Apo Analysis

Today, most of the trainees in Dumaguete went to Apo Island on a snorkeling trip.

It was not an ideal day; tendrils of a passing typhoon made the sky and the seas ominous, and our boat ride over was choppy and wet. I had wanted to bring my digital SLR camera, but as I was leaving the house, Keith told me the ride over would be too wet, and he was right. I had a strange experience on those cresting waves though, while my companions battled seasickness and epic splashes. My mind was completely still, unaffected by the crash and slam of our roughshod journey, and I thought: I have had an amazing life. I have made the most of my opportunities, succeeded, done well, thrived. When I reach my mid-twenties, I will have lived most of my twenties outside of the United States and liked it that way. I have written fiction and published it, I have won awards and accolades for it, I have a future in the craft of writing. I even have friends who send me certificates of excellence for being awesome. I was sent to the Philippines, and though some days I have to force myself to make it through the next five minutes, I don’t regret joining Peace Corps and I don’t regret that I was sent here. How could I possibly regret that, when I get to do things like see a volcano in the backdrop of my city every day, go to a waterfall on a whim, island-hop and eat mangoes? Yesterday, I seriously, without doubt, knew that I was going to be here for the next two years, and today my sense of my permanency here only grew stronger. Nothing big, no change or event, just the silent knowledge that I am ready.

Snorkeling was also an incredible experience. I saw beautiful things, and because I’m legally blind without my glasses on, I saw them from a fuzzy distance, bursts of color, light and movement. I imagine I saw the underwater world as a newborn sees the open air one: all things are new, unknowable wonders, impressions, immediate and emotional rather than concrete. For me, there were no hard lines between one coral, one fish, one color and the next. I felt a great sense of peace though I could not make out the beauty of what I was seeing with any precision. All I could hear was the sound of my breath through the snorkel: inhaling from undearneath water, traveling through the tube, filling my mouth, my throat, my lungs, exhaling - the sound of it sharp in my ears. It seemed life-giving in a way I’d only thought of in terms of my heart before. It was elemental to be there, mostly blind, floating above a previously-inconceivable environment, listening to the rhythm by which I lead my life, this life. My own existence suddenly seemed both profound and utterly simple.

My day at Apo ended up not particularly being about the snorkeling. After lunch and an epic battle with coral, I was exhausted and didn’t go on a second snorkeling trip further out, where I knew I would be able to see even less. I managed to sleep sitting up, lying down and even upright and clutching hands with Megan on the rather terrifying boat ride home during which I thought we were definitely going to capsize. I have a hard week ahead of me; I can only describe my feelings on teaching in an analogy in which I am a bad comedian and my students are an unlaughing audience. It’s almost 6pm and I have dinner ahead of me, a community project for which I am absolutely out of my depths to plan and a skit with Sheryll to plan rather independently, both for tomorrow. And, if I knew what was good for me, I’d do my work on Cebuano. I am getting through this week with the knowledge that maybe this time next week I’ll know the location of my permanent site.



Mga girls: Heather, Beth, Megan and Connie



Syd and me



Coasting into harbor



Apo rockface



Hut

Trudging on

The days are long and pass slowly. In general I have nothing to update: I get up at 5.30, get to language class with my cluster at 8, go home for lunch around 11.30, then either have tech training, practicum or medical briefings in the afternoons, then I eat dinner about 7 and go to bed between the awesome hours of 9 and 10. Weekends are short and we still have long tech sessions on Saturday mornings. We are approaching week 5 of training, and the next event to look forward to is at the end of week 6, which is when we learn where we’ll be for our permanent sites. After that, we’re having a conference in Bacolad and then visiting our permanent sites, and after that, it’s a few more weeks of training.

I’ve been here a month now. I’ve been having trouble with being gluten-free, which I think we’ve ironed out, but when I initially went gluten-free I did not become truly well for several months, and now that I’m back to where I was before being diagnosed, I can’t tell if there has been progress or if I’m still ill. I don’t want to spend the next few months getting better from something I should have already defeated, especially when so many other diseases could befall me.

Two friends of mine are in the hospital. That’s where most of us spent the majority of Friday and Saturday, keeping them company. One girl, after a week of travails, has found out she has an amoeba and is doing much better with treatment. The other girl is keeping in good spirits now that she’s in the hospital, but the prognosis is murky. I haven’t been updated today and didn’t visit them because of my own poopy issues, so I don’t know if there has been progress. Last I heard, she would be released tomorrow on the approval of a specialist.

