Week 8
10/11/09 - 10/18/09
Week 7 and Week 8 really ran together since I was gone for part of both. After the street immersion in Manila, the CYF trainees met up with the rest of the Luzon trainees in Education and Coastal Resource Management (CRM) for the Supervisor's Conference in Cavite.
Supervisor's Conference is exciting for all the trainees because on the first night, we get to find out what our permanent site is going to be. Also, as the name implies, we get to meet our supervisors for our permanent site. For Jessie and I, a lot of the excitement was deflated by the fact that we were already pretty sure where we were going to be. We ended up being right.
A lot of hints had been dropped throughout training that our permanent sites were going to be the same as our respective training sites. There is nothing inherently wrong with either of our sites. In fact, our training sites are awesome. The town we are living in is awesome. Our host family is awesome. BUT, when everyone else is finding out about their cool new regions and new work sites...when they go to visit their site and get a parade and see new sights...it is really easy to be jealous. We weren't jealous of their specific sites, we were jealous of the new experiences that they had that we don't get.
This was a couple weeks ago, though. Now, that jealousy has faded. We are excited about staying here. We are excited that we don't have to pack up our lives again and haul them off to a new place. We are excited that we don't have to wonder whether or not we will get along with our new host family. We are content. And, now we have all these new places that we can visit where are friends are!
So, that was Supervisor's Conference. Not exciting for us, but great for everyone else.
It was great seeing all of the other trainees who we haven't seen since Initial Orientation. We will get to see them again when we swear in too. More places to go visit!
Alright, I am almost caught up with the weeks. Boring week 9 to come soon!
Until then...Pis Out (ps - "Pis" = phonetic spelling of "Peace" in Philippines)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Street Kids, Prostitutes and Flooding. Oh my!
Week 7
10/04/09 - 10/11/09
Week 7 saw Jessie and I spending our first bit of time apart. The CYF people throughout Luzon went to Manila for some street immersion. We got to follow around a couple NGO's as they did street education with homeless children. It was interesting to see young kids with barely any clothing, barely bathed, yet flocking around the educators to learn their lessons. It was impressive to see these street educators teach valid lessons about life skills, while not being boring or lecture-y. I have a lot of respect for those people after seeing them in action.
CYF Luzon also got to witness two types of prostitution in Manila. One was obvious, one blew my American mind. The obvious one is that there are bars in Manila that you can go to to get GROs (Guest Relations Officers). Quite simply, there are bars with lots of prostitutes in them. You go in, make eye contact, and next thing you know, you are surrounded by 3 attractive women who will flirt with you all night, as long you are buying drinks. You then have various options to pay for sex with them. What made that experience disturbing was all the "white" people in there. There are so many older male foreigners who go into these places and act like they are just the shit. It's creepy and despicable...though I think there is a psychology of pathetic-ness involved in some of the lonely old men who actually feel special in these interactions, but that is a conversation over drinks, not blogs.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience. I was moved by it, but am not good at articulating feelings like that. There are other blogs that can do it better. I will say briefly, though, that it is unreal seeing this young kids on the street, who barely have food, who barely have adequate clothing or shelter...it is unreal seeing them there with big smiles on there faces, helping each other out, always curious about strangers (not just begging)...just so much more positive than their circumstances would indicate. It makes me want to contribute that much more to help meet their basic needs in life.
While all of this was happening, I also had to deal with a scare back at site. The day that I left La Union, the rains from Pepeng were really picking up there. Sadly, Jessie had to stay behind and deal with it. Our town generally doesn't flood with heavy rains, but this time the water started creeping up. In the middle of the night on Thursday, October 8, Jessie woke up during the heaving storming that had gone on since the day before (when I left). The power had already been out all day. The water was starting to rise outside of the house. Jessie went upstairs and woke up our host parents...at which time they proceeded to move everything that was downstairs to the upstairs!
Needless to say, Jessie was a little freaked out. I didn't find out what was going on until Friday morning because the inexpensive Nokia phones that we use here don't give you any warning alarm when your text inbox is full...and mine was full. I felt so terrible (and scared) the next morning because Jessie had been trying to text me throughout the night and I wasn't getting any of them (it eats up too much money to call). Thankfully everything turned out ok in the end. No major damage to our town, though the town just North of us had some mudslides and a few deaths due to the river washing some people away.
