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!!