A call to action

It was a great day on Tuesday, the right man was picked for the job in my opinion, and I feel fairly confident that he'll be able to get us moving in the right direction again. And, Obama has finally broken our pattern of only white males in office. About time. But as great as the election was, it overshadowed (and rightly so) an insidious plague in our country. The plague is religious fundamentalism.

We hear news all the time about the religious extremists over there! Watch out, those other people are trying to take away your freedoms! And it's true, Muslim extremists are assholes. But we have been duped into not noticing that our very own country is slowly becoming a theocracy. We mock Iran for their government and policy that's led by religion. We say, "look at us, we're so free!" We pride ourselves on the fact that people can say whatever they'd like, and believe in whatever they'd like to believe in. But like it or not, we are becoming a Christian country. Not that everyone in the country is becoming Christian, but we are increasingly letting Christians fundamentalists dictate policy and laws for us. The entire Republican party depends on capturing their vote, and Obama had to repeat over and over that he was a Christian, that he attended church and believed in god. In a nation made up of dozens of religions, as well as agnostics and atheists, that believes in the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, why did both candidates have to prove that they were good Christians?

This is from the World Factbook, regarding the makeup of the US population: Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%, other Christian 1.6%, Jewish 1.7%, Buddhist 0.7%, Muslim 0.6%, other or unspecified 2.5%, unaffiliated 12.1%, none 4% (2007 est.)

So by that estimate, a little more than %75 of the population is some kind of Christian religion, but that leaves %25 who are not (or in other terms, about 75 million people).

Where am I going with this? Some people might have seen the news that Prop 8 passed in California, banning gay people from getting married. Why was this even on the books in the first place? Because of the Mormon church for one, but also because of a large group of people who's religion tells them that homosexuality is a sin. It is a sin to them, but not against the law in the US. It's also a sin to commit adultery, covet your neighbor's goods and wife, as well as a multitude of other things that are not against the law. So does the fact that adultery is a sin stop Christians from committing that sin? Some yes, but certainly not all, not even a majority. So basically they pushed legislation up for a vote, banning a right for an entire group of people, simply because some people's religion considers it a sin. Does that sound like something that happens in a free country, where people's religion is not supposed to influence legislation and law?

I read a comment about it by a guy telling gays not to sue, because it was the will of the people, the majority has spoken. Yes, all %51 of the majority. The population of Cali is about 38 million, so that means that just less than half of the people, or 18 million people give or take, did not want that prop passed. But if all it takes is a majority, what if it turned out that 51% of a certain state did not want blacks and whites to get married? What if it turned out that since 51% of people thought cheating on your wife/husband is a sin, laws would be passed making cheating punishable with jail time?

The fact of the matter is, no matter your thoughts on homosexuality, being gay isn't a crime. It doesn't matter if you think gay people are born gay, or if they choose their lifestyle, it's still not a crime. And if two people wish to get married, who they fuck are we to say they can't? If they're of legal age, and both going into the marriage willingly, then they should be allowed to marry. Don't people see, this is no different than not allowing interracial marriages? Don't they see that legislation like this eats away at the most cherished foundations of our society and country, that all people are free and have a right to happiness? Doesn't everyone see that by allowing legislation like this to stand, we are no better than any of the "unfree" countries conservatives and liberals alike love to mock?

So my view is this: There are more of us than there are of them. There are more religious and non-religious people in this country who believe in the separation of church and state, who want to be free to live and practice as we see fit. The Christian fundamentalists are louder, meaner and more cutthroat, and that's usually why they're heard so often, but it's time to put a stop to this nonsense. It's time for us to demand they keep their creationist beliefs out of school textbooks and other public places where they don't belong. It's time for us to demand they keep their beliefs about what is a sin and what is not a sin out of our public domain. This is our country, and unlike them we believe in freedoms for all people, that everyone is equal and should be treated as such, and we're not going to let them turn our country into a theocracy. It's time to start fighting back.

More information about ACORN

Get the full scoop from factcheck.org, a great independent website that debunks false claims made by both sides. Read it here.

I think the reason this bothers me so much is because it's such an obvious attempt at a gay marriage issue of 2000 or a Swift Boat of 2004. It's the Republicans, again, trying to win by ignoring the issues and focusing exclusively on 3rd party issues that are usually highly exaggerated and unimportant. Just once I'd like to see an campaign run by the Republicans that anything other than mud slinging and name calling. I guess they've got nothing left, courtesy of Bush.

For the record, I'm not a Democrat specifically, I just happen to usually vote that way because their candidates care about something other than big business and wealth. As soon as a Republican candidate beats out a Democrat in their positions on renewable energy, education spending, cutting the defense budget, affordable health care and corporate responsibility, I'll be happy to vote for him/her. As long as they also believe in evolution...

