An Unwelcome Intruder

So much has happened since my last post (yeah, it’s been a while!) that it’s difficult to choose a story with which to break the “blogging drought”. Whilst this story certainly does not fit in the “only in the Philippines” category, it is nevertheless probably not a common scenario for most of my readers, so I thought I would tell it to you…

A few weeks ago, we had a scheduled all-day power outage in our area. We have these from time to time, presumably to enable maintenance work to be done. It was hot inside my house without fans and it was also somewhat dark, so I decided to sit outside to eat my lunch. I doubt it was actually any cooler outside, but at least there was a breeze.

I grabbed my lunch and went and sat on the plastic chair just outside my front door to eat it. “My” cats (street cats who aren’t technically mine but are essentially my pets) obviously also thought that lunch was a good idea, so they gathered around and started eating their food which was under my chair.

Suddenly, behind one of the cats, I noticed something sticking out of a tiny little hole in the wall (a hole that, up until that point, I didn’t even know existed). A SNAKE was coming out of my wall!!

As it ventured out, it stuck out its tongue and evidently sensed danger (the presence of one human and five cats!). Before I could even process what was happening, it turned and slithered right under the front door, straight into my house!

After watching it slither across my dining room floor for a few seconds, I propped open the door and unleashed my weapon of choice – the cats! I was really hoping one of them would take care of it for me (at least drive it out of the house, if not kill it) so that I didn’t have to deal with it. I had no idea what type of snake it was at that stage, so I was not keen on getting too close to it.

Unfortunately, my Plan A failed to achieve the desired result. It turns out that the cats were rather wary of the snake too. One of them followed it across the room until it disappeared under the cabinet, but then she lost interest. It was pretty obvious that I would have to come up with a Plan B.

I soon realized that the cats were actually my ONLY useful weapon, so I walked down to my friends’ house to get help (just one more reason why I’m glad to have friends living close by!). They didn’t really have any suitable snake-killing implements at their house either, so we borrowed a shovel from some nearby workmen then walked back to my place.

In order to kill the snake, the first thing we had to do was locate it again (and when I say “we”, I mean my friend Cole who came to rescue me, the damsel-in-distress). This took a while. Of course it didn’t help that it was dark inside my house. The cat was actually somewhat helpful this time, as her gaze narrowed down the direction of the search.

In the end, Cole found the snake in the bathroom (the darkest room in the house, of course!) and annihilated it with the shovel. He then took it out and showed it to the group of curious neighbours who had, by this stage, gathered outside.

The neighbours didn’t know any more than we did about what type of snake it was, but after some research, I’m now fairly certain that it was a red-tailed green rat snake (apparently quite harmless). If I were to come across another one in my garden, I would leave it in peace. If, however, one would be so bold as to trespass inside my house again, I may not be so merciful!

I wish I could say that this was the first time I’ve had a snake inside my house, but unfortunately that is not the case. I think the count is currently at three (the last two were in Paraguay). But while it may not be the first time, I can always hope that it will be last!!

Recent Happenings...

Life has been pretty busy here over the past few months. In addition to regular language and culture study, we have kept busy with visitors, meetings, potlucks, birthdays, and a regional conference. 

Mock language evaluation

Sharing a meal with our church planting consultants

Ladies' meeting at our regional conference

When we  moved to this area, the ladies in my neighbourhood told me that rainy season starts at the beginning of June, right when their kids go back to school after summer break. They said that it always floods and school ends up getting cancelled.

Well this year the rain didn't start until the middle of July. We were beginning to doubt that there really is such a thing as rainy season in this province! Then it rained almost continuously for two weeks... 

It was so humid that water drops collected under my salt shaker!

Oops! I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work!!

Although it can be extremely humid when there's continuous rain, the weather is generally cooler, which is a welcome change from hot and humid! 

Rain makes it cool enough that I can actually enjoy a cup of tea

Since those two weeks of rain in July, we have had the occasional rainy day, but it seems like hot, sunny days are still the norm. I'm still not entirely convinced that rainy season actually exists! Haha. 

