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November 18, 2004 - The girls on your left are cute, cute, cute! I am a proud father duck whenever I walk my students from our school to the internet cafe. No one in Carigara gets to be surrounded and adored by as many cute girls as me. Even when I go to the park to play badminton, I get to see some of my former students. If you recognize the faces below from last year's class, notice how much bigger the girls are!
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Birthdays are a big deal in my town, so my family and students certainly would not let the day just pass as I had hoped. Below is my host family with greetings for me. The signs are all designed by Aliw (shortest girl with short hair) and I have kept her signs from last year and this year as souvineers. I am lucky that people are nice to me and take the time to do things like that.
One of the best things I could ever wish for happened on Nov. 1. For some reason, my host mother discontinued her cable service. So there is no TV. I think the conversation had to do with Aliw's grades. (it was in waray) This is a drastic measure for a Filipino family to take. We are a middle class family and should have cable. Poor Aliw now has to go to school and not know what is happending in Mulawin (a popular tv show about people with wings? I don't know). I tell my kids we don't have cable and they can't believe it. It is one less source of noise for me, but I feel bad for Aliw. |
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Look below to see how dark I am! I look like a beach bum but I don't swim or surf here. Whenever one of my host father's farmer friends come over, I check to see if I am darker than them. Not quite, but I sure am darker than all of my students and they worry about me.
Tacloban is the nearest city to me, but I don't often go there because I like to be around if my kids would like to play or visit. Its part of my "just show up" doctrine from the Navy. My friend Rowena, a professor at UP-Tacloban, likes to tease me that I have become a vegetable. She is right, I have made adjustments in my expectations of life. |
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| They have DSL in Tacloban, which is fantastic. I use dial up in Carigara to do all my epals work and it is a pain. Even this webpage is a piece of cake with DSL. In Carigara, it involves a lot of time and headache. The local phone company is about 25K away from Carigara for DSL. Perhaps next year. Thankfully the march of technology is reaching us here. |
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A short story about my friend Rowena. Everyone needs an interpreter in a different culture and through my almost 2 years here, she has been mine. Whenever I did not understand the writings of F.Sionil Jose or had a question on Filipino history, she has been my go-to person. However, she is not so good when it comes to modern culture. I was telling her how I got headaches from listening to "Itsumo" in our house during lunch. All my kids love "Itsumo." Its the biggest song on ASAP Mania. Her reaction was "what's Itsumo?" Ahhh! How can a Filipino actually avoid that song?! But she manages to live without knowing the things I am pounded over the head with by TV and my kids - Star Circle Quest, Star Search, Jennelyn Mercado, Jasmine Trias, etc. She does know CSI and X-files. I tease her that she is not Filipino. She will kill me if she ever sees this, so I am hoping she will not.
Whenever I feel unexicted about being a Peace Corps volunteer, I stay overnight in Tacloban and watch Globe Trekker. The travelers are always so curious and amazed at the places they go to. Sometimes, I lose that sense of wonder and charm, so it helps to see others that still have it. |
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