Happy 2012!

One of my students asked me if I thought the world would end this year.  That turned into an interesting discussion.

I hope you all had a lovely holiday and are excited for this year—I definitely am.  Returning to school and my routine, I’ve had quite the boost.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so motivated at the turn of a new year before.  I think it’s the combination of that plus having been here for four months now that’s making me feel pretty awesome.  Starting to feel more like a local; I’ll be moving into my apartment hopefully within the week… The carpenters are working on “Filipino time,” running about a month behind schedule but oh well.  I’ve just been collecting things for my new place.  I’ve got about as much as I can afford for now.  What else is new; I somehow burn through all my money.  I am still keeping a notebook of my daily expenditures, all the way down to my trike and jeep fares though, so I do KNOW where my money’s going at least.  My vacation travels were certainly not cheap, so that’s at least one explanation.  But it’s fine.  Those eleven days were amazing and totally worth binge-spending money.  I’m no stranger to living like a cheap-o, so it’s all good!

Anyways, as I was saying, I’ve suddenly been hit with some major WHOO WHOO power!  I’ve been having a ton of ideas for the upcoming months, and projects for summer vacation (which is April-May here).  My fellow PCVs have been feeling the same way, too, and are working hard on organizing camps and workshops at their sites.  All of my brainstorming will certainly result in similar activities, but I’m taking my time and I want to really get input from my students and community before getting the ball rolling on these things, to make sure it’s exactly what people are hoping for.  And I don’t want to skimp on any of my efforts.  So we’ll see.  But I have a ton of ideas floating on, and will certainly be sharing those with you as they begin to take shape.  But for now, I’m going to have to keep you in anticipation.  Keep you hanging.  That’s what the best writers do, right?  Make you continue to come back for more.  Which I hope you are.  Although there have been plenty of lapses of time with my posts, I hope I’ve been able to keep piquing your interest and making you laugh at the silly idiosyncrasies of life over here.

My site mate’s mom came to visit recently, and it was so funny talking with her about what she’s been seeing.  Her reaction to the daily things I’ve gotten so used to was really amusing.  Her facial expressions when we were talking about bathrooms and trikes and such… it was hard not to laugh because I remember feeling the same way.  Made me think about  when I studied abroad in London two years ago and spent a ton of time traveling around Europe.  Especially around eastern Europe, where things are much different from our familiar westernized lives.  Just those brief visits to places without modern conveniences was a bit unnerving.  And now it has become somewhat normal.  Not to say that it feels natural by any means.  But it does feel normal.  I’ve learned that there’s a big difference between these two words: normal and natural.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be served a plate of fat on rice and be like, “Oh yum!”  These things continue to make me smirk.  I’ve just learned to find amusement in these differences.  Because if you sit around and say to yourself, “Ugh!  All I want is some pork meat sans globby fat hanging off!” it’s going to drive you up the wall.  What I’ve learned to do is to look across the room and see everyone else thoroughly enjoying themselves, slurping it down like you would with gummy worms, and just smile at how drastically DIFFERENT we are! 

It’s so interesting though, and this sounds kind of dumb, but you don’t really think about how many PEOPLE there are in this world.  Okay I KNOW I wrote about this briefly back in July, but I’ve had a new revelation about it that I want to share this again.  Before coming here, these people didn’t exist to me.  In an egocentric way, if you’ve never been to place “X,” it doesn’t exist to you.  Does that make sense?  It’s just a dot on the map.  Sure, you can Google Earth it.  You look at the satellite view and see rows of square rooftops, cars on the road, but there’s a complete disconnect.  Even if you’re driving somewhere and take a different route one day, that route now exists to you as it didn’t before.  Ahhh it drives me in crazy circles when I think about it. 

