La Trinidad!

So, my dear friends and family, I apologize for the lack of posts. My host family doesn't have internet, and I have been so busy that I am just now finding an internet cafe (a 2 minute walk from my house!). I'll do my best to sum up what has happened over the past 9 days. As I write this, the sound of jeepneys buzzing by and off-key singers at the videoke bar next door fill my ears. So forgive me if my mind wanders!
Last Sunday we took our seven hour drive from Cavite to La Trinidad. We left at 4:45am, and if you know anything about me... well, you know what that was like. I stole the whole back seat and sprawled my body across it. What a brat. But whatever. When I wasn't sleeping, I was looking out the windows and my GOODNESS! At one point we were climbing a mountain for over an hour. Uphill, uphill, uphill. When you looked over the side, all you could see was fog. We were so high, we had disappeared into the clouds. Craaazy! Our group took three bathroom breaks. I didn't want to tell them the Keys family could have done it in one :) We arrived in La Trinidad to smiling faces of our host families, which was pretty cool. I am now the oldest of four, daughter Lily, 22, who lives away from home, son RJ, 15, and son Romy (aka Asi), 10. Asi has been my personal language tutor. He helps me make flash cards and I let him play with my build-a-bear that he named "Mr. Green."
Every day we have Ilokano lessons from 8-12, and 1-5. I go to my house for lunch, because it is about 100 yards away from where we have our sessions. I get to leave at 7:59. Nevertheless I am with a family of early risers. Breakfast is always at 6:15, but don't worry- I've already been up for over an hour thanks to the 5 am roosters outside my window. Oh boy. Many more stories, but I better get going to dinner. I'll try to post tomorrow because there is MUCH to talk about! Thank you for all the comments and emails! I love them!

Last Day in Cavite

Today was our last day of Pre-Service Training in Cavite. Tomorrow I, along with seven other education volunteers, travel 7 hours north to La Trinidad, Benguet. We'll be leaving at 5AM (yes, 5 hours from now), so arriving just in time for lunch with all the families. It will be a big welcoming ceremony with everyone, which should be fun! I'm going to miss everyone here; they've all been so wonderful. However, I am suuuuuper excited to get out of the reservation. I've definitely been feeling a bit claustrophobic since the CYF volunteers left the other day.

Today we had our one-on-one meetings with our TCFs (I apologize for the acronyms. Peace Corps thrives on acronyms), mine being Myles. At one point she says "So I did not know you were funny. You always look so serious!" I had to tell her the whole story about how everyone says that, but not to worry-- it's just my relaxed face. DANG! Maybe I'm like one of those intimidating-looking Russian gymnasts. They look like they're P.O.ed all the time, but maybe that is THEIR relaxed face, too! They might be as jolly as Santa Claus, but we just assume they are mean foreigners. I will never judge them (no pun intended) for that again.

Last night a bunch of us watched "The Princess Bride" in the lobby. We were going to call it a painting nails movie party, but our friend Matt, the only guy there, told us we had to rename it to "a movie... and some people painting nails party." I guess that was the masculine title. Who doesn't like The Princess Bride? I'm glad I brought it, and my other movies. Definitely going to be an asset, plus apparently Filipinos looove American movies. Hopefully they like popcorn too. Let's cross our fingers!

A handful of us hung out in the community room tonight, just chatting it up about our new sites, what the current PCVs are saying about it, and whatnot. We're all soo psyched about it. I feel like being here has only been a half reality, in a way. Yes, we are in the Philippines, but other than two mall trips and 2 hours at the beach, we've been here for 13 days. So getting out is going to finally feel real. Which is crazy exciting for me. I just hope I don't look like a sleepy mess tomorrow when I meet my host family!

The Ants Come Marching One by One, Hurrah, Hurrah...

…right through our room! Gina and I have been doing well with accepting the fact that ants crawl all over everything in our room. As I type this, ants periodically crawl across my keyboard. I have to keep blowing them off so they don’t go and crawl underneath the keys. I’m no computer expert, but I’m pretty sure that an ant burial ground under my keyboard wouldn’t be a good thing. I’ll know when that happens because my A, N, and T keys won’t be typing. Their ant families will be ticked (no pun intended) that my oblivious fingers blogged for hours while their Uncle Ned suffered, and they will decide to conduct burial ceremonies under those keys. And seeing as they are Filipino ants, these ceremonies will be eight days long (a new fun fact I learned today from a PCV). So, my dear readers, if you suddenly start reading blogs h look like his (“that look like this” minus a, n, and t), you’ll understand what has happened. Please forgive me. Oh my word. Clearly all these training hours are making me delirious because I just pulled that story out of thin air in 2 minutes. There’s a lot more I could talk about, but I’m afraid I might make up a story more ridiculous than the Harry Potter series. A huge group of PCTs went to see the H.P. premiere tonight, and they are apparently really excited because it means they will have seen it before it opens in the U.S. I don’t know what to say to that.

