjoy more than a touch of phantasm and imaginative unreality in my literature. (I especially enjoyed the metaphorical "iron mullahs": comprised entirely of metal.)

The novel's threads open in modern-day Hollywood before gently stitching their way through an untouched and highly idealized Kashmir past. More than once referred to by the author as "paradise," Kashmir is stacked high only to be knocked to its knees. There is a brief interlude in hot-to-trot contemporary Delhi-life before the thread travels back into today's paranoid, superficial, pop-culture United States; where the novel began and where it ultimately knots unto itself. It was the last bit I objected to... I felt that the thread had frayed and Rushdie should have left it to the reader's imagination somewhere in the destruction of heaven rather than returning to a glitzy, brightly lit California which one couldn't help but feel was a complaint against his own celebrity spotlight. Alas, he couldn't resist and I admittedly found his worldview, overall, to be a tad overdramatic and damning. Unfortunately, the attacks on Mumbai of merely a week ago have me rethinking my original impressions.

A major character in the novel, Max Ophuls, serves as the US Ambassador to India. It is his musings on international relations that lead to the development of the United Nations in the story. Rushdie writes:

He tried to believe that the global structures he had helped to build, the pathways of influence, money and power, the multinational associations, the treaty organizations, the frameworks of cooperation and law whose purpose had been to deal with hot war turned cold, would still function in the future that lay beyond what he could forsee.

What is the future we are entering? It is that of the iron mullah. It is one in which the fiery coals of revenge and hate can smolder even while those who intend to commit acts of terror live amongst their future victims. It is a globalized world in the wake of 9/11. The closeness of hunter and hunted, two lives whose gentle overlaps should logically repel and pulsate against one another, make no sense. In the chaos of modern day hatred, understanding does not give way to compassion and vengeance has the patience of a saint.

I would like to argue against Rushdie. I feel inclined to argue against Rushdie. But over a hundred people were killed in Mumbai last week and, in the end, I just feel sad.

Panagad sad sya. (She's observing things in the community.)

2008-11-20T01:14:00.005-05:00

I was on the second loop of my now-established run this morning when I noticed a quirky little path darting off to the side. This was the first time I'd contemplated its conclusion, but until now I had always chosen to follow the other way - the way I'd discovered early-on would lead me down a pleasantly covered trail that eventually spilled out upon a small, paved road which, after a spell of bemused lolling, would lead me safely home.

I'd discovered this particular divergence during the October site visit; stumbling upon it in search of the expanse of rock and beach that comprises my island's border.In the horizon, a watery mountain range belonging to a nearby atoll beckoned invitingly. "It's near yet..." they seemed to whisper. Tempted, I took a firm step in their direction, prepared for a long journey on the path's reddened earth when I was startled by a scream. “Ma’am, are you okay ma’am? Are you lost?” one of the locals shrieked, sprinting towards me. I gave up. This was already the fifth such invasion of my mental privacy and I was feeling caught in the barbed-wired fence of Filipino concern; though meant to keep you safe, it will surely stop you short. I am not accustomed to being treated like an abandoned child in need of rescue. Or an Alzheimer’s patient wandering the neighborhood aimlessly. Or foreigner in a tucked-away corner of sparsely populated tropical island who is perpetually lost if not in her thoughts or in her bearings than surely in uncovering her personal thoroughfare through life... Hmm, perhaps they were right to fuss...

In any case, my run is early in the morning and, after a quick, guilty glance around to ensure that no one was present to witness my folly other than the enormous black karabow grazing approximately ten feet to my left (at whom I impulsively stuck out my tongue; daring the fly-ridden beast to judge me), I plucked at the Robert Frost within – the road less traveled by, it would be.

Would you like to know where that path led me? Not the point, and I’m not telling.

On another random, hardly-worth-reading-I’m-warning-you-now tangent, I bought soap. Although this may seem like a trivial event to others, I personally hold the purchase of soap in high regard. It is, at the very least, an action of great symbolic importance. I never buy soap unless I am sure that I will be staying in a particular location for a long enough expanse of time to warrant its usage. Soap is not a vacation-friendly item: it is bulky, priced too cheaply to earn the right to the volume it consumes, available ubiquitously and a tiny bottle of traveler's shampoo is a far more practical general cleanser. My first six weeks in China were strictly soap-less (consisting as they did of a harebrained move from Beijing to Shanghai and a seemingly hopeless job search that very nearly left me broke and at my parents mercy). It was only after I’d stumbled upon a decent job and stupendous apartment that I succumbed. So... soap. I bought it. I’m guess I’m sticking around.

Kinamatis nga English. (Tomato English: English mixed with Filipino words)

2008-11-18T04:07:00.004-05:00

Today, one of my favorite students celebrated his 13th birthday. A miniature version of all the other already-tiny students, his hands are restless and his feet have a mind of their own. On the first day of class I caught him staring at me while my co-teacher lectured and I stuck my tongue out at him. He was shocked, twisting his body to tell every other student in his vicinity what I'd done. I don't think they believed him. Now when I ask him a question he tap-dances a response, wiggling with pleasure at my attention. I give him a direction and he jumps out of his seat and, with an awkward two-step, doggedly and laughingly goes to accomplish the task. His smile stretches beyond the limits of his small face and his teeth are unusually wide, straight, white: perfect. He seems to winsomely stride through life; successfully communicating through muffled laughter and adored by all.

As the birthday boy, this child was awarded special privileges. We sang him happy birthday and no one objected when he brought in his pet bird to class. That's right, a pet bird. A big ol' fat green pigeon thing with clipped wings and ruffled feathers. It was a sad little bird; miserable to find itself in a first year classroom when it was born to hopscotch coconut trees, but the boy was so obviously bursting with pride that, when he held it out to me, I succumbed.

After class, my counterpart told me that she'd slipped him a hundred pesos. I gave her a strange look: is money really an appropriate student-teacher gift? So she told me his story. The boy's parents live in Iloilo (a city approximately an hour away, on another island) and he lives, and works, with a teacher at a nearby high school. She is not his relative, but she allows him to dwell in her home as long as before school, after school and on weekends he works in her fishing pond. He captured that pet bird with a fishing net at work one day. He is paid a small salary in exchange for the work, out of which he purchases school supplies, clothes and food. I sigh. "He just turned thirteen! You're describing adult responsibilities!" I say, helplessly. "Ay, Julie, what can I say?" my counterpart says. "That is why when he comes to class smelling badly I forgive him. When he is late because he has been playing I also forgive him, because the only time he can play is on the way to school. Sometimes I feel as though I am a mother, not a teacher." I sigh again. That perfect smile.

I was especially sad to hear his story today, but his is not unique in my classroom of twelve and thirteen year-olds. There was the girl who stole the jeepney tickets (provided by and redeemable by the government for students who cannot afford the transportation to school) and was too ashamed of herself to return to class. There is the student who was left under a bridge as a baby and adopted by the kind couple that found him. That couple recently died. He has been living with a local pastor ever since. My counterpart warned me that he is a "special" student. Although never malicious, he is famous for doing queer things like forgetting to wear shoes or standing up and walking around the classroom for no apparent reason. He makes me wish I'd taken more psychology courses in university. There is another student who can only come to classes on occasion; he also works in a fishing pond to support himself. His parents moved to the island of Negros over a year ago, but he wanted to continue his education and so stayed behind. He bounces from neighbor to neighbor; sleeping wherever the community allows. On the days he does come to class, he has no money for lunch. The other students always share...

This is what I know so far. I've been here for exactly nine days.

On a lighter note, I was asked to speak about the differences between American and Filipinos in a third year classroom. I attempted to distinguish between "independent" versus "dependent" societies and, with the students help, tried to explore the reasons why, when asked by their Filipino teacher, students were quick to determine that Filipino's "lack self-reliance" while Americans, and other westerners, do not. During the session, I was asked the following questions by extremely earnest students:

Are Americans very punctual?
How do teacher's discipline students in America? How do parents discipline children?
Do you have to ask your parent's permission to be married?
Are American women really "liberated"? (I took particular issue with this one, noting that the interpretation of the word here is of an incorrect connotation)
Do American women really lose their virginity at the age of fourteen? (I know they say their impression of the west comes from the media, but what did they see on television that led them to believe that?)
Would you ever date a Filipino, ma'am? (giggle, giggle, elbow one another)
What are the "courting rituals" in America?
Ma'am, have you ever been in love? (Ha.)

It was a fairly enjoyable and extremely interesting experience. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible... tried, I said. Through all of this their classroom teacher was leaning farther forward in her chair and listening more avidly than any of her students. A difficult feat, indeed. I'm considering making her my second counterpart.

Siguro galutawo ang barato. (Maybe the boat floats.)

2008-11-16T01:16:00.005-05:00

Ants. Ants dotting the walls; black and red figures scrambling up, down and sideways, clearly outlined against the light blue paint. They travel en masse so that small armies cross one another as they head in opposing directions; forming tiny vertical ant piles on my wall as they climb over one another before determinedly continuing on their way. They appear on my legs, navigating my freckles, and meandering through my closet. They form clumps on the kitchen floor and queues heading both down the drains and back out again. When I pour my morning cup of instant coffee I inevitably scald a few alive, despite my best efforts beforehand to pick them out of the various containers. There are tiny red biting ones which I loathe more than all other bugs combined and whose bite turns my skin itchier and redder than the thirstiest of mosquitoes. There are gargantuan red ones that inhabit my bedroom, but the it is the bulbous black ones that have laid claim to the kitchen floor. The smallest kind, the brownish black ones, continuously find my computer despite experimentally zipping it into several other compartments. So far, they don't seem to do much damage although it seems to me that their presence on such a valuable object is quite presumptuous. After all, in the spirit of the Jainists, I do not harm them or any of their cousins. There's too many of them in any case. A mere flick off my kneecap and it is welcome to begin anew from wherever it lands. Ants, ants galore.

A few weeks ago my mother, exasperatedly, said, "Julie, I don't need to be wowed by all your blogs!" She meant both that she wasn't impressed with one of the previous ones and that she wanted me to provide her, and anyone else reading, with more concrete information about my day-to-day life. I'll do my best to please her now.

I have officially moved to Guimaras, an island small enough to run on a solo power generator that can be heard, humming busily, on a quiet evening. Citizens of Guimaras are subject to frequent brownouts as electricity is shut off in one region so that another can use it. The island itself is perhaps a kilometer away from bustling Iloilo, the major city of Panay island, but no bridge exists connecting the two. This lack of connection maintains that Guimaras remain rural and fairly untouched; a fact which locals applaud and is echoed in the "Save Guimaras" signs appearing on random roads. (I asked my counterpart, "What, exactly, does the term 'save' encompass?" She thought for a moment and then replied, "Well, save Guimaras from popluation growth, violence, coal-mining and natural disasters." Hm. Natural disasters?)