Nuts About ACORN

From Slate.com, learn more about the ACORN "scandal," and the farce that it really is.

Believing in vote fraud may be dangerous to a democracy's health.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008, at 7:16 PM ET

---

Last night's presidential debate didn't rise to full-frontal bodice-ripper status until John McCain insisted, "[W]e need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." Obama probably shouldn't have guffawed. But it was hard not to. He was probably thinking, "Destroying the fabric of democracy???" Even for McCain that was a little bit of breathless chest-heaving.

As far as "gotcha" stunts go, the right-wing feeding frenzy over the vile vote-fraud treachery of ACORN has yet to yield much fruit. Investigations are indeed under way. But then, they are always under way this time of the year—and as the indefatigable Brad Friedman points out, so what? Evidence of voter-registration wrongdoing is no more a sign of widespread, Obama-sanctioned vote fraud than evidence of minorities being misled and intimidated on Election Day is a sign of official, McCain-sanctioned vote suppression. What's the real point of turning voter-registration shenanigans into "one of the greatest frauds in voter history"? The object here is not criminal indictments. It's to undermine voter confidence in the elections system as a whole. John McCain wants to build a better bogeyman, and he needs your help to do it.

ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It's a 30-year-old nonprofit that organizes on behalf of poor urban minorities, and it has registered 1.3 million new voters this year. There's no denying that the organization's system of paying workers $8 an hour to gather voter registrations creates screwy incentives. Encyclopedia Brown could have cracked that mystery. That's why ACORN is either obligated by law or opts voluntarily to turn over all its voter-registration cards suggesting that Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys just registered to vote in Nevada. That GOP elections officials started screaming "gotcha" when those registrations were turned in is the real fraud here. Jump back, Encyclopedia Brown! There is wrongdoing afoot in low-paying voter-registrationland.

Last week, media attention focused on a "raid" on ACORN offices in Las Vegas in which voter registration documents that had mostly been voluntarily turned overFreddie Johnson of Cleveland testified that ACORN encouraged him to sign 73 voter-registration forms—all in his own name) overlooks the fact that all 73 registrations would still have allowed Freddie to vote just once. The connection between wrongful voter registration and actual polling-place vote fraud is the stuff of GOP mythology. As Rick Hasen has demonstrated, here at Slate and elsewhere, even if Mr. Mouse is registered to vote, he still needs to show up at his polling place, provide a fake ID, and risk a felony conviction to do so. were dramatically seized by force. Right-wing screeching over nefarious doings in Ohio (where

Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen. The incentives—unlike the incentives for registration fraud—just aren't there. In an interview this week with Salon, Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College, who has studied vote fraud systematically, noted that "between 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty others were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five were guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters." Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that U.S. attorneys, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired for searching high and low for vote-fraud cases to prosecute and coming up empty. Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that five days before the 2006 election, then-interim U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman exuberantly (and futilely) indicted four ACORN workers, even when Justice Department policy barred such prosecutions in the days before elections. RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has said he is unaware of a single improper vote cast because of bad cards submitted in the course of a voter-registration effort. Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"

There is no such thing as vote fraud. The think tank created to peddle the epidemic has evaporated. A handful of cases have been prosecuted. Then why is Sarah Palin shooting off e-mails contending that "we can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election?" Why is former Sen. John Danforth announcing, all statesmanlike, that the whole 2008 election "has been tainted?" Why is Ted Olson, the Republican National Lawyers Association lawyer of the year, claiming that "[ACORN] acknowledged having to get rid of a thousand people or more who were participating in voter fraud efforts." These people know the difference between registration fraud and vote fraud. Why continue to suggest they are the same thing?

Consider the fact that, as the Brennan Center reported recently, "[E]lection officials across the country are routinely striking millions of voters from the rolls through a process that is shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation." Consider the recent New York Times review of state records and Social Security records, which concluded that "[t]ens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law." Consider the case, now on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, in which 200,000 new Ohio voters stand to be bounced off the rolls because, through no fault of their own, their names don't match error-riddled state databases. Consider the indictment this week of former Republican official James Tobin for his 2002 role in jamming Democratic get-out-the-vote calls. Consider the much-ballyhooed Republican challenge to the eligibility of 6,000 Native American and student voters in Montana that backfired first in court, then with the abrupt resignation this week of the official who spearheaded the effort.