Yesterday and today we all made lesson plans that we’ll be “demo teaching” tomorrow and Saturday, and I’m really excited for mine. I think they’re pretty cool, if I do say so myself. One’s about differentiating between fact and opinion based statements, and the other is about imperative/ interrogative/ declarative sentences. And yes, I remembered that vocabulary off the top of my head, thank you very much. Becky + Syntax = <3. Nerd alert! Okay, enough of the boring stuff that nobody cares about.

We’ve been learning a lot about the differences between schools in the Philippines and those in the U.S. My personal deterrent from pursuing a career in teaching high school in the States is that teenagers can be really disrespectful to each other and their teachers. But every PCV goes on and on about how wonderful the high school students are, and how they are polite, considerate, and thankful to have a teacher who cares. I’m interested to see this, as it seems to be a natural phenomenon. Perhaps a pandemic that hasn’t left the island. Customs won’t let it through the border.

Two more days of Initial Orientation, then Sunday our cluster has a seven hour drive up to La Trinidad, where we will meet our first host families! The CYF volunteers went up yesterday, and have been texting us about how beautiful it is and how welcoming everyone has been. Before any of that happens, I’ve got to pack everything back up-- yuck. I dropped off my laundry at the front desk, 5 kilos (11 lbs) worth, and it’ll only cost 300 pesos (~ $7) to have it done and my shirts ironed. There were about 30 articles of clothing in that bag. Thank you very much. Dang. If that’ll always be the case, you better believe I’ll be sending my laundry out for the next two years. In February I got one dress dry cleaned in Scituate and it was $16. Bologna!

Some of nature’s wonders… Today a butterfly flew onto my friend Kayla’s hand as she was sitting at a table. It was amazing. (Mom—who do you think that was?) Also, during our morning merienda (snack time), a little 3 inch-long gecko was skittering around on the floor. A few of us saw him and didn’t want him to get squashed, so my friend Mike helped him out of the door with some gentle toe-pokes. Also, the frogs here are craaaazy! At night it sounds like the frog symphony in The Little Mermaid, when Ariel and Eric go for a rowboat cruise and they sing “Kiss De Girl.” Sha la la la la la don’t be shy… But for real, they are crazy loud. And you wouldn’t believe the crickets, either. The first day I thought there was an alarm going off for hours, and I said this to one of the staff and they were like, “Oh ma’am, those are the crickets.” They are super loud. And sometimes they’ll just stop for a while, and then start up all together again. But they sing all day long. I can’t think of any Disney movies with singing crickets---help me out, people. I wish I had a tape recorder or something so y’all could hear the sounds. Maybe I’ll try a video and see how it turns out.

A few of us got together Tuesday night with our Technical Cultural Facilitator (TCF), Myles, to work on our Ilokano after dinner. We ended up practicing for an hour and a half! It was a blast. Myles is a riot, and the four of us were just joking about how ridiculous the words are. Myles is from northern Benguet, but it’s an area that is actually the hottest place in the Philippines. Just a weird geographical oddity, kind of like Scituate I suppose. And Dad, I found out that they roll their r’s too. Myles said they stole it from the Spanish :) So that’ll be another challenge I’ll have to work hard at. I was never good at rolling my r’s. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes!

Well, I’m off to do some finishing touches on my visual aids for my lessons tomorrow… Corie, you’d be proud at how super-teacher-y they are. Obviously with my flawless handwriting, which my friend Kevin today told me should be a font. Love it. Happy times.

Unleashing the Creative Genius of Peace Corps Trainees

Today us Education PCT's split into our "clusters," which are the groups we will be staying with once we travel to our training sites. There are eight of us going to Benguet, and another eight that are Community, Youth, and Family (CYF) Trainees. Anyways, throughout the day we had 4-two hour sessions on Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking English. I'm honestly considering taking our training schedule and notes home two years from now and presenting it to UNH to ask for my master's in education. By the end of these two weeks we will have had 96 hours of training (I counted), and then we're at our sites, doing all day training for another 9 weeks. I'm pretty sure that'd equal at least a year of hourly credits.
Anywho, in our Writing group today we did an exercise called a "writing chain," in which the teacher begins with half of a sentence and passes it to the first student, who finishes the sentence and continues writing the story, passing it to the next person, and so on. By the end of the circle we ended up with an AWESOME story. These are the people I'll be headed into the mountains with. I am SO pumped. Enjoy!