In 2006, Guimaras was the unfortunate site of the worst oil spill ever to occur in the Philippines. Still reeling today from the environmental consequences, I have been told numerous times that the island received "big money" from the shipping company responsible which, among other things, has provided every public school with computers. I have seen these aging machines and I am not impressed. Additionally, one must wonder: what good are computers without printers or internet?

I cannot publicly post the exact barangay in which I dwell and work. I'm not sure why that is, seeing as anyone who arrives on my tiny island could probably ask the nearest local, "Hey, where do those Peace Corps volunteers live?" and receive an immediate answer, but it is a Peace Corps rule and so I will abide. Suffice to say that I have begun teaching at one of the public high schools and it has been quite an interesting week.

COUNTERPART

Every Peace Corps volunteer is required to have one Filipino teaching counterpart, although most have two or three. I have only established ten working hours per week with mine (the other woman I'm supposed to teach with has been absent since my arrival, hmmm) which means that I have two classes; 1st year sections B and D. The students are approximately twelve years old and have already thrown me a Filipino-style welcome party complete with opening prayer, songs, chalkboard decorations, candy necklaces and a poem written by the students. I begin actually teaching on Monday (I've been observing all week).

My counterpart is thirty-one years old; a young, vivacious woman with whom I immediately cliqued. She cares deeply about our students and was already prepping me for their misfortunes before arrival. She has warned me that others refer to her as "left-wing"; an insult in Filipino-terms, but a welcome adjective to my liberal American ears. The Peace Corps advised us to find younger co-teachers with more flexible attitudes, and in this regard I could not be luckier. There is one issue, however, which has already put me in a compromising position. She and my Principal have a long-standing, ongoing, familial-based feud which has stuck me as surely as a fly to a spider's web.

PRINCIPAL

Elderly, hunched-over, short and heavyset, she reigns over her kingdom with assured calm. A trike carriages her the grand three-minute ride from house to school and the guard, already standing in anticipation, swings open the gates with one hand and hands her a daily newspaper as she drives by. Over the volleyball courts and over the field, crunching the impossibly green grass beneath its wheels, the trike beelines to her office and deposits her at its doorstep. Seeing me, she beckons me toward her and begins our daily hand-holding. I am her adornment, her latest pet, and as much as I have been assured by others that such welcoming treatment is normal, I am already anticipating the day in which the novelty of "having" an Americana wears off. She marches me around school and the neighborhood, holding me firmly by the wrist. She sends me snacks wherever on campus I may be and boasts at large meetings that I am entitled to free snacks, that I may nap in her private quarters any time I like, that I have received gifts such as wallets and handkerchiefs from her, that she is worried about my safety in everything I do and that everyone must take the greatest pains to ensure my happiness and comfort. As a result, I have a horde of fussy Filipina teachers watching me, ready to smother at every opportunity.

THE FEUD

It began a decade ago, when my counterpart's sister-in-law's status as a "national" employee was swapped, by the Principal, with the "district" and therefore lesser status of the Principal's own daughter. Both women were teachers at my high school, in which the Principal's word is final. At receiving the news in the Principal's office, the sister-in-law began to sob at the injustice of the situation. "Wipe your tears and powder your face!" the Principal supposedly thundered, "I won't let anyone see that you have been crying!" Heartbroken and with nowhere to take up complaint, the sister-in-law was soon suffering from "heart troubles" due to sorrow at her maltreatment and wound up, for a brief spell, in the hospital. (Allow me to remind you that this is not my story, I am merely repeating it as I heard it.)

Soon afterward, my counterpart applied for a teaching position at the same school. Due to the previous encounter with her family, the Principal did not wish to hire her despite outstanding credentials. Higher-ups were involved, including the my counterpart's mother-in-law, and sobbing hysterically, the Principal was eventually forced to sign the contract hiring my counterpart. The Principal did not make life easy for her newest employee, however. Her lesson plans were scrutinized every day for the first three years. On Fridays, she was publicly criticized in front of her co-workers. She was, and still is, not invited to faculty meetings and the Principal, upon discovering that she had recently turned in a thesis which would complete her master's degree, contacted those checking it and asked them to put it at the bottom of the pile. The Principal refused to provide her classroom with a roof, although the children suffered daily from the tropical heat. My counterpart turned around and raised the money for it herself from parents. As I was told this story she pointed to various classroom items that, having been requested from the Principal and refused, were subsequently donated by students and parents. A trash can, a fan, curtains, paint, a blackboard...

The result of all this, as it pertains to me, is that as I run back and forth between classroom and office one is always questioning me about the other. "Did she try to give you her leftover food again today?" asks my counterpart, laughingly. "What was her lesson? Was it good? What was the objective?" questions the Principal. "Did you tell her that you were going to look at bikes with me?" my counterpart wonders. "Have you been in her classroom all this time? Why?" the Principal sniffs. The worst part is that each of them has a barcada: a group of followers that are in the same school of thought as they. I have to tread carefully in what I say, as I have trouble keeping track of who belongs to whom. I am already walking the balance beam and, unwilling to give up my cheerful, enthusiastic counterpart and equally determined to stay on the favorable side of the queen, whose support is imperative in facilitating a successful two-years at the high school, steadily walking that center line - one foot in front of the other - is where I'll stay.

After intense monetary negotiations, my future nipa hut has begun to undergo necessary renovations. (The bamboo is being dried at this very moment.) My runs these days are quite different than those of Bacolod. I have tried to get as high as possible in order to replicate the fantastic views of my community in Negros, but alas, my thighs have melted but my vision has not yet risen above the treeline. The island is flat and jungle-like, filled to the brim with coconut trees and all species of wild, entangled hinterland. There is a total absence of trash and pollution and only the rarest appearance of a dog or another human being. I find myself dodging rocks, endless puddles of mud and numerous snails as they trudge along, supporting shells the size of my fist. Last night, hearing the rumbling of encroaching thunder, I found myself wondering what a lightning storm in a nipa hut would be like just as the first flashes sparked across the sky outside my window.

This coming Saturday I will be giving my first-ever teacher training. I see you are laughing, you who possess the knowledge of how utterly unqualified I am to do such a thing. Don't think that I am not completely aware of that: I am. I am laughing, too. I also know that, no matter how inexperienced I am, I have something to offer these teachers by simply being a product of the American education system. More specifically, I am a product of a system that emphasizes student-based learning in addition to an interactive classroom which caters to multiple learning styles. If there was any doubt of my capability beforehand, it was dispelled upon first entering that Bacolod classroom. (Don't worry, my presentation will be based on a previous seminar given by the very capable and appropriately educated Sir Tabor.) There has been discussion, too, of turning this seminar into a larger-scale mobile event to be given throughout the year around Guimaras.

I suppose there is much be discovered, about my surroundings as well as myself... Soon enough.

Mahampang ko ang sipa takraw. (I will play hacky sack.)

2008-11-11T02:00:00.010-05:00

“I’m okay. I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay.” Repeat. “I’m okay...” I'm lying in my new bed on my first night at permanent site, and I’m hoping that mental repetition will persuade my heart to fall in line. Currently it is behaving with all the full blown bipolar, teenage-angst-filled wild thrumming of which I know it is fully capable. I'm thrilled and I'm frightened. The world is full of unknowns: a fact that is so wonderful it has me floating up to the ceiling, high as a kite... and yet terrible enough that I turn over, burying my face in a pillow. Is there anything better than feeling as though your heart is about burst out of your chest and hop around the room in joyful abandon? Is there anything worse than feeling as though you are the only person sitting on the quietest rock facing exactly nobody in the loneliest corner of the earth? How is it possible that, in a split second, human emotion can hopscotch from one to another… and then back again… grin, grimace, repeat.

sss

After a month-long hiatus, I am finally talking to myself again. Hooray. I did actually miss it. The last weeks of Peace Corps training drowned my inner voice with raucous and white noise as we trimmed and tucked in loose threads before attempting a graceful departure from Bacolod City. There were community projects to be completed, host family parties to be thrown, language tests to be taken, packing to be done (somehow, the amount of stuff in our possession sneakily doubled as we distractedly said our goodbyes) followed by a whirlwind Counterpart’s Conference, in which the Filipino we will be working most closely with for the next two years traveled from our permanent sites to a Bacolod hotel in addition to all forty-some other volunteers (most of whom we had not seen since the first week in Manila) and all of their counterparts. After a week of conferencing and the necessary small talk accompaniment intertwined with person-to-person bonding, jubilant drinking sessions (don’t give me that look; Obama won AND we were sworn-in as Peace Corps Volunteers in the same week), deep and meaningful conversations that tended to extend unabashedly into the late hours of nighttime television (cable!) and all the air-conditioning we could possibly endure without turning into ice boxes ourselves; perhaps predictably, we all got sick.

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This afternoon I finally arrived at my permanent site. It is a little difficult to accept the fact that, from this point onward, those people I have become closest to will be quite far away. I include my host family in that thought. A few minutes ago I received the following text messages from my them:

"Sorry to disturb you I just want to say goodnight and did you eat well?" - From my host mother. ("Who will feed you laswa every day?" she worried before I left.)

"Manang Julie its me cj who text you. I missed you manang Julie. I love you so much. Love cjtan." – From herself.

As my mind was busily chatting away and I worried that my heart might faint from exhaustion after bounding from one emotional extreme to another, my phone rang. India calling. My parents. I snatched the phone and darted out the door and up a nearby hill, hoping that the connection would be reasonable. There's nothing more comforting in the world than your parent's voices. Dad, it was great talking to you, but in the end nobody can lift you out of the crazies and squarely back into reality like your mother. “Mom, I’m feeling small. Talk me out of it,” I said. She understood, and this was her reply:

When your father and I found out we were being posted in Islamabad, Pakistan, I was really, really down. I did not want to go there. It was only after Larry and I started to name places in America that would be worse (for us) to live in than Islamabad that I started to feel better. I mean, it's amazing how many places there are in the States that sound worse to me than Islamabad. Des Moines, Idaho. Vienna, Virginia. Shelbyville, Kentucky. Kansas City, Kansas. Columbus, Indiana... We went on forever. It was only then that I thought, 'Okay, I can do this.'

Thank you, Ellen Schwartz. It's not about living or not living in the above-mentioned locations. It is about choices, and this was my decision. I wanted this new experience. I wanted it badly enough to endure a year of applications and three months of monotonous government-initiated training. Given the choice; I wouldn't be anywhere else. My mother also reminded me that I always have a hard time with change, which is strange because I continue to voluntarily put myself through extreme situational alterations. What can I say? Perhaps pushing my own panic-button gives me a thrill. With new information to consider, I lay back down on the bed for a re-think. Still clasping my phone, I brought up a text message exchange I'd had with a fellow volunteer earlier that day. Sometimes, he really gets it right.

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." I said.
"That's right: you can't have adventures in Kansas." He replied.

Touche.

Obama. (Needs no explanation.)

2008-11-05T05:42:00.003-05:00

As soon as I found out, I e-mailed my father (who lives and works in India) the following message to his blackberry:

we got ohio!!! yayayayayayayayyayayayayay!!!!!!!