Drinking soft drink from a bag on a hot, sunny day

We Are Crazy!

So apparently it’s been a while since my last blog post! It’s probably about time to fill you in on what language class looks like these days…

Now that we are able to construct sentences in Tagalog, we spend a lot of time discussing pictures. Hannah and I take it in turns to say something about the picture we are looking at. Our teacher then helps us correct our sentences when necessary. As well as using words we already know, we are able to learn many new words by asking what something is or what someone in the picture is doing.

We started with using the pictures in a wordless story book and I discovered that sometimes my Tagalog speaking skills are better than my picture interpretation skills! After saying a sentence about the fact that the boy was lying on the bed and dog was lying of top of him, I was informed that I was, in fact, wrong. Apparently the boy was lying on the bed and dog was standing on the bed next to him. Whatever. At least my sentence was grammatically correct!

Many of our sentences are incorrect, though, and this often provides us with a good laugh. I think the funniest mistake I have made so far was when I said that the cake was going to eat the boy, rather than vice versa. (I then realized that there is only one letter difference between those two statements!)

Now we are talking about photographs from some excursions that we took together before we started formal language learning. Some of the photos we took are rather boring, but this one totally cracks me up…

I am possibly a little too excited about the fact that I am now able to say, “The man is hiding behind the curtain because we are crazy”! Although "crazy" may not be the most useful word I've learned thus far, I'm sure it is one I will nevertheless use a lot! 

You Know You’re in the Philippines if…

I have now been in the Philippines for four months, but in many ways it feels a lot longer than that. A couple of days ago, my fellow languages students and I started compiling a list of some of the unique features of life in the Philippines. This took more thought than I expected as most of these things already seem so normal to us! Here are just a few from my list:

You know you’re in the Philippines if…

…you have a bank account at the United Coconut Planters’ Bank. Yep, that is what the bank is actually called! I’m not even kidding.

…you can buy packets of MSG at the vegie stand. Or pretty much anywhere else, for that matter… I guess it’s kind of like a Filipino pantry staple?

…your meal comes with unlimited rice. Okay, so it’s actually only one restaurant I know of that does this, but that’s not the point. The presence of rice is what gives food “meal” status. Different types of noodles are also available everywhere, but they are considered “meryenda” foods – snacks.

…you get asked if you are jogging every time you go for a walk. I also get told by neighbours that they saw me “jogging”. Whilst I do walk faster than the average Filipino, I can assure you that I most definitely am not jogging! I’m not sure, but I suspect that the reason my walking gets labelled as jogging is because I’m wearing sneakers rather than tsinelas (thongs/flip-flops).  

…you have to check the labels of soaps, moisturizers and deodorant if you want one without whitening agents in it. While we are working on our tans, Filipinos are doing everything they can to make their skin lighter.

…you pay for things with the biggest note/bill you think they will accept because you’re always trying to collect more small change. Until now, I had always tried to get rid of small change because I find it annoying, but you need it for so many things in this country. Now I often find myself intentionally trying to create change.

…you go furniture shopping and every cabinet you look at turns out to be a shoe cabinet. I am therefore using a shoe cabinet for my pantry, and a couple of shoe racks for additional storage!

My Neighbourhood

In one of our recent language sessions, we walked around my neighbourhood and took pictures of various things that we wanted to learn the names of. I won't share those pictures since they are rather boring, but that activity has inspired me to share a few other other pictures of my neighbourhood instead.

This is the entrance to my subdivision. My house is one of the blue roofs on the right-hand side.

My neighbours often come out to socialize in the evening after the sun has gone down. 

My subdivision is built on a crazy hill. I don't feel like I've been able to adequately capture its steepness in photographs, but this view of my roof-top from half-way up the hill will give you some idea of what I'm talking about. (My American friends liken the hills here to San Francisco hills, if that means anything to you...)

The view makes it worth the effort to walk up that hill!