I woke up this morning, got up from bed, when suddenly my mom screamed in horror as she looked at my face. There was a huge pimple on my nose. She rushed me into the bathroom and the pimples began to spread all over my body as we looked in the mirror. My mother decided that we should show my father, a dermatologist by hobby. Before we reached him, however, the pimple on my nose began to talk. It said, “I’m the king of the world!” My mom agreed with the pimple. We wanted to let the whole world know so we took a plane to Zimbabwe because Leonardo DiCaprio was shooting a movie there, and as everyone knows he was the original king of the world. Also Zimbabwe has the best policy for dealing with people and things that think as highly of themselves as the pimple on my nose. But as soon as we got to Zimbabwe the pimple was exposed to the dry, African heat. It dried up and went away. However, I didn’t have enough money to fly back home and I will have to live in Africa forever.

The end.

Gym Class Clearly Taught Batch #270 Nothing About Volleyball

Today was water safety day! Yayyy! We had a much needed excursion from the “compound” and went to Villa Excellance, a beach in Tanza, Cavite. I was expecting those white beaches you see in photos, but this one was a little different. The sand was black! I’ve never seen anything like it—one of the girls thought it was from volcanic ash? I don’t know… will someone Google that for me, please? There are a ton of volcanoes throughout the Philippine islands, both active and dormant. I want to hike to the top of a dormant one at some point; I’ve heard people do that. I have a feeling that’d be pretty awesome.

The point of this training was to teach you how to get in and out of a boat, what to do if your boat sinks, and how to escape someone trying to desperately hang onto you in the water. Hee-yah! Practiced my karate moves. These boats were pretty native, to say the least. They’re all handmade, and the one our group was supposed to get into started sinking as we tried getting into it. Sooo we made the executive decision to wait a bit longer and take another one. I told them it would have been a more realistic scenario, but I don’t believe that was the popular opinion.

Once we finished on the boats, we were just hanging around the beach and saw some Filipinos down a ways, playing volleyball. A few of us went down, and after a couple minutes a whole bunch more came down to play with them! At first our teams were all mixed and then one of the Filipinos said with a big smile on his face, “Filipinos vs Americanos!” and we all switched. Needless to say it ended up a slaughter. Some of them were taking it seriously, but whenever a point was scored, everyone cheered. Definitely did NOT remind me of gym in Scituate High School. It was so fun. I wish I could do that EVERY day. A lot of them spoke little or no English, and would just “blablabalbalblablablabla hahahahaha!” and you kind of stand there nodding and laughing along. Granted they were probably saying, “Wow you Americans are SURPRISINGLY awful at sports! Hahahaha!” and I’m just standing there agreeing. Yep. Ignorance is bliss.

And when I suggested taking a photo, I might as well have held up 1 million pesos in my hand, for the reaction I got. People rushing around, posing, laughing, making faces… and then another 10 cameras popped up everywhere, everyone wanting their own shot. We ended up with a massive photo shoot. Love it.

Today was a good day :)

Naimbag nga rabii mo!
(Good night!)

Mr. Photographer, I Think I'm Ready For My Close-Up

As an Americana, I don't think there's anything that could make you feel more like a movie star than walking through a mall in the Philippines. My Goodness! Walking around, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is watching you in wonderment. The salespeople come rushing up to you with big smiles on their faces saying "Hello Maam! Oh you're so beautiful! So pretty! Hello Maam! Hello Maam!" According to the current PCV's, Maam and Sir are what Filipinos address anyone if they have great respect for them. And everywhere we walked, it was "Hello Maam!" It was wild. And when they could help you find something, it was like they won the lottery.

I was checking out at one of the stores, and the total was 173.25 (Philipine pesos) and I start counting out my cash, and she asked if I had 25 cents and I said "I have no idea! Can you help me?" I spread all my coins out on the counter and she started giving me a currency lesson, showing me that yes, I did indeed have 25 cents. At one point I said "You are a great teacher!" and I think she may have peed her pants. She turned to all of the other cashiers and was like, "She said I'm a good teacher! Thank you, Maam!" Hahaha she genuinely WAS a big help, and I thought she'd like a compliment. Later on my friend and I were casually looking at some hair accessories and a saleswoman came up to us, smiling, said "Hello Maam!" and proceeded to just linger as we slowly walked around. She was just gazing...