I received the following message in response:

I reported this on Indian national tv as something I just learned from you in remote Phils
What a world

What a world, indeed. Although it is not my usual inclination to be sappy happy, today that's exactly what I am. Today I am exceedingly proud to be an American.

Trabaho sa abroad. (Working abroad.)

2008-10-31T00:14:00.008-04:00

Brace yourself. This one's quite long.

The Philippines has a statement that aptly summarizes their history under colonial rule in one brief, snip of a statement: "Four-hundred years in a Spanish convent and fifty years in Hollywood." They are, of course, referring to the heavily Catholic influence of Spanish rule followed by the haphazard American foray into colonialism that, after fifty years, was voluntarily relinquished.

After Ghana, the Philippines was the second country to receive Peace Corps volunteers following President Kennedy's 1961 call to service. The first to arrive in Manila were 123 Education volunteers: Batch #1. My own group is #267. Although we are comprised of Children, Youth, Family Services volunteers as well as Coastal Resource Management volunteers; the majority of us have been recruited into the Education sector. Education has long been one of the crucial links in American-Filipino relations and the recent request by the Filipino government for an increased number of Peace Corps teachers is actually a reflection of a far longer history.

I arrived in the Philippines with vague notions of Imelda's shoe collection and Rizal's martyrdom. Upon landing in Manila, I noticed aloud that a huge sign welcomed us to "Ninoy Aquino International Airport". "Oh!" I exclaimed, the obvious dawning upon me, "This must have been where Ninoy was murdered!" Hearing me, a nearby volunteer asked cluelessly, "Who's Ninoy?" Feeling less than confident in my ability to fully answer the question, I demurred. I supposed that we would all figure it out eventually.

Merely a few days separate Batch 267 from our swear-in ceremony where we will make the official transition from "trainees" in training sites to "volunteers" in permanent sites. The basic assumption is that after having spent three months in-country we now speak one of three Filipino languages and have made a surface dive into Filipino culture. I'm not sure how accurate that assumption is, but I did take it upon myself to delve into a true terror of a book - "In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines" by Stanley Karnow - which, after a marathon reading session, I finally concluded last night. I would like to note that although I will avoid quoting the book directly, the following blog is a culmination of information mostly acquired within its pages compounded with my previous knowledge of Philippine history.

I borrowed this particular book from a fellow volunteer who, I would later discover, had been unable to descend more than three-quarters of the way down its spiraling, dank pages. From his descriptions, I'd expected an enlightening novel that would sportively elucidate aspects of the unique relationship between the United States and the Philippines; the effects of which I had noticed but, lacking the necessary background information, had mostly served to confuse me. What was handed to me, instead, was a faded, abused brick of pages. Is there anything more intimidating to a reader than a worn-out, yellowed book? White indentations wrinkled an otherwise entirely black cover and a page fluttered away as I moved to put it in my bag. Sigh. I opened this book with dread, took notes as I read out of sheer determination to educate myself and am blogging about it so that I won't forget. Perhaps you will learn a little something, as well.
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As it turns out, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer under service of the Spanish crown, was the first European to discover the Philippines. He strode ashore what is now the island of Cebu in April of 1521 and, after planting a wooden cross firmly in the ground, began converting confused natives to Christianity. After baptizing one Chief Humabon and some two-thousand of his Cebuano followers, the pious Magellan was convinced to attack Humabon's old tribal enemy, Lapu Lapu. The mission failed and Magellan himself was killed as he led the onslaught. Disappointed, Humabon invited the remaining European officers to a banquet and, after they had their fill of food and women, promptly slaughtered them. Those still on board the ships hightailed it back out to sea; an inauspicious beginning to Spanish-Filipino relations.
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Let us skip over several hundred years of Spanish imperial rule. (My note-taking did not begin in earnest until the Americans entered the scene.) Suffice to say that under their tutelage an archipelago of independent, tribal islands was united for the first time, Christianity was established as a major religion, haciendas (which still exist) were introduced and, in the grand tradition of colonial powers around the world, manipulated to keep the colonialists wealthy and the locals in a position of poverty. Members of religious orders, a position conveniently denied to Filipinos, became the influential, ruling class and mestizos, descendants of mingling between Spanish and Filipinos, were the inheritors of fantastic estates and an enormous amount of wealth. This racial division purposefully created a class system based on corruption and instilled in Filipinos the association of white skin with beauty and wealth - both of which endure to this day.
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All this is not to say that the Filipinos were complacent in their subservience. Small-scale revolts against the Spanish began in the nineteenth century. One of the first to protest, a Filipino named Jose Rizal, formed La Liga Filipina (the Filipino League); an organization that clamored for social reform. Although he was not advocating independence from the crown, he was arrested and executed by the colonial government in any case. Today, Rizal is celebrated in the Philippines as a symbol of Filipino nationalism.
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I am going to skim over further Filipino uprisings, of which there were many both under Spanish and American rule. Instead, I would like to enter the Spanish-American War and the indecisive President McKinley. ("Why is President McKinley's mind like a bed?" asked a popular joke of the late 1800s. "Because it has to be made up for him before he can use it!").
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In 1898 the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 266 crew members. A dubious Navy investigation concluded that a external device, presumably a Spanish mine, was responsible. The cry "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!" echoed around the nation. Americans pressed for war and a reluctant President McKinley, after unsuccessfully reaching a diplomatic conclusion with the Spanish, accommodated them via a land grab that would eventually include Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The United States, for the first time in history, was about step outside its usually insular focus and try its hand at being a global, imperial power.

nnnU.S. Commodore George Dewey, with the assistance of the rebel forces under Emiliano Aguinaldo, defeated an antiquated Spanish fleet at Manila with ease; prompting President McKinley to call for a map that would enlighten him as to the archipelago's location. On August 13, 1898, a mock battle was staged so that the Spanish could capitulate without losing face at home. Despite the widespread view of the islands as merely another bargaining chip with the Spanish, the successful conquest prompted a new train of thought amongst Americans: What was the point of accepting responsibility for a land without reaping the benefits? Although he could have guaranteed the Philippines independence under a U.S. protectorate, McKinley feared opposing national opinion. Popular sentiment at the time likened the United States to the Garden of Eden and viewed American imperialism as a means of fashioning other lands in its own enlightened image. (McKinley later had the nerve to tell a group of Methodist Missionaries that God himself had instructed him to civilize the archipelago.)
gggg
Whereas the Spanish, as a mechanism of wielding control, had refused to educate Filipinos, the McKinley administration believed that creating a public school system would create a stronger allegiance to America amongst Filipinos. They hoped that benevolent governance would convince locals to voluntarily accept a permanent American presence. Allow me to insert one especially interesting passage from Karnow's history book (p. 198):

Under a slate sky on a sultry August morning in 1901, a converted cattle ship, the Thomas, steamed into Manila Bay. Crowding its decks were five hundred young Americans, most of them recent college graduates, the men wearing straw boaters and blazers, the women in long skirts and large flowery hats. Like vacationers, they carried baseball bats, tennis rachets, musical instruments, cameras and binoculars. Few had ever been abroad, and they scanned the exotic landscape with a mixture of fascination and anticipation. Precursors of the Peace Corps volunteers of a later generation, they were arriving as teachers. They quickly fanned out across the archipelago to set up schools and soon became known as "Thomasites," after the vessel that brought them. The label, pinned on all American teachers of the time, had a ring of a religious movement. But their vocation, though secular, did have an evangelical design. Education would Americanize the Filipinos and cement their loyalty to the United States. "We are not merely teachers," Philinda Rand later wrote to her family in Massachusetts from the island of Negros. "We are social assets and emissaries of good will."
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Philinda Rand was, coincidentally, writing from the same island upon which I am now typing.
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Under American influence, primary schools were set up in most provinces and both vocational schools and teacher colleges were established. Recognizing the bitterness of Filipinos towards the church-owned, corrupt haciendas, the U.S. government bought large chunks of property from the Catholic church and re-sold it at discounted rates - largely to local workers - additionally mandating that there be religious freedom in their children's schools. (Despite this, Catholic influence in the public education system remains heavy - classrooms are decorated with looming, paternal images of Jesus and every class begins with a Lord's prayer.)
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The Philippine Islands were first united by the Spanish but it was under the Americans that they attained the highest literacy rate in Asia. English fluency and Christianity became the strongest bonds between the formerly tribal islands. Despite this, Filipino's clamored that the time had come for their rightful independence. In 1935, the United States granted the Philippines commonwealth status and, allowing a span of eleven years for the gradual depletion of American military presence, declared 1946 to be the year of official independence. These plans were frozen, however, when on December 7, 1941, the Japanese annihilated the U.S. Naval Fleet at Pearl Harbor and devastated the U.S. air force at Clark Air Base near Manila.
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After Warsaw, Manila was to become the second-most destroyed city of World War II. Once again, the Americans and Filipinos found themselves struggling together against a common enemy. One of my grandfathers and a great-uncle were among the American soldiers deployed to the Philippines. Thousands of Filipinos perished alongside Americans in the infamous Battle of Bataan and in the ensuing Bataan Death March to Camp O'Donnell internment center, prompting multitudes of Filipinos to join rebel forces against the Japanese. Although some Filipinos sided with the Japanese in an attempt to accommodate the current imperial presence, many ordinary Filipino citizens risked their lives to provide troops with rice and water.
nnn
Following heavy losses at Bataan, General Douglas MacArthur fled to Australia proclaiming "I shall return" - a statement romanticized by both Filipino and American press and which became a galvanizing factor in the United States' war commitment to "liberate" their former colony. On October 19, 1944, MacArthur made good on that promise as he dramatically waded ashore the island of Leyte (not far from Cebu where, in 1521, Magellen erected his wooden cross). Led by MacArthur, the subsequent military campaign through Luzon was second only in size to the American drive across Central Europe. Several hundred thousand American and Filipino troops faced a Japanese force of equal size. The final confrontation in Manila produced a civilian holocaust in which the Japanese soldiers embarked upon a violent, rapacious onslaught of civilians reminiscent of the 1937 Rape of the Chinese city, Nanjing. My host mother provided me with the following summation: "They throw babies in the air and they land on sticks! My God!"
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In 1945, Japan was devastated by atomic bombs and the war ended, saving another one of my grandfathers, after having fought on the Allied front in France and Germany, from being re-deployed to the Philippines. Officials from all the Allied powers were present at the formal surrender, but MacArthur stood as the only (honorary) Filipino present. In July of the following year the United States voluntarily gave the Philippines formal independence; fifty years after its original invasion. Although this marked the end of shared battlefields, the United States would continue to play a crucial role in the political arena.
nnn
Fast forward. The year is 1985 and Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines, has just announced on American television (the choice of medium exhibiting his preference for American sentiment over that of his own people) that he is considering calling an end to martial law and, for the first time in twelve years, holding presidential elections. Marcos had initially declared martial law with the support of the U.S. government at the height of the Vietnam war in order to repress Communist and Muslim insurgencies. These insurgencies have an influential presence in the Philippines to this day, particularly on the predominately-Muslim island of Mindanao. As a result, Mindanao is a "black" zone - Peace Corps volunteers are not permitted to either work or travel there. According to the U.S. Embassy Security Officer who presided over our briefing in Manila, "If there wasn't Iraq or Afghanistan, there would be Mindanao."