That wrapped up week 7 for us...which transitions to week 8 when Jessie and I were reunited at the Supervisor's Conference in Cavite.
More on that to come....
10/04/09 - 10/11/09
Week 7 saw Jessie and I spending our first bit of time apart. The CYF people throughout Luzon went to Manila for some street immersion. We got to follow around a couple NGO's as they did street education with homeless children. It was interesting to see young kids with barely any clothing, barely bathed, yet flocking around the educators to learn their lessons. It was impressive to see these street educators teach valid lessons about life skills, while not being boring or lecture-y. I have a lot of respect for those people after seeing them in action.
CYF Luzon also got to witness two types of prostitution in Manila. One was obvious, one blew my American mind. The obvious one is that there are bars in Manila that you can go to to get GROs (Guest Relations Officers). Quite simply, there are bars with lots of prostitutes in them. You go in, make eye contact, and next thing you know, you are surrounded by 3 attractive women who will flirt with you all night, as long you are buying drinks. You then have various options to pay for sex with them. What made that experience disturbing was all the "white" people in there. There are so many older male foreigners who go into these places and act like they are just the shit. It's creepy and despicable...though I think there is a psychology of pathetic-ness involved in some of the lonely old men who actually feel special in these interactions, but that is a conversation over drinks, not blogs.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience. I was moved by it, but am not good at articulating feelings like that. There are other blogs that can do it better. I will say briefly, though, that it is unreal seeing this young kids on the street, who barely have food, who barely have adequate clothing or shelter...it is unreal seeing them there with big smiles on there faces, helping each other out, always curious about strangers (not just begging)...just so much more positive than their circumstances would indicate. It makes me want to contribute that much more to help meet their basic needs in life.
While all of this was happening, I also had to deal with a scare back at site. The day that I left La Union, the rains from Pepeng were really picking up there. Sadly, Jessie had to stay behind and deal with it. Our town generally doesn't flood with heavy rains, but this time the water started creeping up. In the middle of the night on Thursday, October 8, Jessie woke up during the heaving storming that had gone on since the day before (when I left). The power had already been out all day. The water was starting to rise outside of the house. Jessie went upstairs and woke up our host parents...at which time they proceeded to move everything that was downstairs to the upstairs!
Needless to say, Jessie was a little freaked out. I didn't find out what was going on until Friday morning because the inexpensive Nokia phones that we use here don't give you any warning alarm when your text inbox is full...and mine was full. I felt so terrible (and scared) the next morning because Jessie had been trying to text me throughout the night and I wasn't getting any of them (it eats up too much money to call). Thankfully everything turned out ok in the end. No major damage to our town, though the town just North of us had some mudslides and a few deaths due to the river washing some people away.
That wrapped up week 7 for us...which transitions to week 8 when Jessie and I were reunited at the Supervisor's Conference in Cavite.
More on that to come....
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Twitter's Back
Ok...I tried to put the Twitter widget back in my page. It is in the right hand column. My username is skumis22. It should say that at the top of the widget. If it says anyone else's username, please comment on this post immediately. I don't want you guys to have to read some other clown's updates.
I am still processing (ie, being lazy) the blog posts for week's 7 and 8. I will post them soon, hopefully...
Pis
I am still processing (ie, being lazy) the blog posts for week's 7 and 8. I will post them soon, hopefully...
Pis
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Stupid Twitter
So, I had a twitter widget installed as a sidebar on my blog, but apparently it had someone else's posts popping up. So, all the stuff you have seen for the last few weeks is not me. I don't know what kind of random-ass things he was saying, but hopefully it didn't make me look bad.
For future reference, my twitter name is skumis22. If you see any other name, it's not me!
For future reference, my twitter name is skumis22. If you see any other name, it's not me!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Playing in the Rain
Week 6
09/27/09 - 10/04/09
All is well here.
It has been rather wet, though.