This wasn't the only reaction though. We were in line at the grocery store (yes, in the mall) and a little girl-- she might not have even been 2 years old-- saw me. I smiled and waved, and a look of shock and horror came over her face and she started frantically wiping the sides of her face, I'm assuming to make sure all of our faces didn't just lose pigmentation. I looked up and her mother and grandmother were smiling at me, and laughing at the little one. So cute.

This was really interesting to me, though. Earlier that day we had a training session about diversity. I've sat through a fair number of diversity seminars throughout my college career, but this one really stuck with me. As a debriefing at the end, they gave us a paper entitled "List of White Privileges." It was a research project done by a professor at Wellesley College in the '80s, and I just found it extremely insightful. After my mall experience, one of these "privileges" really hit me. #1: "I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time." If it wasn't for the other PCV's, I would have been the only white person in the entire mall. I was really looking out for others, but with no success. It was such a powerful moment when I realized this, because for the first time in my life I felt like a 100% COMPLETE outsider. Yes, everyone was beyond friendly, but I was still absolutely out of place. Even through all of my European travels, I could always find people that looked like me. Not here. This was a significant realization. In school we are taught about diversity and what it's like to be a non-white American. And of course there's no way I could ever know what it's really, truly like to grow up as a minority in my own country, but last night was a little bleep in time that I felt what it's like to stick out in a crowd. It was a real learning moment for me.

Anyways that was my wild night at the mall :) Time for some zzzzzz's...

You Can Stop Holding Your Breath, Mom, I'm Here :)

Phew! I made it! So yes, I know it’s been a whole week and you’ve been waiting in breathless anticipation for this oh-so-exciting blog post. (Once I start speaking Ilokano I don’t know if my sarcasm will translate, so bear with me if I overuse it here). It seems like I’ve been gone for sooo long because so much has happened this past week! I’ll do my best to condense it and not bore y’all to tears.

So Friday I had my lovely flight from Boston to LA… 6 and ½ hours wasn’t actually that bad because the whole time I was like “whatamidoingggggg?” Just crazy butterflies. Basically take every SAT, my driver’s test, and every dive meet—put them all together and that’s what I was feeling. Get to sunny LAX, and go out to the hotel shuttles. Someone taps me on the shoulder and asks if this was the Radisson bus stop. I turn around and it’s a guy holding the same Peace Corps paper I was! My first PC friend! So we got on the bus, and met another PC girl, and 5 minutes later we got to the hotel and there was a whole smorgasbord of PCT’s (Trainees—yep that’s us)!

Friday was crazy full of registration/pre-training training, ice breakers and whatnot. There are 59 of us in our “Batch # 270.” The number is based on how many groups have gone to a country. Therefore, we are the 270th batch of PCV’s (Volunteers) to go to the Philippines. Pretty crazy. The Peace Corps was founded in 1961, and the Philippines was the second country where volunteers were sent. So far there have been more than 200,000 PCV’s worldwide, 8,000 of which have been in the Philippines. I guess you could say we’re in good company!
Saturday we had our flight from LAX to Tokyo. We left at 12:40pm PST and arrived in Tokyo 4:50pm. I just read that first post on Jeff’s blog and it seems we did the same thing: we chased the sun, so our entire flight was full sunlight. Everyone on the plane just kept the windows closed because 12 hours of full sunlight would have been no fun for anyone! Our flight was so sweet though; all of our seats were booked together in the back of the plane—kind of felt like the cool 5th graders in the back of the bus. We spent the whole time playing cards or airplane games (aka car games, but plane version. It made “I spy” a little more difficult to play though), and just talking to everyone. The seatbelt sign was off for most of the flight so we were all just walking around to each other and hanging out… it was totally fun.

In Tokyo we had a short layover and then a 4 hour flight to Manila, landing close to 10pm. Walking off the ramp from the plane we were greeted by 8 or so Filipinos saying “Welcome to the Philippines!” with big smiles! Normally, “tired Becky” (and you KNOW what tired Becky is like) would be having NOTHING of such chipper behavior. But this was so awesome! They were just so genuine, and it was exactly what I needed after so much cabin fever.
By the time we got all of our bags together and on buses, we left Manila at 11 and took (legitimately) fancy coach buses to the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in Silang, Cavite, about 90 minutes south of Manila. The IIRR seems to be a compound of some sort, or a campground or something, I’m not totally sure, but they’ve been spoiling us rotten! I had pictured straw huts with mosquito netting right away, but we each share a room with one other PCT, 2 desks, closets, beds with sheets, pillows and all, a full bath, and, duh duh duh DAAAAA! AIR CONDITIONING! Victory is mine.