During the first years of martial law, the economy stabilized and newly-confident businesses flourished. However, as the tentacles of corruption spread, the largest conglomerates were brought under the control of Marcos and his cronies. For example, Philippine Airlines was nationalized and then used as a private carrier for the Marcos' international shopping expeditions. Marcos appointed military officers from his home province and gave them huge salary boosts in order to promote loyalty. Although the rich continued to flourish, malnutrition began to spread throughout the poorest provinces.

Marco's decision to permit elections and, supposedly, re-admit evidence of democratic processes, brought relief to both Filipino and the U.S. government. Department and Central Intelligence Agency officials were flown into Manila in order to track the election tally through an independent monitor. The former Philippine senator and Marcos' arch-enemy, Ninoy Aquino, Jr, decided the time had come to return from exile in the United States in order to run against Marcos, asserting before departure that "the Filipino is worth dying for".
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Appallingly, Ninoy was arrogantly murdered in full view of an enormous crowd and numerous foreign journalists as he exited the aircraft at Manila International Airport (now Ninoy Aquino International Airport). Although never proven (the investigation having been corrupted from the start), many believe the attack to have been orchestrated by Marcos himself. In an unprecedented move, Aquino's widow - Cory Aquino - decided to run in her husband's place. Although Marcos' election tally declared that he was the victor, the independent monitor produced an opposite outcome. The blatant, shameless corruption of the Marcos regime was officially and undeniably exposed, evoking condemnation from governments around the world.

The People Power Revolution, in which hundreds of thousands of armed civilians took to the streets in a prayerful mass demonstration, swelled in protest to Marcos' sham inauguration. In the end, the U.S. government provided a helicopter and asylum for Marcos and his wife, Imelda and their twenty-year regime came to a close. As ordinary Filipinos stormed the Presidential Palace they discovered physical evidence of the Marcos' gluttony including mink coats, Swiss bank accounts, hidden real estate deals and, most famously, thousands of pairs of Imelda's designer shoes. My own parents remember sending postcards showcasing Imelda's shoe collection to relatives back home during the late 1980s, when they lived in Davao. The Marcos' drove their nation into an enormous debt that put them at the mercy of their foreign creditors; a debt I believe the government is paying off today.
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I was observing another volunteer's English class a few weeks ago when her students began discussing why the Philippines is the child of a "marriage between east and west". The confusion in my mind as to what constitutes Filipino culture, I have realized, is actually just the recognition of a work-in-progress. When we volunteers walk through the streets of Bacolod, it is usually to a chorus of, "Hey Joe!" - a reference to American soldiers during World War II that has stuck as a term for all foreigners. The jeepney system, a network of transportation best described as public busing with a dash of third world chaos, was originally comprised of US military jeeps leftover from the war. As most of the original vehicles are now defunct, what can only be described as knock-off or imitation jeeps are used. As I walk past stores and shops, titters of "Americana" float past my ears - they have no idea where I'm really from, they simply assume - and trisykads whiz by blasting "Apple Bottom Jeans" by Florida from decrepit speakers. Somehow, at least to me, it seems fitting that Cory Aquino's daughter is the host on the popular Filipino version of the American game show, Deal or No Deal.

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When we first began learning to speak Ilonggo, our instructor explained that large chunks of the language were a form of "bastardized Spanish." While this turned out to be true, it is also true that in class my students twice asked my co-teacher to tell them the English word for "reporter" and "hospital". "Those are already English words," she cried, partly laughing but mostly frustrated. In my head, I sympathized with the students. How could they be expected to know which words belongs to what language when television is in Tagalog, their families speak Ilonggo while neighboring cities speak any number of other tribal dialects - all of them doused with a heaping portion of both Spanish and English. The headlines on the news last night read: "Trabaho sa abroad." How's that for an identity crisis?

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Karnow's book, published in 1989, concludes with the premonition that the Philippines is still working out a few cultural kinks and would need a great deal of foreign assistance before it could stand on its own two feet. Now that I have a slightly broader knowledge of its historical background, all I can think is, "No wonder." The archipelago of 7,107 islands was never a untied nation before imperialism and spent its first four-hundred years discovering itself under imperialism. As I sat on the jeepney last night, riding through the dusty afternoon as cars, trikes, jeeps, bikes, pedestrians, motorcycles attacked the intersection from all directions, I find myself agreeing with Karnow and thinking (I know this metaphor is extremely cliche, but bear with me), "Well, there probably is a better system. And eventually, I'm sure there will be. But this one works, too." After concocting that fleeting metaphor, my drunken jeepney driver slammed into another jeepney heading in a perpendicular direction. My next thought was, "Good thing these things were intended for war."

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Today, more than a million Filipinos live in America and more than 11 million Filipinos work abroad. These Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) comprise about 11% of the total population and singularly make up 13.5% of the total GDP. Many Filipinos that I know and live with receive regular allowances from family working overseas and the economy here is inextricably intertwined with that of the United States. With that kind of money flowing in from out of town, it is not surprising that I had a difficult time convincing my host mother that there are homeless people in America, too. "What, you mean leaving on the streets?!" she cried, unbelieving.

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I have no real answers here, just the realization that at least some of my cultural confusion stems from the culture's own evolving identity. As a final note, I would like to insert a passage I stumbled across in my host sister's Filipino culture school book. It is entitled "Colonial Mentality":

There there is the ever-present colonial mentality. We love anything imported. We still believe that foreigners are better than us, foreign-made items are better, and even foreign languages are better. We idolize foreign actors and singers. We sing their songs and imitate their dances, fashion, and way of life. We do not realize that most of our products are in demand in the world market. Our talents are internationally acclaimed yet they do not recieve great recognition from our own people. It is all right to appreciate the talents of foreign people and the good aspects of other cultures. But it is not correct to look down on our local Filipino talents and abilities.

Nasunog ang balay ni Superman. (Superman's house is on fire.)

2008-10-14T19:28:00.005-04:00

Five Peace Corps volunteers.

Five Peace Corps volunteers in their early twenties.

Five Peace Corps volunteers in their early twenties, laughing and chatting comfortably with one another.

Five Peace Corps volunteers in their early twenties, laughing and chatting comfortably with one another in a glittering, behemoth of a mall. One completes an expensive purchase while another has her hair straightened by a tiny Filipina lady in a outrageous, neon pink miniskirt. The Filipina beckons to an identically-clad co-worker and together they twitter over the volunteer's "different, so-soft" hair. They handle the hair gingerly, fearful that it will disintegrate between the porcelain jaws of the straightener, while telling the volunteer how much they wish they could go to America. "Well," she replies, looking at the stacks of brightly packaged merchandise surrounding her, "it's a lot like this."

Another particularly enthusiastic volunteer is literally bouncing with excitement as she shows off her brand-new acquisitions; Burberry perfume and chunky black heels. The two males group-members sit and survey the scene unfolding around them. Like men in malls around the world, they are bored and a little awkward. At least here there is solace to be found in breathing the fresh, air-conditioned oxygen filtering out the normally palpable grit. Suddenly, one volunteer takes a step back and quips, "Wow, guys. We're really roughing it." All five are immediately overtaken by a laughter that swells from the belly and spouts out in violent, tumultuous waves - leaving its human capsule on the verge of tears and gasping for air. The Filipina ladies halt their fussing and glance around nervously, bewildered by the sudden shift in mood.

Strange how small, simple words can convulsively trigger emotions at an entirely disproportionate level. Prior to this episode I had been wandering around the mall with one of the other volunteers and we had both admitted, somewhat self-consciously, that we had been initially disappointed with the Philippines as a Peace Corps assignment. He'd been hoping to go to Africa and I had been pushing to remain in China. The Philippines is oftentimes not the back-to-basics environment most of us envisioned during the application process. Instead of building from the ground up we find ourselves wishing we could blast the current institutions to smithereens and start all over again. As another friend likes to say, the Department of Education (DepEd) encapsulates "the opposite of all that is good." The fact that Americans were the initiators of the educational system here is a discussion for a different day.

Every nation, including my own, is loaded with its own set of spectacularly self-destructive systems and beliefs. I am not so naive to believe that the utter breakdown of our expectations has been a uniquely Peace Corps Philippines experience. However, it oft feels as though the overwhelming, nonsensical fluff pervading Filipino culture has invaded the Peace Corps, an institution of the American government, to an unacceptable degree.

It has now been a few weeks since I visited my permanent site: Jordan, Guimaras. I have sat down at the computer several times in an attempt to write about the three days I spent there but, most perplexingly, the words refused to come. Let me try once more.

My school is lovely. It is fully equipped with volleyball courts, locked gates holding students prisoner during school hours, enthusiastic employees, a "freedom wall" upon which students are permitted to graffiti whatever they wish and a brand-new library. A government-sponsored ticket program for students unable to afford transportation to and from the school is already in place and fully functioning. As I walked in the gates the students flocked to me, smiling brightly and already comfortable in their English fluency. I was walked to the Principal's Office and presented to a large, overbearing woman in her fifties. She wheezed slightly as she stood to greet me and, hearing this, one student ran for water, two teachers scattered to find her pillows and another student rushed to turn the air-conditioning up a little higher. I was clearly in the presence of royalty.

The deference attributed to my new boss was not without precedence. As I learned in the next few days, she singularly transformed this school from overgrown jungle to top-scoring institution through sheer bullheadedness. It certainly helped that my new community is comprised of exactly one family. The environment is borderline incestuous - depending how one views the match-up of second cousins. The shared interest in creating a healthy educational environment for the family motivated community leaders to break the traditional norm of Filipino officials (corruption). A twenty-something version of the current principal was assigned to a piece of wilderness upon completion of university. Over time, her kingdom sprouted into a top institution with an all-star girl's volleyball team and in which over one-thousand pupils voluntarily travel extensive distances in order to attend.

I was feeling, I think understandably, very overwhelmed. What did I, an untrained English teacher, have to contribute here? I soon discovered, as a massive onslaught of text messages assaulted my cell phone, that many of my fellow volunteers had found themselves in a similar "tent of despair," as one termed it, at site. Perhaps the most wonderful part of being in the Philippines has been the company - more specifically, the other Peace Corps volunteers in Bacolod City. They have been a support system through the culture shock and frequent disappointments. In the absence of family we have been lucky enough to create our own. Yet there we were at our permanent sites, abandoned and utterly alone.