I case you don't watch the news (which I don't since I am TV-less), there was a massive typhoon named Penpeng that swept across the Philippines. If you looked at at weather map, it appeared as if the entire country was engulfed by it. Fortunately that was not the case. The really bad parts went up the Eastern coast of the country.
Our training region, La Union, is on the West side of the main island of Luzon. No major flooding. No major wind damage. We got lucky. I was told by someone that La Union gets lucky a lot because we have the mountains to the East and the South China Sea to the West (which supposedly is never the source of typhoons). We still get typhoons, but the super ones don't plow over us like other parts of the country. Not sure how true any of that is, but I'll take it for now and allow myself to be reassured. ;-)
We did get a heck of a lot of rain and wind, though...which leads me to another great Peace Corps experience. One of the volunteers in our cluster is having a birthday in a couple weeks. We are all supposed to be out of town that day, so her host family decided to have an early birthday party for her on Saturday (10/03). Now, Saturday night was the night that we had our worst weather from the typhoon: Signal 2 level winds and rain. I guess the birthday has to get cancelled. Wrong!
Jessie and I (accompanied by our host dad) drove over to our training site, parked the truck, and then trudged through rice fields to this other volunteers host family's house. It was awesome. Imagine Jessie and I all geared up with raincoats, headlamps (gotta see the path through the rice) and completely ineffective umbrellas, walking through a dark rice field in the wind and rain. Imagine us arriving and then shortly after that, all the other volunteers in our cluster arriving with their respective host families. It rocked. No fucking typhoon was going to cancel that birthday.
Leaving the party was even more fun because we all left together (see below picture). Raincoats, headlamps, flashlights, plastic bag ponchos. Lots of rain and wind. Did I already mention that it was awesome? Hahaha.
Stacking up experiences like this one is such a great part of this adventure.
Sadly, the typhoon caused the postponement of our supervisor's conference until next week. Still don't know our permanent site. Boo.
I should have those details the next time I blog, which may not be a couple of weeks since I will be offsite from 10/07 until 10/18.
Make sure you miss me!
Pis Out
09/27/09 - 10/04/09
All is well here.
It has been rather wet, though.
I case you don't watch the news (which I don't since I am TV-less), there was a massive typhoon named Penpeng that swept across the Philippines. If you looked at at weather map, it appeared as if the entire country was engulfed by it. Fortunately that was not the case. The really bad parts went up the Eastern coast of the country.
Our training region, La Union, is on the West side of the main island of Luzon. No major flooding. No major wind damage. We got lucky. I was told by someone that La Union gets lucky a lot because we have the mountains to the East and the South China Sea to the West (which supposedly is never the source of typhoons). We still get typhoons, but the super ones don't plow over us like other parts of the country. Not sure how true any of that is, but I'll take it for now and allow myself to be reassured. ;-)
We did get a heck of a lot of rain and wind, though...which leads me to another great Peace Corps experience. One of the volunteers in our cluster is having a birthday in a couple weeks. We are all supposed to be out of town that day, so her host family decided to have an early birthday party for her on Saturday (10/03). Now, Saturday night was the night that we had our worst weather from the typhoon: Signal 2 level winds and rain. I guess the birthday has to get cancelled. Wrong!
Jessie and I (accompanied by our host dad) drove over to our training site, parked the truck, and then trudged through rice fields to this other volunteers host family's house. It was awesome. Imagine Jessie and I all geared up with raincoats, headlamps (gotta see the path through the rice) and completely ineffective umbrellas, walking through a dark rice field in the wind and rain. Imagine us arriving and then shortly after that, all the other volunteers in our cluster arriving with their respective host families. It rocked. No fucking typhoon was going to cancel that birthday.
Leaving the party was even more fun because we all left together (see below picture). Raincoats, headlamps, flashlights, plastic bag ponchos. Lots of rain and wind. Did I already mention that it was awesome? Hahaha.
Stacking up experiences like this one is such a great part of this adventure.
Sadly, the typhoon caused the postponement of our supervisor's conference until next week. Still don't know our permanent site. Boo.
I should have those details the next time I blog, which may not be a couple of weeks since I will be offsite from 10/07 until 10/18.
Make sure you miss me!
Pis Out
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