Nobody is suggesting the Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts are perfect. But the suggestion that Barack Obama, through ACORN, is systematically working to get Huey, Dewey, and Louie to steal elections, and that therefore minorities and people of color should be disenfranchised, is cynical beyond belief. Consider the fliers and robo-calls designed to spread false information and threats to Hispanic and African-American voters. (According to the Philadelphia Daily News, fliers in minority neighborhoods warned residents that undercover cops would be lurking around the polls on Election Day, arresting anyone with "outstanding arrest warrants or who have unpaid traffic tickets.") There is wholly implausible vote stealing, and then there is the vote stealing that actually happens. You want to get all crazy-paranoid? I'd worry more about the people who want to rough up their fellow citizen at the polls than people who want to risk jail time for voting twice.

In the end, all roads lead back to John Paul Stevens. He wrote the plurality opinion in last term's Crawford v. Marion County, which upheld Indiana's restrictive voter-ID law. Stevens understood that there is no such thing as polling-place vote fraud, conceding that "[t]he record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history." But, continued Stevens, in the manner of someone rationally discussing the likelihood of UFO sightings, "flagrant examples of such fraud in other parts of the country have been documented throughout this nation's history." Like, um, an 1868 mayoral election in New York City, he notes, and a single 2004 incident from Washington. Stevens was more worried about shaky "voter confidence" in elections than actual voting. The message that went out from on high was clear: undermine voter confidence. Even if it's irrational and hysterical and tinged with the worst kinds of racism, keep telling the voters the system is busted.

Each time they spread the word that Democrats (especially poor and minority Democrats) are poised to steal an election, John McCain and his overheated friends deliberately undermine voter confidence. That is the point. It encourages citizens to accede to ever-harsher voter-verification laws—even if they are not needed. It musters support for voter purges that are increasingly draconian. Insist often enough that the other side is cheating, and you may even encourage partisans to take matters into their own hands, leading to the worst forms of polling-place vigilantism—from a cross burning in Louisiana on the eve of a 2006 mayoral election to the hiring of intimidating partisan "poll watchers" to volunteer at inner-city polling places. When McCain goes after ACORN, he's really just asking you to join him in believing that the system is broken. And if you choose to overheat along with McCain, the Supreme Court promises to sign off on any measure that might calm you down later. John McCain might want to be a little more careful about accusing Obama, ACORN, or anyone else, of "destroying the fabric of democracy." In so doing, he's either deliberately or unconsciously encouraging his own supporters to grab a handful of the stuff and start ripping.

The Klaw

Now that we're officially back from Peace Corps and they can no longer touch us with their big, ugly stick of rules, I would like to present The Klaw for public consumption. Basically, myself and a few other volunteers would write some random shit that most likely is and will be funny only to us and small handful of others. Never the less, it is 11 issues of pure genius. I would take everything we wrote and every two months or so put it into a newsletter of sorts. So have a look America (and other, smaller, insignificant non-America countries), and be prepared to laugh. Laugh, and wonder aloud, "Did these motherfuckers ever work?" To quote the Tootsie Pop commercials: The world may never know.

THE KLAW

The password for all the issues is: theklaw

Philly is for lovers. And cheese steaks.

A couple weeks ago our Peace Corps friends separation anxiety got the best of us, so we went on a little road trip out to the east coast. We visited friends in Pittsburgh, Philly, and then hit up the Radiohead concert in Cleveland on our way home. It wasn't exactly on our way home, but whatever, it was still a really great show. It was sort of the culmination of the Summer of Abby and Owen. When I was in between junior and senior years of high school, I didn't work, stayed up until 5am every night, slept til 2pm every day and basically did nothing, so my Dad dubbed it "The Summer of Owen." He'd come home from work and ask, "How's the summer of Owen going?" because he was jealous of the fact that all I did that day was play video games and eat bean dip. Anyway, long story long, this summer, with the exception of a little school for Abby, has been The Summer of Abby and Owen. We've gone out with friends, taken trips, and generally enjoyed having a little money and a lot of free time. Abby's back in school now, and I'm *this* close to getting a job (PS Thanks a lot, Peace Corps, for being totally useless on the job search front), so the summer is coming to a end, but here are some pictures of us, doing nothing and loving every minute of it.

Matt taking photos around town.

View of Philly from the Rocky Steps.

One of the many beautiful old parks around town. Also, a lot of people there ride bikes.

Philly has a lot of murals.

Art museum.

Art museum / Rocky steps.

Walking around in Old Town.

Founding Fathers: Good at drafting documents, but not very original architects.

Down near the Liberty Bell.

Out drinking.

Carrie, Matt, and Honey the dog, who was wasted.

Carrie and me, walking down South Street in Philly.

Some guy created this little art park out of found items (junk).

Inside the park.