In Guimaras, the principal adopted me as a pet and gave me a very short leash. She fussily tucked my skirt under my legs whenever I sat, coaxed my hair behind my ears and, firmly gripping my hand, paraded me around town. A little girl told me that she wants to be a nurse when she grows up so that she can wash her "mama's monay" (feminine parts). The nipa hut I'm supposed to live in is collapsing unto itself. The principal, worried about my well-being, suggested that I move into the school permanently so that upon nightfall I would be "locked in" safely. She sweetened the deal by offering to have two other English teachers sleep on cots outside my bedroom so that I "won't be lonely". Instead of laughing it all off, all I could think was, "I've got to write this stuff down so that I can tell everyone when I get back to Bacolod."

This tight-knit affection we now feel for one another was not easily achieved. Those who choose to join the Peace Corps must have at least a somewhat introverted, private personality in order to withstand the emotional onslaught borne out of living alone in a foreign country. Little by little, day by day, we grew tentatively closer until one day, after spending morning language class together, watching one another teach all afternoon, going home to quickly change and then immediately departing on a ninety-minute trek through the wilderness before sunset, we still wanted to spend three hours watching Lord of the Rings together. Perhaps that is why I've had so much difficulty both writing and talking about the inevitable, quickly-approaching move to our permanent sites. The nucleus of all those thoughts spinning around my head has consistently been the people that I've been spending time with rather than the experiences we've been having.

In my head, our permanent sites form a fortress around a central point: Iloilo City. There are guards in a lopsided, circular formation standing in positions at a distance of approximately three hours in every direction with a few left protecting the inner sanctum. Of course, this is simply a metaphor for the individuals who are currently buttressing my personal sanity. That is why it was so awful and distressing when an integral member of my support system had to return home due to a personal tragedy. I immediately burst into tears when someone alerted me to the news - I'm not sure if I was simply hurting because I knew she was hurting, or because of that damned siren in my head screaming, "Man down! Man down!" It was probably both.

Nothing forms bonds more firmly than a common enemy. Although we have no true enemy here, culture shock and Peace Corps pandemonium have served in its place. What we are realizing, I think, is that although we've become very comfy-cozy with our current environment, in three very short weeks we will be thrust into an entirely new, foreign Peace Corps. Our coping mechanisms? An all-around uncharacteristic display of clinginess combined with total, purposeful denial. That being said, I think it's time for another group walk...

Miss you, Hil.

Intermission.

2008-10-06T08:25:00.015-04:00

**Disclaimer: Although this blog was created primarily to report back on my adventures in the Peace Corps, it is also my own personal space to explore, well, whatever I want to. This next blog has nothing to do with anything. I have visited my permanent site and do have lots of interesting things to say about it. However, I don't want to write about that at this moment because today all I can think about is a book I finished reading this morning. Please don't be disappointed. I'll write about the more interesting, reality-based stuff later today or tomorrow.**

It was with a feeling of disappointment that I reached the end of the novel "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami. I read the last ten pages or so at an painstakingly drawn-out pace, sensing the books culmination as the padding of the pages between my thumb and forefinger began to thin. I lay on my back under the ever-vigilant protection of my mosquito net and savored the last chapter, the last page, the last sentence. Upon closing the book I was seized by that infrequent urge to re-examine each solitary word and its relationship to every carefully sculpted passage in the entire novel. I am, admittedly, a sucker for deliberately, cleanly written works of fiction. Concise writing allows the subject matter to take on a more ethereal quality. This style is appropriate in Murkami's world, where alternate realities overlap and souls searching for fulfillment flutter back and forth between them.

I defiantly turn back to the first chapter and, without taking my eyes off the page, rummage around my purse for a pen. Success! My right arm produces a black pen with just the right amount of ink to make a mark without blurring. I feel like a architect about to examine some ancient relic. Unlike the architect, however, I fully intended to graffiti all over my treasure and, in doing so, make it more my own.

I normally treat even books I deem unworthy of having been published with a sort of reverence most would reserve for the Holy Bible. I always turn pages gingerly and consider dog-earring to be an appalling method of bookmarking. Not the neatest person, I will pile anything (including clothes) on the floor with the exception of books. Books belong on a shelf unless there is a cushy rug already in place... in which case anything goes.

Coming from this school of thought it is easy to see why I was so appalled to see one of my best friends unabashedly attack his books; his messy writing sprawled across page after page, seeming to suffocate the typescript. Having read some of his original work, only respect for this friend as a writer himself halted my urge to stage a rescue attempt from his gushing mind.

I watched him do this for the entire four months that we spent living together in Shanghai. It is only natural that friends influence one another; ever heard of peer pressure? I therefore reserve the right to blame him for my downward spiral and the personal discovery that I, too, have a weakness for seeing my own thoughts dancing crookedly down margins and somersaulting between pages. This is not a narcissistic act of defacement. Rather, I am consistently astounded by my own thoughts. Snippets of commentary and zooming opinions bounce around my mind at such a lightning pace that I spend an inordinate amount of time in my own head merely sorting through a handful of them. It is delightful to return to some of the more interesting ones, and observing them in their original context has become a mechanism for getting to know myself a little better.

That being said, I do not personalize every book I read in this manner. Since I was a little girl, my mother has commented on my ability to inhale books - a bad habit that I have never successfully kicked. It is only my favorite books that I choose to nibble on, delicately savoring each individual component. Such careful treatment must be allotted to that which I choose to read and read again, re-examining old themes in a quest to discover new ones as I journey through the pages once more. Forgive me, oh God of Literature, for it gives me great pleasure to make these books mine, mine, mine.

Akon tatay. (My dad.)

2008-09-29T08:08:00.004-04:00

"It may not be quite the end of the Earth but we suppose you'll be able to see it from Guimaras!" - Larry Schwartz; akon tatay.

Guimaras may be beautiful, but it's incredibly impoverished and rural. My supervisor brought a written report of the school and a few pictures to show me... it is a very poor area. The students are frequently absent or not attending school at all in order to provide a supplemental income for their family. Today I stole some permanent markers from the Peace Corps; they leave them in the hotels anyway because the staff doesn't want to carry them back to Manila.

On the other hand, we are being put up in a nice hotel for a few days before heading out to site. There is AC, toilet paper, flushing toilets, showers (not buckets), beds sans mosquito nets and, most exciting of all, another city of volunteers are participating in the conference, as well. We haven't seen them since that first week in Manila.

I don't have much to say, but I did want to say Happy Rosh Hashana. I gave the only other Jewish volunteer a big Chag Sameach hug this morning. I'm thinking of you, family. Happy New Year! Love you all (and, admittedly, a tiny bit homesick for you).

There is a synogogue in Manila... maybe next year. Apparently I was there with my parents when I was two and we were residents of Davou City. My mother and I sat in the women's section.

And for those of you that asked - I do indeed like the guy I will be sharing an island with. He's really nice and will be a good friend. The nearest hospital is about ninety minutes away and requires a boat ride (my island really has nothing except beaches and biking), but I trust Peace Corps to be my knight in shining armour. My host parent at my permanent site is a former Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF) for the Peace Corps so she knows all the ins and outs. I haven't met her yet, obviously, but my current LCF has only great things to say about her and I know she will look out for me. My current host family is insistent that I take one of the three dogs. My favorite one is a medium-sized, smelly mutt named King. I think he'll be the one.

Off to drink wine with my girls in the hotel room and feel human for the first time in quite a while. Sorry if this blog sounded a little loopy - I'm always feeling slightly drunk on Malaria Pill Monday.

Tag balay? (Anybody home?)

2008-09-28T03:57:00.015-04:00

I know where I'm going.

GUIMARAS - "Mango Island of Visayas"

http://www.islandguimaras.com/

Tourism, handicraft, food processing, agriculture, and fishing are the major industries of Guimaras. It has scenic and magnificent white sand beaches and island coves. It has the best diving site with its splendid coral reefs and marine life, which are impressing to the sight. The island is also famous for handicrafts like woven “buri” bags, mats, hats, and baskets. It is also famous for its lime industry, mining industry, fruit processing industry, and coconut industry.

Guimaras is home of the famous and the best export-quality mangoes in the Philippines. Mango plantations with golden fruits are scattered in the island. Aside from mangoes, kalamansi and cashew nuts are also abundant. Moreover, the seas of Guimaras teem with fresh fishes, shellfishes, and lobsters. Guimaras also produces a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, orchids, and root crops.

I've also heard you can bike around the entire island in a day. Although I will be living in Jordan, the capital of Guimaras, it is still considered to be a rural location. That being said, I am about forty minutes (20 minutes by jeepney to port and then another 20 minutes ferry ride) from Iloilo City on Panay Island, where a number of my counterparts have been assigned in and around. From Iloilo (by car), it is only four and a half hours to Boracay Island; one of the Philippines' premier vacation spots. However, wikipedia.com (which we all know is a totally reliable) had this to say:

"Guimaras is also famous for its beaches. Clear blue waters, white sand and marine life rivals that of Boracay" and "The Guimaras Island is famous for producing the sweetest mangoes in the world. Guimaras mangos are reportedly served at the White House and Buckingham Palace. Guimaras' largest event of the year is The Manggahan Festival (the Mango Festival)."

Boracay who? I suppose I could live in a place like that for two years.

There will be one other volunteer on my island - Tom. He's going to be working in a Boy's Home about thirty minutes away. I think we're both very excited, although still trying not to get our hopes up about our actual sites. Although the island might be beautiful, my neighborhood certainly doesn't have to be. I will be working at a high school with 1257 students and five English teachers (aside from me). I really don't know much else, but on Wednesday morning we leave to visit our sites for three days. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say after that...

I was really hoping for an island!!!! Joke, lang.

Mmmm. Mangoes.

Dali lang ha. (Just a moment.)

2008-09-22T23:07:00.003-04:00

The Philippines is home to some of the world's most beautiful tropical paradises. Don't expect your site to be one of them.

Somehow this is the only line I recall from my invitiation packet to join Peace Corps Philippines. The Peace Corps constantly stresses how important it is for volunteers not to get their hopes up. For example; one training activity required us to write down all of our expectations for the next two years on a piece of paper. After we had done so and turned them in, the activity leader surveyed the auditorium and, in a tone denoting the utmost seriousness, said, "That paper should have been blank. You should have no expectations for the next two years. If you don't have expectations, you can't be disappointed when they're not met." We all looked up at her, mouths agape. A roomful of Americans, successful products of an education system that emphasizes setting objectives high and working hard until they've been reached, shocked into silence...

A lot has happened in the last five weeks since that seminar, not the least of which has been an utter breakdown of all the expecatations I (disregarding all warnings) had mentally set. The public educational system here in the Philippines is shockingly outdated, corrupt, it is lacking in serious commitment and teachers are lacking in serious training... I could go on but I won't because the truth is, I've come to terms with it all. The entire system is in need of drastic changes but if it wasn't then I would not be here, right?

The Peace Corps has undergone some recent changes. We made the news here due to some serious budget problems. Here's an excerpt from the article, printed on September 15th in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The agency, which has a budget of $330.8 million, is preparing for an $18 million shortfall over this fiscal year and next, primarily because of the declining value of the dollar and increased food and fuel costs worldwide. It estimates its foreign-currency losses from 2008 alone to be $9.2 million.