The people here could not be more accommodating! They put AC’s in every room 2 days before we came. And we’re taking up 40ish rooms, including all of the other Peace Corps people staying here. In addition, they also installed wi-fi right before we came! I can tell you one thing, you’d be hard pressed to find an American establishment that would go that far out of their way just for one group of people. These Filipinos we have met here are some exceptional people. Whenever you pass by, they’re always smiling and saying “Hello!” I haven’t yet had one pretend not to see me as we cross paths. They’re very cordial. Much appreciated! And the cafeteria food is so cute. They’ve definitely been making a big effort at providing at least one familiar dish at every meal. They will always have traditional Filipino dishes, but for example the other night there was also mac & cheese, another time there was chili con carne (with nachos mixed in… interesting), etcetera. So I think this has all been a big effort on their part to help us make a gradual transition into their culture.

The one non-gradual thing for me has been technology! So obviously the second I turn on my computer here the first night the battery dies. So whatever, I go to plug it into the wall. Nope. My plug has three prongs, and the outlet only takes two. Great. So I used my roommate Gina’s computer to put up a quick Facebook status, saying I was here. I attempted email but the internet was like, “Oh Becky, that’s funny. You think you’re going to get enough connection out of me when everyone else is doing the same? Sorry!” I talked to one of the computer nerds the next day and he said that the amount of bandwith (????) was equivalent to about half that of dial-up internet. I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL, GRANDPA KEYS!!! So anyways that was Sunday night that my computer died and I was going to take the jeepney (ßGoogle image that word) to the mall Tuesday but I passed outttt after training and didn’t make it. Therefore I finally made it to the mall tonight (Thursday) and bought an adapter for the plug, hence I am FINALLY getting a chance to blog!

My fellow Trainees are fantastic! It’s a total mixed bag too, which is really cool. We have two RPCV’s (Returned PCV’s) in our group, one man Rich who taught in Africa back in the ‘60s, and another woman Regina who was also in Africa. I’d say the majority of our group is mid-20s, but there are a few in their 30s, maybe some 40s, a whole bunch in their 50s and a group of 60+. And the whole US demographic too, which I think is especially cool because countries worldwide think being American means blonde hair and blue eyes. Granted I don’t much help this stereotype, but there are plenty of others in our group that do. From what current PCV’s have told us, Filipinos seem to have some difficulty believing that we DO come from such a melting pot (Can you blame them?), so apparently it can be a challenge for some of the non-cookie cutters to be thought of as “American” by their communities. I hope to be able to teach diversity in some way when I have the opportunity to do so. For me, I feel that our diversity is one of the coolest things about being an American. It makes our country special from others. I’ve been having a lot of uber patriotic thoughts this past week, which I’m sure I’ll share at some point, but I’m just trying to condense things here for a moment.

Anyways, yesterday we found out where our training sites will be! We’re here until July 17th, then we go to our training sites until September 20th, when we are “sworn in” as PCV’s (no longer Trainees)—and THEN we go to our permanent work sites. But knowing our training site gives us a basic idea of where we’ll be for the duration of our service. So Dad, open up another Tab because I’m sure you’re going to start Googling and Wiki-ing: La Trinidad, in the province of Benguet. Our training and orientation will be at Benguet National High School, and we’ve already started learning Ilokano, which is the regional dialect.

Yes, I was a bit hesitant at first about this news because Benguet is the “mountainous” region that I didn’t want. BUT I am so totally stoked now. Benguet is nicknamed “the salad bowl of the Philippines” because the majority of the country’s fruits and vegetables are produced there, and I LOOOOOVE my fruit! (Juiciest mango of my LIFE at dinner last night. Melted into gooey deliciousness. Amen.) Also, the PCVs from that region told us it doesn’t ever go below 40 and usually not over 80. So when I think of it that way, that’s basically Scituate from April to August. And I’m loving that, especially since dress code is looking like it’s going to be pants all the time no matter where I am. Apparently our ankles are just so attractive we’ll have to put them away. Here at our secluded compound it’s okay to wear shorts though. I guess the PCV girls say that we’ll just have to gauge what it’s like at our specific work community, because apparently it can differ a lot depending on where you are.

But yes, so BENGUET! (beng-ET) has a ton of hiking trails and apparently the Guinness World Record for biggest strawberry cake, made at one of their strawberry festivals! We could be placed at a number of places in the province too, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be mountain men. We could even be near the water. Either way it’s going to be beautiful and I’m so excited!
Oh my goodness look at the time. I have really funny stories about my mall trip tonight. Maybe I’ll get a chance to write it tomorrow, but until then…

Agannad ka! (You take care!)