Freakin' finally

We know where we're going to be living finally. About 1 year 4 months into the overall process and we know what we'll be doing, who we'll be working with and where we'll be living. Abby and I will be in Calapan, Mindoro. It's a larger city, I think of about 100,000 people and it's the provincial capital. It's taken a second to get readjusted to the idea of living in a city since I think most of us assumed in the Peace Corps you live in the boonies in a hut, but I'm very happy with our placement. It supposed to be a very cool city and it's really close to a lot of good beaches and scuba spots. Actually Mindoro is known for its excellent scuba spots, and that's saying a lot since the Philippines is considered one of the best dive spots in the world. I'm going to be working with the provincial government helping with eco-tourism, reef restoration, flood control and a bunch of other semi-unrelated things. It sounds pretty cool because the government works with something like 12 municipalities around the province, so I'll be doing a lot of day travel around the island to different communities and working with them to set up programs and implement them. Abby is going to be working in a high school that has both a special ed and a deaf ed class, so she's very excited about the prospect of working with deaf kids. I can't say much more at this point since I haven't looked into it at all, and I'm kind of pressed for time, but yeah, it seems like it going to be awesome. We've been in Balanga the past two days for more training, and we're heading back now. We go to visit our site next week, so that'll be our first big travel experience since we're arrived here, and it'll be great to finally see the place. Also, we went swimming in the south china sea yesterday, and it was amazing. This country rocks. And now, look at some pictures.



This is a picture of the flagellents from behind. You can see their bloody backs.



Here they are from the front. They cover their faces to make it more of a personal sacrifice and less of a public display.



Here is where we had our water safety "lesson." Life is hard here.



Here is our host father Bhoy with his grandson Paul Lee.



They had a night time procession on Holy Thursday with lots of floats.



Here is a view across the fishponds from our town. As you can see, it's very nice. But, directly behind me is a lot of trash.



We walked over this rickety bamboo bridge to get out to the water at the mangrove nursery.



This is us in a tricycle, the best and usually cheapest way to travel short distances.

Magandang hapon

It's official. Internet cafes here should be renamed internet video games rooms for boys under 16. The "cafe" part of the title is the most misleading, mostly because it's totally untrue. There is no coffee here, not even a cookie. It's just a room with computers. So maybe it should be called Internet Room on all of the signs.

We moved in with our host family a week ago, and they're awesome. The Estrella family consists of about 47 people by my estimation, most of whom come and leave throughout the day. There are 6 kids, a few grandchildren, grandparents, aunts, uncles, um, second cousins... I don't know. I can't remember half their names, but if they're female and under the age of 25, it doesn't matter anyway because they're all too shy to talk to me. Well, that's not true, they are warming up, but it's been a slow process that involved a lot of card playing. We've played uno, canasta, skip-bo and my new favorite game, tongkit. It's kind of like rummy mixed with poker, only you throw in a ridiculous, incomprehensible betting system that I have yet to make any sense of. Luckily we play with pisos (2 cents). They have a nice little house though, mainly due to the fact that he worked in Japan for the last 9 years until he was sent home for being an illegal immigrant. It's funny actually, walking around town you can pick out who has a relative abroad and who doesn't. Cement walls, tile, a complete roof and a big TV? They have a relative abroad. Wood or sheet metal walls, coconut leaf or tin roof and a small tv? They're a fisherman. I've been talking to some people around town and apparently the use of dynamite in fishing has totally wrecked their catch. People come in from other provinces, blow the shit out of the fish population and then the net fisherman here are basically left with nothing. It's a huge problem, one that hopefully I'll get to help with.

We still don't know where we're going, but there's a lot of gossip, so we're about 95% sure now. Probably a small island, hopefully one that is well stocked with beer. When I first got here I heard about the barkada, which is a drinking circle of (male) friends who have some (or many) drinks and just generally shoot the shit. Then I learned most barkada drink gin or brandy and my enthusiasm waned. Nothing like a hot shot of gin from a communal cup, followed by a chaser of warm water. That sounds like the scientific formula for puke. Actually I briefly hung out with a few guys and had a shot of brandy, which had ice in it luckily, so it wasn't too bad. Which leads me to my next point, the Filipinos are friendly to the point of embarrassment (on my part). I walked by those guys a few days back and they yelled at me "Shot! Shot!" so of course I had to stop. But everywhere you go, there's food, coconut juice, mangoes, halo-halo (ice milk with beans and stuff), cookies, crackers... If I make the mistake of asking someone what a food item is, within 3 minutes that food item will be in front of me so I can find out for myself. The first three questions you get asked are: Are you married? Do you have kids? and Do you eat Filipino food? It works out really well though because Filipino food is the shit. Did you know you can buy a kilo of caught-that-morning fresh mussels for 20 cents? Well, you can.