Before we got the call on Friday that both of them were in the hospital, we had a cookout in language class to practice Cebuano and then had our site placement interviews. The former was a lot of fun at the market and at Dan’s house, and the latter was at first nerve-wracking but then fairly heartening. Sometimes, with the ear infections and the amoebas and the gluten and the technical sessions and the language barrier and the people insisting you’re not an American, it’s difficult to remember the reasons you’ve chosen to follow this path. But then, you end up having to justify this choice to someone who is giving you this chance, and you suddenly remember how much you wanted this and everything that comes with it. Fiona, one of my flatmates from my now-golden Scotland days, reminded me that the tough days are the ones we learn from most, and they make the experience whole. I had a lot of tough days in Scotland, especially the entire first semester, but now all I do is plan for my triumphant return. Someday, some months from now, I will forget the struggles of these early weeks.

I have some trouble with the idea that I’m coming to another country to teach English like an imperial force, but I remember that the countries to which Peace Corps volunteers are invited have requested us and they control which programs are implemented. I also see the unique position of the Philippines as a country which has based its entire education system in an understanding of the English language; if students are not proficient in English, they will not be educated because all classes are taught in English. Teaching is going to be a difficult job with many expectations on me, most importantly my own. It is easy to favor the students who are already fluent, who are succeeding so well; it’s harder and more crucial to reach those who need it most. With co-teaching, there can be more individual attention apportioned to students, and though I find it draining work, I know it’s important work. Currently jealous of the apparent leisure of the Coastal Resource Management volunteers, wink wink.

We recently met some more volunteers from last year’s batch. I really like them and hope that I can succeed as well as they have.

Because I know you clamor for picspam, here are some from recent weeks. I know, I have none of the beach or other great scenery, but when I’m in that scenery I’m in it, not trying to capture it. Also, it takes ~50 years to upload just one.




Sean with some new Filipina friends (he wishes)



The art of making pansit



At Dan's with our feast



This one is called Sheryll in Junob with mountain



At a parade



Scandalous

A Day of Exposure

So, today was one of my more bizarre days here. We are obligated to take a malaria prophylactic every Monday, and on Tuesday nights and Wednesdays during the day I feel the side effects, which are insane dreams and minor diarrhea, the latter of which is not what this story is about. I dreamed that my clustermate Dan’s family all got stuck in a Mayan temple which was for some reason in Zoar Valley and helicopters had to rescue them. The disturbing part was that I seemed to get a very vivid, long parade of his family members, whom I’ve never met therefore were just made-up white people, coming out of this temple haggard, naked and clutching their severed limbs. So that’s how I started my day.

In the morning at 7.30 I walk from my house about ten minutes to my teacher May’s house, traversing my barangay Piapi to Syd and Sally’s barangay Bantayan and ending up in this sort of Bantayan/Piapi no-man’s-land. Today, I had my first real day at my practicum site, Negros Oriental National High School, so I had to go to May’s in my nice clothes, which include unforunate pants because I left all my skirts and dresses in a suckpack behind my bed in the burg. As I popped an Immodium to stave off my malaria poops, I noticed that two of the buttons on my exorbitantly expensive Banana Republic shirt had come undone and I was flashing all of Bantayan. I have no idea for how long I was treating the world to a peepshow, but I’ve decided to put it behind me and stop feeling embarassed about things that happened in the past. I need to exercise this resolution about other things that have happened, but I have a hard time.

As I further made my way towards May’s, gathering to myself my tattered dignity, I saw a man wearing a shirt but no pants and no underwear. I walked past with purpose and managed to embarrass neither of us, but it was still a curious occurance. Men, while willing to expose their rounded beer bellies as their version of a come-hither look, are not as prepared to bare the full story, so to speak. I’m sure there’s a tale to tell there.

The weirdness of the day ended there, but I still had some tough stuff to deal with. It was my first real day at the school, and we couldn’t find my co-teacher and Sean and Sheryll’s were absent, so Sean had to teach for the first time by himself without a plan or even warning, and so did Sheryll. For the first hour, I was with her scrambling to find something productive to do, but we just ended up fielding questions about ourselves and playing hangman, a game during which these second year students read our minds and made short work of us. After that period, my co-teacher was located, and it turns out she doesn’t have class before 2pm anyway, and we Peace Corps Trainees leave the school at 4, but her classes go on until 5, so there is no time for us to plan together, which was frustrating and troubling.