Although it might have been my own error, I thought that Peace Corps told us we would be allotted $80 per person to create a "sustainable project" at our training sites (where we spend the first three months in the Peace Corps before being sent to our permanent sites for the following two years). Perhaps it had to do with the budget cuts, perhaps not - either way the Peace Corps informed us last week that we will be receiving a grand total of eight dollars each. That's right. Further, they would like us to write a proposal for how we would like to spend the money. What can we do? Even in the Philippines the answer is; not a whole lot. How's that for no expectations?

One Peace Corps volunteer visited our cluster two weeks ago. One of the first things he said to us was; "People leave early because they come into the Peace Corps thinking they're going to change the world. When that fails they think, okay I'm going to transform this community. No? Okay then, just the school. No? Fine, I'll try to make a difference in the life of one person. And that's just not enough for some people to stay."

Well, here I am at the midpoint of service training. Although it poured rain all morning, it is now a beautiful tropical day complete with sunny skies, suffocating humidity and only a slight breeze. We finally made it to a beach last week for water safety training (we will be taking a lot of boats in the next few years - this country is comprised of 7,107 islands). It certainly was no paradise. The beach was at the edge of a slum village that stunk like fish. A few palm trees presided over a dirt beach that was entirely consumed at high tide by suspicious-looking ocean water. The boat we jumped in and out of was rusted and peeling. We had all been looking forward to finally getting to swim, but once in most of us couldn't wait to get out and shower.

Somewhere in the middle of that day I remembered something a former Peace Corps volunteer advised us in Los Angeles at the very beginning of training. She said, "It's going to be hard, but at some point you'll realize that you're exactly where you're supposed to be doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing." We find out where our permanent site is this coming Sunday and I can say in all honesty - that is exactly how I feel. I'm content with being here in the Philippines and, although I am dying to know where I will be spending my Peace Corps service, I know that I would be happy anywhere. I have no expectations at all of anyone or anything except myself. My expectations for myself are still extremely high and with time perhaps I'll have to knock them down a couple notches... I'm okay with that.

And, in case you were curious, we're combining our eight dollars each to do some sort of "Health Camp" at school. We're doing all the work. The money is probably going towards pamahow - snacks for the participants.

Bahala na si Batman. ("It's up to Batman" or "We'll see")

2008-09-16T00:12:00.033-04:00

I rise at 5.10am to the tinkling of my phone alarm. I can't believe that nine hours have already disappeared since first tucking into my mosquito-netted haven. I have been here long enough to sleep through the midnight cock-a-doodle-doos and incessant barking of the neighborhood canines. Our dogs contribute from their roost directly beneath my window; a fact which bothers me no longer. I understand why my host family's reaction when I first arrived was to ask innocently, "Our dogs bark at night? Our rooster crows? Are you sure? What time did you say?" I suppose one could say that my ability to sleep through it all is part of the general, sluggish cultural immersion I am undergoing.

I allow myself ten minutes of quietly lying still - enjoying the fan and the stillness of the household - until I hear the housekeeper wake up my little sister. Everyone refers to our housekeeper as Manang (elder sister) Gamay - not to be confused with my own title, Manang Julie, or my host mother/aunt whom I call Manang Nene. I affectionately refer to our home as the "house of sisters" which makes them giggle. Although it befuddles my Western-bred logic to envision us as sisters, in community-oriented Filipino culture the deliberate manipulation of language serves as means of making space for everyone in the familial cluster.

I can hardly feel sorry for myself about the earliness of the hour when my little sister is already eating breakfast and preparing for school. Our Manang Gamay is awake the latest; washing the dishes and ironing clothes. Her bed consists of a thin, ragged blanket on the living room floor. Because she wakes up at 4.30am to cook breakfast and works well past my bedtime, it was weeks before I used the bathroom in the middle of the night and, startling her out of a snatched slumber, realized where she slept. There are some things you do not question when thrust into a new culture. I feel it's important to remember that I am the strange one here. I carefully select my requests for elucidation to avoid appearing judgmental or intrusive.

I eventually convince myself to get out of bed. Throwing on my jogging clothes - the same shorts and tank top everyday, washed only after the third wear - I exit my bedroom, kiss my little sister's small raven head, tie my shoes, let out the dogs yipping at the gate, put on my headphones and begin to run.

I've concluded that while several Americans running together is an awesome sight, a single running American is just plain ol' sweaty. At first volunteers would exercise in large packs in order to form a better protective layer against the staring Pinoys and growling mongrels. Now, predictably, it is lucky if we are three. Some have opted out in favor of much-needed slumber while others prefer to run in the evening. I prefer the clarity of morning-time. The floating dust caused by daytime activity has been washed away by the nightly rainfall, leaving a coolness in it's wake that here, in a land so intensely humid that the pages of my journal have curled backwards into themselves like flower petals, I am loathe to miss. As a result I sometimes find myself to be the lone, dripping American in a race against the six o'clock crowning sun.

As I approach my first neighborhood loop I look up and smile at the beautiful landscape in the distance. The sky is stained pink, yellow and blue as the sun announces it's daily ascent from behind the mountains. Thin, wispy clouds crowd together and form a transparent fog. The mountains and the tiny neighborhood I run in are separated by several kilometers of fields filled with green sugarcane stalks of a height that would intimidate any man. My heart is fit to burst with the ecstasy of being young, adventurous and alive. I try to keep my eyes on the horizon as long as possible - I know from previous runs that once I lower my gaze this wonderful feeling will dissipate. The contrast between what is immediately in front of me and what lies in the distance is startling.

Used diapers stolen from garbage bags and torn to bits by wild dogs are strewn carelessly across the road. Candy wrappers and all other manner of waste congregate in random piles. I watch as an especially mangy animal trots by me with its mouth proudly clamped around some manner of fecal treasure. I slow to a walk, worried that a misinterpretation of my movement could cause it to chase and attack. As I run past a man cutting his meager lawn with rusted household scissors and a woman cooking breakfast over a fire, I am almost hit by a sparkling yellow motorcycle. A man opens the gate to his house and steps outside; revealing a matching porch set and a hammock within. I marvel at the capacity of seemingly opposing forces to occupy the same space.

Up ahead a woman glances at me and leans down to whisper something in her daughter's ear. The wide-eyed, pretty girl is wearing the uniform of the local public elementary school. In a characteristically Filipino manner, I raise my eyebrows at them in a sort of "hey, I see ya" acknowledgment. Both faces break into gleeful smiles.

I round the bend and begin my second loop. The sun is significantly higher than before, and is now radiating outward from behind the peaks. To my left three small boys play with a broken plastic truck attached to a string. They follow the string's charge as he drags it up and down a small mound of dirt. Chickens scatter from the drive as the vibrations of my footsteps announce my impending approach while the occasional rooster preens off to the side. The world of the Filipino fighting cock is bound by a foot-long string, attaching their leg to a wooden peg in the ground. In front of me a man in street clothes walks casually. I am struck both by the ragged, backwards Dickies cap on his head and the shotgun slung carelessly over his shoulder.

In all probability this man is just on his way to work as a security guard. In any case, I try not to glance at him as I begin my third and final neighborhood loop. It's nearing six o'clock and the heat is quickly intensifying; I can taste the air thickening. I recall a conversation I had with my Manang Nene the previous evening. On the news a reporter was interviewing child soldiers in Mindanao. These children were not working for the Filipino military but for a terrorist organization known as MILF (Moro-Islamic Liberation Front). I recognize the absurdity of the acronym.

The word "GALIT" flashed across the screen and I asked my host mother what it meant. As is her routine when I ask about Tagalog words, she told me but immediately translated it to Ilonggo. Kaogot. Anger. "Those children should be holding pencils not guns!" She said, emphatically echoing a sentiment heard somewhere before. She began to tell me about the 1980s - when she was a fifth grader and the NPA (New People's Army) was at war with the Filipino military in her barangay. Her family was forced to hide in a trench dug into the floor of their nipa hut for five years, on and off. "You can really see the bullets dancing back then," she said. She witnessed the killings of both the barangay captain and his son and the abandonment of their decomposed bodies in the street. At some point in the telling of her history she put the baby down and stood up, incensed. "They kidnapped my father and brother!" she exclaimed, "My father was only the manager of the kopra businnes; not the owner. He only had small money!" Kopra is the dried shell of a coconut, often used to make soaps or other lotions. It was years before she would be able to hear loud noises without immediately having a nervous breakdown.

I think further back, to a week or so ago, when I had my classroom artistically interpret a William Wordsworth poem. One group of students drew the Romantic poet wearing a New People's Army t-shirt. I'm not exactly sure why (as my co-teacher was unable to explain it and the students had already rushed out of the classroom by the time I noticed it), but it proves that terrorism and the presence of such militia groups is hardly a relic of the past. It is alive and well in the minds of even the local high school students.

Manang Nene often says that although her family may not have a lot of money, at least they are "not like the people of the mountains" who "really have nothing." It sounds as though she is trying to convince herself. I ask her to please elaborate and she tells me about public school teachers assigned to the mountain regions that end up spending their salaries on food for students. She mentions Manang Gamay's three children, who live at her village in the mountains. They go without meals, washing and schooling on a regular basis. When they visit our home Manang Nene says that she allows them to bathe in the outside faucet. Why doesn't she allow them to stay on the floor with Manang Gamay on occasion? Why doesn't she let Gamay go home more often than every few months? Why not give them her children's old things? Again, I keep my thoughts and opinions to myself. I have only immersed a few toes worth of myself into this culture and I do not feel comfortable asking a question that might require soaking my whole foot.

Partially to distract myself, I wonder aloud why they don't send Peace Corps volunteers into those beautiful mountains. They are picturesque, somewhat near a city and the people clearly need assistance of any capacity. At the very least I would not have encountered Principal Do-Nothing. "Ack! No!" she gasps, "There is New People's Army there!" When the Filipino military eventually kicked the NPA out of communities like her own, they escaped through tunnels dug into the mountains and have thrived in various mountain ranges around the country ever since. Plantation owners to this day cannot fire hired pickers, even those that do not show for work, because the NPA will surely burn their fields in retaliation. A sort of modern-day Robin Hood, the NPA targets the corrupt and wealthy (one does not often exist without the other) members of society. Manang Nene reminds me that although they do not target foreigners specifically, groups that embrace destruction and violence should be avoided at all costs. "They did not try to kill citizens in my barangay," she says, "but when there is fighting in a place where people are living..."

I bring my mind back into the present and focus on jogging. The sun is almost a full round ball and my run is nearly complete. I exit the neighborhood via a hill with a sharp bend and as the sweat drips off the tip of my nose I worry that a tricycle will blindly ricochet down towards me. I guess I worry a lot here. The usual trio of young men are hanging out and smoking at the hilltop in front of a sari-sari store. They grin at me and, while blowing an enormous cloud of smoke in my face, cheerfully wish me a good morning. Acts of kindness do not always translate well across cultures. They are too-often marred by misunderstanding and a difference in societal norms. I wonder how many times I will make a similar mistake during my service here.

