May 19, 2004 - One of the neat things about being a Peace Corps volunteer is that you can pretty much do almost anything you want. It also means you never really know what to expect, be it success or failure. It makes living interesting.

All summer I've been hoping to put together a soccer camp for kids. I finally got all the pieces together - kids, a DVD player, the movie Bend it Like Beckham and some girl soccer players from the Tacloban girls team (its the Tacloban team, but all members are college students from UP-Tacloban).
It might seem easy to do, but it took me a lot of time. It probably is easy to do in America. But this was, I am sure, the first soccer camp in Carigara. It worked! Up above is our group photo.

It was a fun day for me because the girl soccer players were very much what I would call city girls. We watched the movie first. When we headed out to play, they saw our girls in jeans and slippers and told them to change. But we here in Carigara always play in jeans and slippers! I had to explain this to the city girls. Its normal for me because this is what I've always seen them play in.
Our city girl friends had all the "real" soccer gear. Real soccer shorts. Real soccer shoes. I mentioned this to the little girls as the city girls were changing. Their response was they had "real slippers." First of all, girls here in Carigara will not wear shorts outside for sports. I have even adopted this. One time, way long ago, I was wearing shorts and was about to hed out to play. The girls told me I should change.

The city girls did a great job of teaching the children some of their drills for quickness and ball control.
The boys were troublemakers, as always, but they got pretty tired.

We played a little game of boys against girls, the favorite challenge. The boys looked liked "street ball" soccer, running all over the place. The city girls knew what they were doing, making the right passes. But our little boys can run, run, run. We only played a little, but we left with our boys in the lead. |Our new city girl friends have promissed to return for a rematch.

The purpose was to have fun, but I also recognize what a great opportunity it is to have the city girls visit us.
I think it is great exposure for the kids to meet and interact with them. Of course our city girls friends are nice people as well.

It is summer, so the Paner home is filled to the brim with relatives visiting from Manila and other places. There must be at least an extra 15 or 20 people running around and sleeping on every space available. Many of these guests are little kids. One of the neat things about any Filipino family is that there is always a bunch of kids. Everyone has lots of kids, so there is lots of excitement when they are all
together. We went to a neighboring in Jaro, where Aida was from, for fiesta. It must be tough to be Aliw (middle with the plate), one of the "older" kids. She can't even eat lunch peacefully. But that's the way we do things here in the Philippines.

Little Jo Belle (in blue denim) is my nemisis. She is from Manila, so she speaks Tagalog. I don't understand Tagalog. She does not believe this is true. She will speak to me all day and night hoping I will understand. She is lucky she is cute.
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