I am trying to do my best in something with which I have no experience, for people who are depending on me to help, and I feel bad that I cannot provide the resource they thought they were being given in hosting a Peace Corps Trainee. It is my hope that despite the rather arbitrary schedule (One day this week! Two the next! Sometimes three! Sometimes none for weeks at a time!) and instability, I can gain a lot from this experience and it will be in some way mutually beneficial. My main personal goal is to (attempt to) reach out to the students who are overlooked, marginalized, left behind or ignored. If I can help them in some small way, even if I never know about it, my Peace Corps experience can mean more than all the benefits I will get out of it.

Now, for your personal enjoyment, some pictures courtesy of Sheryll because I’m too lazy to take pictures myself.



This is my cluster, minus Syd who was being studious and Sheryll, who was taking the picture, obviously. Here we were visiting South Seas, a gorgeous resort that’s just hiding in some nook in Piapi, totally blowing your mind and taking you by surprise when you stumble upon it. The best thing? 1000 pesos a night, which ends up being little over $20. From the left are Dan, Sean, me and Sally.



And here’s a dog on a motorcycle. I have two of these exact same ones at home, except they don’t ride motorcycles. Unless they are leading secret lives.

Dumaguete: Day 6

I arrived last Thursday in Dumaguete City. It has a really positive education atmosphere and laid-back pace; no one breaks 20 mph in Dumaguete. Our group of 69 trainees split into city groups – some went to Batangas and Bacolod – and each group is learning a different language. Within those groups we were split into “clusters” for language training depending on our sector (mine is education) and assignment (mine is Negros Oriental National High School). In my cluster are Sally from Texas/Colorado who is 80, Syd from Nebraska who just finished her tour in Peace Corps Armenia, Dan from Pennsylvania, Sean from Minnesota and Sheryll from LA. I think we are all in agreement that we got the best training site here in Dumaguete and wouldn’t change it.

Here is Syd and me in a petty cab, which is a motorcyle rigged up to be a trike for getting around town.



My host family are really amazing people. They are so caring and kind. Tita Andring is a midwife, Tito Jaime (as in hy-may) works at the power plant, their son Kieth is an engineer and his girlfriend Ellen is about to become a nurse as soon as she passes her board exam and NCLEX. Kieth’s sister is in America, and the family misses her. My host family situation is really ideal. I am so glad I was placed with them. Last night I got a little sick (and I’m fine now), but they were really taking care of me, and now Tita Andring has brought me my favorite sweet: a sweet sticky rice cylinder wrapped in banana leaves and sometimes containing chocolate.

On Sunday Keith and Ellen and Ellen’s cousins Eric and Neil took me to Valencia, to a place called the Forest Camp, because there was a brown out (no electricity), so it was really hot. At Forest Camp, it’s cooler because it’s by a mountain (dormant volcano, I think, actually) and there are cold, fresh mountain springs. The whole day was pretty amazing, and I hope my fellow trainees get a chance to go, though on that day I know most of them went to a beach. So here are some pictures of that.




This is all of us



This is Eric, me and Ellen.

Here in the Philippines, they have a thing called merienda, or just plain snack here in the Visayas, where the whole country is like “Dude I need a snack” between breakfast and lunch and then another between lunch and dinner. I have really gotten behind this idea. I am a fan, and actually, now I require my merienda. I have been doing an epic amount of eating here because I really like the food, it’s easy to be gluten-free and is exactly to my taste. I know some trainees have been having some trouble with the cuisine, but I am very lucky to have exactly what I want pretty much all the time. They have a variety of rice sweets, and I’ve been converted to the joys of the mango, which is vastly superior here than stateside. Also, despite the epic eating I’ve been engaging in, I appear to have lost weight. It’s like a dream: eat what I want, lose weight.

Today I observed a classroom at the high school at which I will be teacher training. I will be co-teachcing with a teacher of the 2nd year. Generally, the age range for that is 13-14, but can contain older students as well. It was really nice there today, and allayed my fears a little bit, but I’m sure I’ll be nervous again when I actually have to get up in front of a class.