But sometimes the view looks a little more like this... It seems that someone is always burning something around here. Sometimes they set the whole hillside on fire (usually just after I hang my sheets out to dry!). I'm not really sure why... Anyway, the top of the hill gives a beautiful view of the sunset, with or without the smoke! :-)

Back to Preschool

We are now in our second week of formal language study, and we have had a lot of fun so far. I think this is as close as we’re going to get to being back in preschool! We have learned the names of colours, animals, body parts etc. and can (usually!) follow a series of two or three simple instructions. One day we even played “Simon Says”! And we have a break and “snack time” in the middle of our session… Seriously, all that’s missing is nap time. :-)

The main activity in yesterday’s session was a “grand review” of everything we had learned so far – we now know over 200 Tagalog words! This picture doesn’t show everything we have learned, but I think it includes all the items that could be gathered together on the table.

We have also learned the names of various pieces of furniture and parts of the house (which couldn’t be put on the table for obvious reasons).

Of course, these are only the nouns we have learned. We have also learned a number of verbs and prepositions, which are what really makes our sessions interesting and fun. For example…

Some of my favourite moments so far:

1) Scattering “body parts” (flash cards that point to different body parts) around the room (“Put the arm behind the door…”). We were so focused on comprehending the instructions that it took a while to realize how weird this was…

2) Throwing “animals” around the room (because when else, except in language study, can you throw a cow at the ceiling?!!)

3) Our teacher telling Hannah (after we’d just learned the verbs “hold” and “look at”): “Hold the knife. Look at Rachael”. Not creepy at all! Haha. 

Home Sweet Home

After being in Bataan for over a week, I was finally able to move into my own house on Saturday. I’m so glad I was able to move and start getting settled in over the weekend since yesterday was officially the first day of our “Culture & Language Acquisition” (CLA) program!

I had my first pieces of my furniture delivered yesterday, so now it is starting to look and feel a little more like a home. I spent a lot of time yesterday washing dishes, storage containers etc. now that I have a table to put them on (you may recall from a previous post that I have no kitchen cupboards at this point in time).  

I also got a sofa yesterday. It is in the room upstairs next to the balcony, and I SO wish I had pictures of how it got there! It went a little something like this…

Me (as delivery people are bringing sofa in the front door): Could you please help me get it up the stairs?

Delivery man #1: Those are small stairs… We go over the balcony?

Delivery man #2, delivery man #3 and delivery lady go outside. I’m thinking that they’re going to look at the balcony, figure out a plan, maybe reverse the truck into the driveway to help…

Delivery man #1 (pointing up the stairs): You show me?

I lead him up the stairs to the room where I want it. He’s still following me so I open the door and walk out onto the balcony. To my great surprise, I see my sofa sticking up in the air! Delivery man #1 promptly climbs over the railing and starts attempting to pull up the sofa by its plastic wrapping, a scenario that makes “ghetto extension ladder” (see previous post) seem pretty tame.

Wondering how in the world they got the sofa up there (remember, my friends, that Filipinos are not big people!) and how in the world this was ever going to work, I grab handfuls of the couch cushion and try to help delivery man #1 before he falls to his death!

Somehow we are able to get hold of the sofa legs – a much more promising prospect. (About this time, I start wishing I still had my phone in my pocket, rather than downstairs charging… but at the same time I realize that I really don’t have a free hand with which to take pictures anyhow.)

The next thing I know, delivery man #2 is beside us, adding his weight to the pulling effort. A few seconds later delivery man #3 shows up as well and the sofa lands on the balcony.  

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would never had believed it were possible. I’m still not entirely sure how they did it. It reminds of me of a line from Sahara (one of my favourite movies): “There’s no way that should have worked”!!

Safety First!

I was up at my house yesterday evening while people were fitting flyscreens on my windows and installing a couple of screen doors. This is the scene I was greeted with upon returning to Cole & Hannah's house (where I'm staying at the moment):

We were amused by this dude's ghetto ladder when we saw it previously (the rungs are made of rebar), but it was even more entertaining to watch "ghetto ladder" transform into "ghetto extension ladder"...