I finally reach my house and play with the dogs in the yard, taking advantage of the fact that I am already too disgusting to acquire any new forms of bacteria. Manang Nene sees me through the window and calls out, "Ah, you were not lazy today!" These are her first words to me every morning. Either that, or a more scornful, "Ha. You were lazy today!" I think that sometimes I am able to get up and go simply in a desire to avoid the latter commentary.

I am just beginning to recognize and understand the various tensions of this nation. The disparity between the dazzling mountains and their hidden secrets echo in a community that is home to both rags and riches. The most devastating effects of human nature mock the lives of the planet's innocent creatures at the same moment that friendliness and goodwill are guilelessly extended.

Over time, as my eyes absorb the complexity of my surroundings, I have become increasingly aware of an inner tension within myself. It manifests itself in a tight line drawn from a twisted stomach upwards to an ever-quickening heartbeat. From there it snakes through some ribs and finds a hook around which to knot itself somewhere in the nape of my neck. I know that I am finally beginning to assimilate but it feels as though the more comfortable I become, the more I find myself mentally caught in purgatory. I am not home, nor am I not not home. I am accepted as a fourth sister and yet I still rehearse questions in my head before giving them voice. I am frustrated with myself for not having the background or the skills to make grandiose, sweeping changes to make the world a little better. Simple observation and mental note-taking is not enough.

It was not until I was rehearsing this blog to myself during an ordinary jeepney ride yesterday while simultaneously contemplating how much I'd enjoyed eating a strange, violet-hued sweet potato the night before that I realized - somehow - that inner-string had disappeared. It was absurd of me to try to understand everything when in reality I am nothing. Just another American do-gooder who probably will not, in the grand scheme of things, ever do that much good. But there I was - smiling like an idiot to myself on a vehicle full of Filipinos. I suppose that I, like the world around me, have found a comfortable inner-medium from which I can function. I figure that as long as I continue to absorb and consider my surroundings... as long as I am trying to do something that will make a small positive difference on this earth, then it's okay to relax a little and enjoy the ride...

Gusto ko lamok ang kaonnon sa panyaga. (I want to eat mosquitos for lunch.)

2008-09-13T03:56:00.003-04:00

This isn't going to be a long winded, overly adjective-ified post so don't panic. A huge turning point is rapidly approaching in my Peace Corps career. My site placement interview is Tuesday and my permanent site will be announced a week from Sunday. Just writing that caused my heart to leap into my throat!

The interview on Tuesday will be about an hour long and, from what we've heard, will include questions like, "How would you feel about learning a whole new language at your permanent site?" and "How would you feel about being placed hours away from the nearest internet cafe?". They already know (but aren't telling) the various locations of our sites, they just claim not to know which peg goes in which hole. Actually, we're pretty sure they've already decided who's going where and are not going to switch us around unless we make drastic statements during our interview. Examples of such statements include; "If you send me to the boonies I'm going home." or "Speaking a language other than Ilonggo is a deal-breaker for me."

My problem is that I have no problem. I really want to make a dramatic, persuasive final argument in one direction or another but I'm having difficult deciding what would be the best situation for me. A more rural region or a city? If I say city, it will most likely be Iloilo City on Panay Island. Do I want to be isolated? If so, how isolated? An hour from the nearest city? Two hours? How important is it to me that I be posted near other volunteers? How near? One hour? Two hours? What if I'm an hour from the nearest volunteer but still six hours from a city?

What I say is going to affect my living situation for the next two years. I've hardly come to terms with the fact that I will be here for that long, and I certainly am not mentally prepared to sway fate in any direction concerning that time. My parents always taught me that voting is a mandatory action - there is always a lesser of two evils. I can hardly afford to be feckless about this. This is the current list of considerations in my head:

City:
- Will most likely be Iloilo (just another dirty, nothing special, polluted place)
- Less visible
- More dangerous
- Internet/shopping/commodities available
- More English
- Bars and nightlife
- Other PCVs will be crashing with me on weekends

Not-City:
- Could be very far from a city
- Lack of internet/shopping/commodities
- I could be on Guimaras, Negros Occidental or Panay islands
- Hardly any English (which I don't mind)
- Extremely visible in the community (definite pros and cons there alone)
- Less dangerous
- Most likely nothing to do besides work
- Most likely will be spending weekends away
- Might be extraordinarily bored

It's sort of strange to even have these options in the Peace Corps. Those who sign up for this type of volunteer service don't do so with visions of city-life... I would like to be near the ocean - for my own personal happiness - but considering Iloilo is on the water that factor hardly sways me one way or another.

I'm leaning towards a more rural location. I figure that I've always lived in or near a city and I have the rest of my life to do so. Moreover, the cities here are dirty and not-so-exciting. That being said, my opinion changes on an hour-to-hour basis.

If you have any ideas/opinions/something for me to consider (ahem, dad) please express them via comments or e-mail.

Bwas na lang kita-kitanay. (See you tomorrow.)

2008-09-11T03:57:00.006-04:00

Want to be on the honor roll? Give your teacher a chicken.

One of my friends reminded me of these words as we discussed our assigned high school. Someone - we can't remember who - offered it as an example of commonplace corruption in the Filipino public school system. I've discussed the high school principal in terms of her fondness for school-hours nap time in a previous post. This afternoon, sufficiently harassed by the Peace Corps co-ordinator, she called for a meeting to discuss the definition of "co-teaching" between Filipino teachers and their American volunteers. Our Filipino counterparts are supposed to be assisting in the classroom and learning new teaching strategies from us, but for the most part they sit in the in the back grading papers and ignoring our lessons. There we were; Four nervous Filipino teachers, four uneasy American teachers, one determined Peace Corps coordinator and Principal Sleepy.

The principal began by reading the definition of "team teaching" from a faded, yellowed Philippine government manual and then told us to air any problems we had with our co-teachers. Criticizing an individual in front of their peers and boss would make for an awkward situation anywhere. The Philippines, as we have been told repeatedly during training, is an extremely non-confrontational culture. Problems between individuals are addressed through a third party - dealing with something directly is considered to be rude and embarrassing.

I experienced this strategic gossip-mill firsthand when my friend's host family had a quandary with the Peace Corps. Instead of discussing it with her they decided to pay a visit to my host family and tell them. Both my friend and I were sitting in the room when this occurred. Although both our families speak sufficient English to have included us in the conversation, their dialogue stuck purposefully to Ilonggo. It was not until the following day that my family "mentioned" the incident to me. I got the hint and dutifully carried the message back to my friend when I saw her the next day. The following morning (four message-carrying days later) she was able to handle the problem. And so, when Principal Napper requested that we volunteers go forth and confront, we politely looked away and kept our mouths tightly shut.

Struck by an awkward silence, Principal Lazy decided it would be appropriate to lecture us on the "poor Filipino government" and drop another hint about the school's "lack of multimedia equipment". While the buildings outside of her office crumble, she thinks that we should donate funds to the school for a second overhead projector. She mentions that "students often miss school to work the fields, they are the children of uneducated sugar cane cutters" expecting us to open our mouths in small Os of shock. Instead, we stare blankly and think "yeah, lady, that's why we're here". She pauses and the tension in the room is palpable. Blinking from behind her large square frames, she tries a new tactic and asks if the students are behaving. She laughs loudly when my co-teacher tells her that I close the door when class starts - embarrassing any students who casually walk in late - and comments on how strict Americans are with time.

Principal Tired has never sat in on any of our classes. This meeting aside, she has for all intents and purposes disregarded the four Americans volunteering their time in her school. One day the two of us found ourselves in the same jeepney. I looked directly at her, but she ignored me altogether. It must have been very difficult for her - a red-headed American girl amongst twenty Filipinos is hardly invisible. She was the only one not staring at me.

Most infuriating of all; Principal Drowsy has called this meeting at three o'clock on a school day. Three of the four teacher-pairs have a class from three to four o'clock, but the students are long gone by the time she releases us from our chika-chika (small talk) a half hour later. "Ah," she proclaims, "we can go home early!" Knowing I shouldn't, I still shoot back, "Yes, it's too bad the students missed a day of class." The Peace Corps coordinator present shoots me a dirty look.

The students are finally, slowly starting to show up for class in larger numbers. Hinay-hinay lang. I think they are becoming interested in my lessons and not just in me. But what kind of precedent is being set here if the principal doesn't even deem the classes important enough to be held as scheduled? Where is the continuity or the expectation? If this is the standard these students don't have a chance.

Nagakanta sula sang Lupang Hinirang. (They are singing the Filipino national anthem.)

2008-09-09T04:47:00.008-04:00

In our daily language classroom we have become very comfortable with one another. Daily singing of the Filipino national anthem (which reaches about two registers above what we are capable) at eight in the morning when sleep is still tugging at our eyes only to be followed by four solid hours of language class... in the heat... with no air-conditioning... keep in mind there are only six of us... will do that. Yesterday we joined together with the other education language class in the area for a special joint session, and our teachers asked us to teach them our fruit song. It goes like this:

(To the tune of Where is Thumbkin?)

Pahu, pahu (x2)

Sandiya, sandiya (x2)
Papaya, papaya (x2)
Fruit salad, fruit salad

Pahu is mango and sandiya is watermelon. After singing it for the other class in rounds with the accompanying dance one of the other class members turned around and said, "And they think we're CIA." We burst out laughing.

Yes, it's true. Some of our host families have come home over the past four weeks to report that neighborhood gossip is abuzz with theories about our "real" reason for being here, in the middle of not-very-much. We have proven ourselves not to be missionaries - we do not proselytize and most of us quietly, compliantly attend Sunday morning mass - so I suppose that being CIA is the next most plausible explanation.

Before my father reads the above and starts to worry that I am becoming Catholic I would like to add that church services are entirely in Ilonggo. I hardly understand a word of the sermon. However, it remains my favorite time of week because it is the only time of week in which nobody talks to (or at) me. Time for self-reflection is rare and I am forced to snatch it where I can. I find it on my morning run while dodging flea-ridden street mutts, in bed huddled under my mosquito net for a brief respite before passing out, during the five-minute breaks in language class... and that is the sum total. But in church, and really only in church, I am totally free for a full ninety minutes to daydream and pick apart the week, moment by moment...

There was the puppy that we watched get run over by a motorcycle. Slightly mangy, very new, it was sniffing along when it meandered into the street. It only made it a few feet. I screamed as the driver failed to swerve or even slow down and then felt my stomach drop as the poor thing writhed - only to be hit by a passing jeepney. John (link to the right of this page) blogs more about it. I stopped watching and started crying as the Filipinos surrounding us started laughing and staring at not the still-alive dog but at the extremely agitated and far more interesting foreigners. Two little girls followed me home asking, "Why are you sad? Why are you crying?" When I pointed out that they had witnessed the same event that I had and asked why they weren't upset by it they replied, "It wasn't sad, it was funny!"