Yesterday my host family got wireless internet, so I have been sitting and basking in my internet connection. I hope it doesn’t distract me too much, but it does mean I am better equipped to respond to messages now, so don’t hesitate. I am kept very busy by the Peace Corps, but I will get back to you if you email me.

So It Begins

Today, the monsoon finally came to prove its mettle. I have been in Antipolo, Manila since arriving in the Philippines on Saturday night. The weather has, until today, been typically tropical: hot, humid. I suppose despite the intense torrents it’s still pretty hot. I am not complaining about the heat, but I am feeling it, and I hope I can get acclimated soon so it stops bothering me.

There are sixty-nine people in our volunteer batch. We are staying in a hotel outside of metropolitan Manila. So far I’ve been mostly functional throughout the day, no naps, but I am still unable to sleep more than about five hours a night. I hope this jetlag does not last much longer. One perk of the not sleeping, however, is that in the early dawn, when the world is still grey, I go out on our balcony and take in our view of Manila.

We have mostly just been doing policy and housekeeping kind of stuff, very dry, so I had nothing to report until today. Last night after a trip to the Mall of Asia, which is the biggest damn mall I’ve ever seen, some fellow trainees and I took in the sunset over Manila Bay from across the mall.

And today, I found out where I will be trained and in what language. Tomorrow, I leave for Dumaguete City on the island of Negros, Oriental Province, among the Visayan Islands in the south. I will be attempting to speak Cebuano, the regional dialect of the Visayas. At this point, I’m really glad I was unable to get Rosetta Stone Tagalog to work, since it would have been a waste of forty hours of my precious, precious time.

Training will begin in earnest soon, about which I am both apprehensive and excited. I will have a host family and professional counterparts and all of the sudden will have to act like an adult in the world. It’s very intimidating, and I’m going into it like something natural but I don’t know if it actually is, if I’m going to wake up every morning and force myself to get out there beyond my fears. I think it would be the same with a “normal” job in the States though, really. Concerns here are really immediate: safety, health, cultural sensitivity, interpersonal relations. But these aren’t chief among my concerns; I’m plagued by thoughts of failure and remaining juvenile in a (mostly) adult setting.

On those immediate concerns though, I seem to be faring well. I don’t mind the bathroom facilities I might see soon, I really like the food, I’m going in being open to new experiences. However, all sorts of health/safety issues are befalling me; I hope this means I am getting them out of the way at the outset, and I am fated for a better time in general. At LAX I ran over my toenail twice and lost the top of it. I burned my tongue and developed a raging canker sore, the former of which just got better today and the latter of which is slightly better today but still alive and sensitive. I fell down the stairs yesterday morning and really twisted my ankle and now it keeps cracking, but the doctor said it’s okay. And, after some travails with poo, I thought I was on even ground, but today the anti-malarial prophylaxis I took on Monday kicked in and gave me some belly sadness. It raped everyone else yesterday and apparently just took its sweet time over here. Gluten, however, has yet to be an issue, knock on wood.

Dumaguete City has ample internet (and many other amenities; it’s the poshest training site in Peace Corps Philippines), so I hope to update with more news and pictures and all that good stuff. Although, right now I'm having trouble posting pictures, so we'll see how that goes.

The Obligatory Introduction

It's been a long road frought with peril and bureaucracy, but I'm finally here. On May 29th, I received my invitation to join the 267th group of Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines, leaving on August 13th. I am both anxious and excited, and I know that this will impact my life in ways I can't yet anticipate. I am very much looking forward to meeting my fellow 267ers, my students, my co-workers, the people of the community in which I'm placed and anyone else who might cross my path. My life is gaining momentum.

Here is an overview of my journey to the Peace Corps:

My father is an RPCV who served two tours in Thailand in the early to mid 1970s. For my entire life, I have known what the Peace Corps does and how drastically it changed almost everything about him for the positive. During college and especially during my own application process, I came to realize how much his time in Thailand, which lasted much longer than his service, has meant to him. I began to consider joining during my junior year in college, which I spent in Scotland being ecstatic and frolicking over every available surface. 