What could possibly go wrong!?!

I find it ironic that this unsafe scenario (to put it mildly) was all for the purpose of making a house safer (they were putting a grill/bars over the air-conditioner).

I haven't witnessed anything quite so entertaining at my house yet, but the important thing is that work has been getting done! The above picture is of the bars (cage?!) that were put over my laundry area today. The workmen will be back tomorrow to paint the bars... And then I'm hoping to be able to start moving in tomorrow night or Saturday!!

First Few Days in Bataan...

Now that I have a table on which to put my laptop and a chair on which to sit, it’s time to fill you in on the past few days…

We left Manila on Thursday, kicking off our long, crazy day with a 6 AM start. I think we could write a book about Thursday, but I’ll just give you the short version!! To put a positive spin on things, we succeeded in buying mattresses to sleep on that night, fridges and washing machines which were (surprisingly) delivered the same day, and cleaning supplies... And we managed to finish our shopping in time for our drivers to get back to Manila.

But it was also a rather stressful and frustrating day… We had such a hassle paying for things, despite having plenty of money with which to do so. Cash is widely used to pay for things here, and yet the daily ATM limit is really low. So I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work! And apparently the limit is the same when you pay for things with your card... I ended up having to use my Australian credit card to buy my fridge and washing machine because my bank here has such a low transaction limit.

I had quite the pounding headache by the time we finally stopped at 3:30 PM for lunch, but I think that was mostly due to my neck not coping with the weight of the bag I was carrying. In the end, we probably accomplished more than we expected to, but it was a long day and I was glad when it was over and I could go to bed!

The next day we decided to have an adventure and figure out how to get into town to start shopping for furniture. People were very friendly and helpful and we had a lot of fun. It was much less stressful than the previous day and we enjoyed the sense of accomplishment in figuring things out for ourselves.

The past couple of days we have mostly been hanging around at home in case we need to let people in to deliver things or work on things. There are a few security-related things that need to be done at my house before I and my belongings will move in, so I’m staying with my friends Cole & Hannah at the moment. Their house is only about 150 metres or so down the road from mine, which is really nice. I think it’s likely to be another week or so before I can move in, but we’ll see what happens…

Today I met a group of women who live on my street. They were sitting outside socializing between my house and Cole & Hannah’s, and they invited me to join them when they saw me going past. Most of them had good English, but they were also eager to help me learn Tagalog. Until now, I have pretty much only seen men sitting outside their houses, so it was great to finally meet some of the women in the neighbourhood.

Anyway, here are a few random pictures from the past couple of days: 

Bathing a baby in the midst of chaos (no furniture in the house)

Watching Americans watch the Superbowl! :-) (As you can see, they now have some furniture - I still have none...)

Adventures: First tricycle ride

Selfie in the tricycle

Adventures: Learning how to use a twin tub washing machine

That gaping air-conditioner hole is one of the reasons I haven't move in yet, but we're making progress - the air-con was just installed this evening!

The Big Move!!

So I neglected to write a blog post about the fact that WE ALL FOUND HOUSES TO RENT during our last trip to Bataan!! Thanks to those of you who were praying for us! This is my little house:

During our house-hunting trips to Bataan, we were also able to check out the shops out there and determine what is available and what we would need to buy in Manila before we move. We have been busy shopping ever since!! 

Rental properties in the Philippines differ from those in Australia in that 1) there are usually repairs that need to be done prior to moving in, and 2) there is NOTHING in the house (which can make shopping a big job). For example, there is not a single cupboard in my house - not even in the kitchen...  

Miraculously, we were all able to find houses that we could move into without needing to repair first. That is not something you take for granted in this country... So thanks again for praying!! 

Tonight we packed all our stuff into the truck, ready for our big move bright and early tomorrow morning!! I think we're all looking forward to finally getting settled in our own houses and to escaping the pollution in Manila. We're hoping to start language study on Monday. :-)

On This Day...