At my school, we are having trouble with the concept of "co-teaching". As trainees we are meant to have support from our Filipino counterparts for the first three months before moving to our permanent sites. Our counterparts have explained to us that their definition of "co-teaching" involves us teaching and them grading papers in the back - internship-style. When our facilitator showed up for an appointment with the school principal to discuss the matter, she encountered a minor roadblock. "Sorry ma'am," she was told, "The principal is lying down for her nap and it's only been five minutes. Can you come back another time?" It was two o'clock in the afternoon on a school day.

August, September and October are the rainy months. Showers arrive unexpectedly, fiercely and frequently. One day a storm snuck upon our morning class. As the volume of rain increased, so did my language instructor's voice...
"You'll learn how to order a meal in a restAUR-"
...she tried, until we were all laughing hysterically, albeit silently as the gush of the water drowned out all competing sounds. Even the fireworks that were being set off at regular intervals all morning to celebrate the arrival of the Christmas months (all months lucky enough to end in "ber") were silenced.

In class today I taught a poem entitled "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by the great romantic poet, William Wordsworth. After dragging the class slowly and painfully through the relatively simple poem my co-instructor asked them each to take a stanza and interpret it artistically. Four group drawings were returned at the end of class and I noticed that one of the drawings was especially thoughtful. Across the top was the stanza they were interpreting;

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

The students had drawn waves, various sea creatures beneath the surface of the water, a romantically-appropriate pastoral landscape in the background and beneath a tree; a man. "Who's that?" I asked. "That's William Wordsworth!" they exclaimed, excitedly. "They really got it." I thought silently, happily as I told the class I'd see them tomorrow. It was only then that I noticed that they had, indeed, drawn the poet William Wordsworth - wearing a shirt upon which the acronym NPA was emblazoned. NPA: New People's Army, the military wing of the Communist People's Party of the Philippines and a recognized terrorist organization. Sigh.

Do I sound as though I have rehearsed this self-narrative in my head? It seems that the only way I process information these days is through a chatty mini-Julie, describing my life to me through her lookout post directly above my prefrontal cortex...

Palangga taka ya. (I love you)

2008-09-03T05:37:00.012-04:00

Left: The road to our town. I love living near mountains...
I sat in the classroom, picking ants off my clothes one by one. Small red ants, mosquitoes and flies are three perpetual pests here. At least one of them is, at any given time, driving me crazy. But, having been seated at a desk in the center of the room, I was slightly perplexed by the presence of so many ants on my body. I watched as a cockroach flew in the open window and scurried across the floor. Ah, that made sense (and yes, the cockroaches here come with a working set of wings). The flies and mosquitoes were landing on my legs as per usual and without a fan in the room that, too, made sense. But the ants... how were the ants climbing all the way up to my shoulders without my noticing? And then I looked up. Above me was a huge, gaping hole in the ceiling through which the rafters were exposed, gutted. "Good lord," I thought, "it's raining ants!"

Today was my second day in the classroom of a Filipino public high school. Although we are strictly supposed to observe at least for the first two days my co-teacher already had me assisting. She repeatedly asked, "What do you plan on doing Friday" and "How do you want to teach this?" and I repeatedly remind her - we are not here to take over, we're here to learn about the Filipino education system.

Actually, I'm fairly sure she's already gotten me into trouble. Yesterday I mentioned to her that each volunteer is allotted a certain amount of money from the U.S. government to jump-start a community project, and that the four volunteers at our school were considering lumping our sums together in order to do something more substantial. I wanted to let her know that we were open to any suggestions from her and offered a few examples - starting a drama club, re-vamping the locked-up library, painting the classrooms or maybe doing something about those "hanging ceilings"...

Right: A normal sight outside of our classroom.

Filipino's think that all Americans are wealthy. I suppose there's really no way to convince them otherwise when all they usually have to go on is television, and when ordinary citizens like my host brother make a grand total of $5/day working at a department store. The four co-teachers whose classrooms we are following for the rest of our pre-service training already asked the Peace Corps for monetary compensation. No chance! We're here to help out in a classroom that often has sixty students. Most students have jobs to complete, such as fishing or working in the fields, before school and during lunch hours and are therefore unmotivated, lacking in home support for education and more absent than present.

The Peace Corps has also filled our heads with hours of information on how to improve classroom management and teaching techniques, which after observing two classes I would argue the teachers in this particular school sorely need. Even I, the least qualified Education volunteer of the lot, know better than to ridicule students for their work in front of the class. In one instance the teacher was making fun of a student for pronouncing "woman" correctly - she told them it was pronounced "women" and wondered aloud how, already in their third year of high school, they could make such a mistake. Yikes.

Left: I enjoy some coconut bought from a street vendor outside class.
Anyway, after I mentioned our community service allotment, my co-teacher spoke with the principal who suggested we buy the school an overhead projector (at a cost of approximately $1000). The school did not have one and the principal, she told me, wanted to meet with us regarding payment for this piece of equipment. I almost burst out laughing. Of course the school didn't have an overhead projector! Not only was the amount of money allotted for the community project a mere $80 (which I had told her) and not only was an overhead projector clearly not in the line of options to increase "sustainability"... considering the state of disrepair the school is in, putting a piece of equipment like that inside it's walls would be like handing a laptop to a three-year old. The walls are peeling, the slogans are misspelled or missing letters, the teachers aren't trained, students stand walk in and out of the classroom freely without reprimand, more students are playing games outside the classroom than attending class, there are no fans whatsoever in a country that never gets cooler than 80 degrees fahrenheit, most students have no notebook or pencil, some students are not even registered, when it rains (three months of the year) there is serious leakage... an overhead projector... what would even they do with it?

On a lighter note; when I got up to speak in the classroom, the students cheered. A few of the girls follow me around asking me questions. They call me "Ms. Beautiful" (I would be more flattered except some of the girls thought another male volunteer was Tom Cruise and other students were asking another volunteer for her autograph.) I told one class that they could teach me one phrase in Ilonggo per day. This blog's title was yesterday's phrase. When two students asked for my phone number, I agreed to share it on the condition they kept it a secret. Last night I got two messages:

"Hi.mis gd afernon .flor."

"Mis julie gd nyth sweet dream."

Higko nga akon tiil. (My foot is dirty.)

2008-08-31T05:43:00.004-04:00

He puts his arm protectively around her for a moment, slipping into a tough-guy role only momentarily before returning to gameboy. Slouched over the Mario Brothers with unkempt hair falling in his face; his smooth, bare chest and slim waist do not convince me that in only two months this boy will be someone's father. Every fifteen minutes or so he puts on his mansuit, puffs out his chest and pats her belly lovingly, expectantly. He personifies his own interpretation of manhood in an attempt to squelchingly remove that last, stuck foot and walk out of childhood.

And she. Shyly smiling. Although she is younger than he, hers is the kind of strength that, like a tree, seems to draw support from the very ground beneath her. She glows from inside as she walks around the house, watches television, eats breakfast... exuding dignity and pride like a scent that lingers in her wake. She was studying to become a teacher. Although this person inside will put off her plans, I have no doubts that she is ready to be a mother.

In this Catholic country contraception is not part of education and although it is exists, it is not necessarily encouraged. Abortion is totally illegal. When it happened, her parents spoke to him and, as I am told often happens, they were married. Seven months pregnant, jobless, homeless and flitting from one relative's spare bedroom to another they quietly go about their days, never straying far from their current residence except in the case, such as yesterday, of a family outing.

Yesterday was a rich girl's birthday. The daughter of a close family friend, I was kindly invited along to the celebration. I watched as we left the Philippines and entered an alternate realm. Two security gates requiring guest lists to enter, high barbed-wire fences, manicured lawns, two-car garages, monstrously large air-conditioned homes. Was I back in American suburbia?No... but close. This was a community composed primarily of American expats married to Filipinas. Swimming pools, flushing toilets, volleyball courts and of course the (widely discussed by the owners and converted to dollars for my benefit) $300,000 homes. My immediate feeling was of pure joy - for at least one afternoon I was going to have hot showers and flushing toilets with toilet paper.

The party commenced and I had a wonderful time swimming with all the children. I taught them "Marco, Polo," "Sharks and Minnows" and other poolside games I've acquired along the way. The sky turned pink and yellow as the evening wore on. We hopped out of the water long enough to play hide and seek, squealing as our feet accidentally touched a frog or other creature hidden by the dusk.

I took a break from my frolicking and sat down with them, teasingly asking him to join me in playtime. He blushed and reached for her hand. She asked me in detail how the homes compared with my own in America - size, amenities, architecture. She often asks me about America, leaning into my every word, her brow furrowing as she tries to visualize it. What animals do I see by my house? Do we have air conditioning? Do I know how to drive? And him... there was the night he wondered aloud, "Is Maryland near Africa?" and the whole family burst out laughing. He no longer asks me questions, but this afternoon I bought him a map

I am fascinated by them. Young people making more young people. Their reality is unfathomable to me. Mentally I am aware that they are the norm in many, many places - including the community in which I currently reside. Including in the home in which I currently reside. Even in communities in my own country. Even for younger couples than these two. Even for Bristol Palin, the daughter of VP-hopeful Sarah Palin.

I wonder what they think of me. I just spent an afternoon teaching girls how to cartwheel; turning my knees the color of grass and my feet the color of mud (please note my newest expression in Ilonggo). A solo redheaded, American girl in Asia. This is not my culture, my language, my people, my home. I've explained the Peace Corps to them a few times and I know that they understand my words. She, especially, is very smart. The fact remains that volunteerism is a luxury of the wealthy. The general concept of me, reciprocally, must be equally unfathomable.

In 1968 Ivan Illich spoke to an audience of young American volunteers. Read it here, but the following is a good summation:

"I do have deep faith in the enormous good will of the U.S. volunteer. However, his good faith can usually be explained only by an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy, By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middleclass "American way of Life," since that is really the only life you know."

I've been grappling with Illich's words since first reading the speech a few days ago. I've come to the following conclusion: In the end, there is no entirely unselfish act. We're all in the Peace Corps for our own selfish reasons, ranging from adventure-seekers to those promiscuous young men of whom Illich makes reference. In the end, I think that the Peace Corps does a decent, persistent job "teaching" us how to be less-offensive Americans and that in the end, the good we do increasing sustainability (the Peace Corps' favorite word of them all) outweighs the cultural offenses and faux pas along the way. I hope.

During the ride home from the party I rest my head on her shoulder. There is that level of comfort between us, at least. I lift my head up to look out the window but a moment later she gestures for me to rest it again. I do, and we sit there like sisters... or mother and daughter. I wonder how to bring us closer without personifying Illich's volunteer. I realize that she probably has more to teach me about the ways of the world than I could ever hope to show her. With her as my pillow I fall asleep... pondering the many paths people take through life and how sometimes even the most unlikely of all can link together for a time.