My father always said, "I wanted to see the world, and I didn't want to pay for it." The benefits of the Peace Corps, which are certainly not limited to the professional and financial, were too wonderful for me to pass up. In the Peace Corps, I could see parts of the world I'd never imagined, become a better version of myself, experience a completely different life, develop valuable skills, meet incredible people and maybe even contribute to society if I'm very lucky. So, in mid-October 2007, I began the application process. 

On Halloween, I had an interview with my recruiter, who would become my strongest supporter and for whom I have a lot of appreciation and admiration. On November 1st, she nominated me for my first choice location, Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, leaving June 2008. I was very happy. I got my medical kit in during the third week of December, mere days before I would be diagnosed with gluten intolerance by a gastroenterologist. Though devastating, this diagnosis would explain debilitating symptoms which had disrupted my life since the summer I was fifteen. Unluckily for me, my medical kit did not read "gluten intolerance" but "IBS." On December 27th, I was told I could not join the Peace Corps with "IBS," but since I suddenly had a name for my actual medical issue, I was determined to go forward. I wrote an appealing letter, including my new medical evidence, and received a call from my screening nurse, who said she would reopen consideration of my case once the efficacy of my new diet was reevaluated in March.

At the end of March, I was officially diagnosed with gluten intolerance and my doctor sent my screening nurse the latest medical evaluations and a letter stating his confidence in my ability to serve in the Peace Corps. I got another call from my screening nurse saying I was cleared on gluten intolerance, but now she had to go over the rest of my medical kit, which had apparently not been cracked since December. I was relieved and happy, and during April, I sent in a few more labs and statements for final medical clearance. 

On May 2nd, I received the much-coveted medical clearance. I really cannot now articulate the level of my happiness, as I thought this was the end of my travails. There was a two page list of countries that could support my diet, and I was driving hard into the busy end of my senior year. About a week before graduation, I received another call, this time one that would raze my spirits and make me very, very nervous.

I realized that it was just slightly too late for my original nomination date, but that suited me just fine as I now wanted to go to the Wesleyan Writers Conference, which would have been later than my leaving date. The call I got, however, said that I could not go to Francophone Africa at all. For six months, I had anticipated time in that region and was rather unhappy about not being able to go. Then, my placement officer said she wanted to send me to the Central Asian Caucasus region. I knew nothing about these countries except that they were practically in Europe, and didn't that mean they ate exactly the food that I really, really cannot? I did some research and found out not only do they eat that food, but they sometimes revere it. Going to the Caucasus region would be tantamount to a death sentence. I would not have been able to eat much of anything, I would have had to be rude to my hosts by refusing meals, and, most likely, I would have had gluten reintroduced into my system and become ill again. I contacted my screening nurse, who assured me that any country on the gluten-free friendly list was safe, but nonetheless offered to check with country-specific medical to confirm. 

A week later, the Friday before graduation weekend, I received another call from my screening nurse saying that the Caucasus region was indeed not the best place for me. She took it off the gluten-free friendly list of countries, and now no one with my affliction will ever have to go there and be ill. I was relieved, though now I had no nomination and no idea as to where the Peace Corps might send me. 

A week and a half after that, I was still operating without news of a new nomination. I was hoping for Asia or non-Francophone Africa, but I was willing to go anywhere they wanted to send me and always had been. My father had not originally wanted to go to Thailand at all, but clearly he had a wonderful experience, and I was sure that wherever the Peace Corps decided to send me, I would be able to appreciate and enjoy that place as well. While visiting with my friend and her parents on Tuesday, May 27th, I received a call from placement asking me how I felt about Southeast Asia, teaching secondary school English, mid-August departure. Of course I was incredibly enthusiastic about both the location and the bountiful (and safe) rice that I was sure to encounter, and on Thursday, the 29th, I had that invitation to the Philippines in my hands. I probably didn't stop squealing for a solid five minutes. After looking over everything with loads of delight, I accepted my invitation the next morning. 

So, I've sent in my passport and visa paperwork. I'm now working (procrastinating) on my tailored resume and aspiration statement. I've set up this blog so I can keep people back home updated during my service. I am so excited for what I have chosen to do with this time in my life after undergrad, when the opportunities seem boundless and I have no obligation but the one where I keep myself happy and stimulated. I know I've made the right decision, and I'm so happy to have been placed in the Philippines. I could not imagine a better placement, and I can't wait for the latest adventure to start.