On this day eight years ago, I embarked on an adventure that would change my life and change me forever. Today marks eight years since the day I left for (and, 5 flights and 36 hours later, arrived in) Paraguay. I had never flown anywhere before then and I had no idea how to navigate my way through an airport. I think I was more concerned about the logistics involved in actually reaching my destination than I was about what I would find once I arrived! Having never been out of Australia before, I didn’t really know what to expect from a foreign country, particularly an obscure little country like Paraguay.

It’s funny how much one’s idea of “normal” can change in just a few short years. When I arrived in Paraguay eight years ago, I mostly took photos of things that seemed abnormal or unusual to me. This picture of people drinking tereré together is one of the photos I took during my first couple of weeks in the country:

Tereré seemed a little strange at first, but it quickly became a normal part of my life.

When I returned to the Manila guest house last week after field conference, I moved into a different guest house apartment and was able to settle in and unpack my suitcase. I also made myself some tereré. It was then I realized that this thing that seems really weird to most of my friends (and that was once a bit weird to me too) now has the power to bring a touch of normality to my life during a time of transition.

This move to the Philippines is very different to that first move eight years ago because the Philippines is now the seventh, rather than the second, country I have spent time in. As my concept of “normal” expands, I find myself taking fewer pictures. An overloaded vehicle or a tangled mess of power lines no longer seem particularly noteworthy; instead, I photograph green vegetation and open spaces when I find them.

This is a picture I took out of the car window when I was in Bataan (a place a few hours out of Manila) earlier this week. I took this picture for two reasons: 1) it’s so different to the concrete jungle of Manila, and 2) it is where I and two other new couples will be moving to learn Tagalog once we find places to live. We are planning another trip out there on Sunday. Please pray that our house-hunting expedition will be successful.

The Philippines!!!

Well this is the second instalment of my blog catch-up posts. The first one took forever to upload because the internet here in the guest house is really slow, so I think I shall go easy on the photos this time…

I arrived in Manila on New Years’ Eve. The lines in the airport were surprisingly short and I got through immigrations and customs very quickly. Baggage claim was a different matter. I waited for almost an hour for my luggage to show up. Oh well, the important thing is that it did actually show up!

First impressions? After a couple of days in Hong Kong’s cold(er) weather, I was looking forward to some warmth. When I walked out of the airport terminal in Manila, I was greeted with weather that was neither as warm nor as humid as I expected… But at least it wasn't cold!

Living in South America, I became well acquainted with driving practices that differ greatly from those of the Western world; Manila driving, however, is in its own special category of “different”. The lanes are definitely “more like guidelines”. What is acceptable seems to be restricted only by what is physically possible. I have actually been very impressed with the skilfulness of most drivers here.

Manila seemed (on first impression, at least) to be a little cleaner than I expected. I found out that this is likely due to the fact that the Pope will be paying a visit to the Philippines next week. According to the front page of yesterday’s newspaper, police are being issued adult nappies/diapers so that they won’t have to desert their post and potentially wait in line for an hour in order to get to a toilet. I guess a visit from the Pope is a pretty big deal in a Catholic nation!!

A day and a half after I arrived in Manila, we travelled to a beautiful little place a couple of hours out of the city for field conference. This was a great opportunity to get to know many of the missionaries here in the Philippines. I think I have mostly figured out which children belong to which parents! I stayed in a dorm with one Faroese, two German and two American roommates. I am really enjoying the cultural diversity of this field!

Five nationalities are represented in this picture of the crazy hair & crazy shoe-themed fun night

Conference ended two days ago, but many missionaries have chosen to remain in Manila a little longer in order to take care of business and/or have a break, so the Manila guest house is still a very social place at the moment. I suspect next week will become a lot quieter as many people return home, but maybe then the internet will speed up a little and allow me to upload a few more pictures...

Hong Kong

Greetings from Manila! It seems as though a few blog posts will be necessary to catch up on the events of the past couple of weeks, so I guess I’d better get started!

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days with friends in Hong Kong on my way to the Philippines, so I thought I’d start by posting a few pictures from my brief stay in Hong Kong…