 One of my excursions over vacation was to a little island off the coast of San Antonio, Zambales.  My friend and I took a boat over and asked the driver to take us to this other little cove that was tucked away on the other side from the busy ones with tourists.  We ended up being the only non-locals there, and it was just another one of these experiences.  But to think of it as if from their point of view.  Little kids running around, playing.  Dogs rolling in the sand.  An ancient woman who mumbled so softly, even if I WAS super proficient with my Ilokano, there was no way I’d ever understand what she was saying.  She took the tiniest, slowest steps around, but just seemed so at peace that every time I noticed her shuffling by it just gave me this awesome feeling.  Whoa.  My friend and I were talking about this and he said, “You know, she probably has no idea how old she is.”  I mean, I guess if you live in this teeny tiny remote place, maybe life just drifts by so peacefully you lose track of your days, weeks, months, and years.  Quite honestly, wouldn’t time just be relative in that case?  The sun was going down, and she sat quietly at this table with a few other locals, watching it go down.  Seemed like something they just did every day, just so normal.  Whereas I’m looking at it in rapture, totally enamored and entranced with its beauty.  It’s not every day you see the sky changing from blue to orange to pink to a deep fuschia as the sun finally disappears below the horizon.  But I guess it is, for that woman.  So just as her little world never existed to me before that day, my world will likely never exist for her.  The next morning, my friend and I left for New Year’s Eve in Manila, which was funny because we traveled from this quiet, little haven to the biggest, busiest city in Luzon.  Night and day.  Kind of wraps up this thought.

Okay I just read over the last two paragraphs… These tangents must make it sound like I’m sitting around, tripping on something, but I promise that’s not the case.  You would just be surprised at how introspective you become when life slows down like it does here.  Anyways I’m going to head off and take care of some stuff in my existing world.  I hope you are all enjoying the days becoming longer at home; that’s always my favorite part of January.  It’s 6am sunrise, 6pm sunset over here year-round, so I’m missing out on that, but it’s okay.  Again, just different J

Tempus Fugit**

Mr. Randall would be proud of that one.**  That’s Latin for “Time flies.”  ‘Aint it the truth.  Our batch of volunteers arrived in the Philippines July 3^rd.  It’s hard to believe that half a year has gone by already.  It’s a very, very strange thought.  I feel like I’m becoming redundant with this observation, but it continues to surprise me. 

I was talking with my PCV friend recently about how sometimes I feel very disconnected from my friends’ lives back home, and worry sometimes that we forget about each other.  He reassured me that we’re all just living our lives, and although right now they’re geographically separate, nothing can take away what we’ve already shared, and therefore we will always be a part of each other.  I was glad to hear it put in that perspective, and it made me reflect on how the little phases of my short life have been so far, when it comes to friendships.  The most similar example would have to be my years of college. 

My little circle of friends scattered (mostly) around New England, and despite our relatively close proximity, we hardly ever visited each other’s respective schools.  Yet on school breaks and post-graduation, everything seemed to come back around and our friendships have remained.  And when I think about my parents’ relationships with their high school and college friends… the best ones continue to this day.  But anyways, I guess we each gain insight from our friends’ separate experiences and learn from them.  Sometimes this results in growing apart amiably, other times this brings us closer.  In school today we were practicing Q&A in my first year class.  To begin the exercise and break the ice a little, I let the kids each ask me a question.  Most of them wondered when I would find love/a husband in the Philippines (most specifically, if it would be with a Filipino.  Since I’m asked this on a daily basis, I’ve learned how to entertain people with my answer because I always feed into them… “Sigurooooooo!”  [Maybeeee]--- this is always followed by oooohs of glee.)  However I did get a few good ones: Did I think 2012 would really be the end of the world?  What is my proudest achievement?  If I could talk about one of three things, what would it be: people, places, or ideas?

Right away, I knew that my answer to the latter was ‘ideas.’  And as I’m reflecting on my answer tonight, I’m coming up with another reason for this response.  When it comes to my friends and I, because we’ve traveled such different paths, we have very diverse views and ideas on aspects of life.  And as these paths have once again merged onto the same “highway” (I guess), I believe they have helped me gain a better understanding of my own world and human nature itself.  In a way, I have learned how to reach new levels of empathy from sharing ideas with my friends.

I remember having these same worries as a freshman in college.  And I’m just now recognizing that I’m having these same concerns.  Granted they are certainly on a much grander scale, and it very may well be another two years until I see most people from home.  However, as the oh-so-wise Rihanna would say, “So live your life….heyyyyyyyyy.”  Haha J  Just kidding.  But for real, I’m now seeing that the things I’m learning here are just many more ideas that I will be able to share with others for the rest of my life.  This Peace Corps thing seemed like it would be a long 27 months, but with almost 25% of it through already, I’m kind of like “AHHHHH!  I gotta kick it into high gear because this is FLYING!” 

Somewhat of a short entry, but it’s almost 1am and I’m still catching up on sleep from my awesome holiday travels.  I’ll indulge you in those stories later.  Until then, agannad ka!  Take care!

**He’d also be proud of the only other Latin saying I remember… “Semper ubi sub ubi.”  Always wear underwear.  Right, Mom?  Or Patti?**