Contrary to popular opinion, these guys are not like the Buckingham Palace guards. You slap one of these guys and they'll pistol whip you with their replica muskets.

America needs to fully commit to renewable energy

Watch this speech by Al Gore and visit the We Can Solve It page for more info. It's time to stop fucking talking about it and do something!

Now that you've watched that, send a letter to Bush, your governor, house representatives, senators, and state legislators. Send a letter to Obama and McCain letting them know that this is the most pressing issue of the election, that oil and energy are the roots of our economic trouble, amongst other things. Use this temple I wrote if you want:

Dear Senator/Governor, etc.,

I wonder if you've seen Al Gore's challenge at wecansolveit.org? He challenged the nation to be using %100 renewable energy within 10 years. I think it can be done. We have the technology, we have the money to fund research in new technologies like improved solar panel efficiency, cellulosic biofuel, fusion and other unexplored technologies. You want to help us fight gas prices, energy costs and boost the sagging economy? This is the way to do it!

This is not just a matter of preserving the environment. It is a matter of NATIONAL SECURITY! The best way to fight terrorism is to stop funding the governments (by buying their oil) that support and/or house the terrorists. You want to deal a blow to Venezuela, Iran, Russia and other similar countries? Well, they're all propped up by oil and gas money! Green technology will also create thousands if not millions of new jobs. It will make us energy self-sufficient so that we won't need new drilling or to have a strategic reserve. It will make us and the environment more healthy. That's the kind of world I'd like to live in.

So please support renewable energy. Continue offering tax breaks to businesses and individuals that produce or purchase solar panels, alternatively fueled cars and the like. Set aside some of the budget to help fund research. Tax and/or fine polluters. Don't build any new coal plants. Require home builders to conform to rigorous energy standards and install solar panels on the homes they build. Help set up wind farms here in YOUR STATE and across the country. In short, do everything in your power and use the power of your office to help America reach its goal of using %100 renewable energy by 2019!

This isn't about money or the environment, it's about making this the best country it can possible be.

Thank you,
YOUR NAME HERE

Philippines slide show

Abby put together a slide show of all the pictures (well, most of them) from our two years in the Peace Corps. Check it out:



Or go here to see a slightly bigger version of it.

I win!

Huh huh, I never really got into YouTube, and I'm still not into it, but here's another YouTube video, cuz it's funny and stuff. Don't watch it if you're easily offended. Or made of cheese. Or on fire.

great song, awesome video

We gots a place for living!

Went over and checked out Abby's brother's house this past Friday to see if we wanted to live there, and it looks really nice. We'll only have to pay utilities, no rent, so that's a huge plus, meaning we'll have an extra $400-500 a month we won't be spending on rent. Booyah. It's in a pretty nice location, a couple blocks away from one of the coolest streets in St. Louis, South Grand Blvd. The area used to be pretty rough, but recently people from all over have moved into the neighborhood, plus a decent number of immigrants, so it's really diversified the neighborhood. There are Middle Eastern delis, Afghani restaurants, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, authentic Mexican, an international grocery store... The house is within a half mile of two grocery stores, a weekly farmers market, tons of bars and restaurants, the community garden and all sorts of other cool stuff. It'll be nice to get out of the suburbs, because while it's nice out here, it's also pretty blah. Not sure exactly when we'll move in because right before he moved in someone broke in and stole all of his copper piping, but it'll probably be within the month.

Check out the hood.

Also, unrelated but still awesome, check out our group's Peace Corps slideshow. A few of our batch mates put it together and we watched it at our COS (Close of Service) conference. It's pictures and some video from everyone in the group from our two years in the Philippines. It barely scratches the surface though, because if we took about 2000 photos during our two years, that means that combined we took at least 130,000 photos, because I know a lot of people took a lot more photos than we did!

Borrrrnn in the U S A, I was borrrrnn in the U S A

It's very weird to be back, I'll say that upfront. When we came back to the US in November it wasn't nearly as weird, for two reasons: the first is that Portland isn't "home" to either of us, I've only been there a few times, so even though we were visiting my parents, it was more like they joined us on vacation; and second, this time we're not going back after two weeks. It still seems hard to believe that we're back here for good, or at least in our case for 15 months until Abby finishes school. But we're done with Peace Corps and I have to admit, it kind of sucks. I was ready to leave the Philippines, but I'm really going to miss Peace Corps in terms of people. Other volunteers. Not very often do you meet 70 random people and have basically all of them be cool. Not that you're friends with all of them, but %95 of them are interesting and smart and fun and easy to talk to. You don't happen upon a group like that very often. So I'm a little bummed about that aspect of it. Luckily our friends here called up the night we got back, and we ended up going out for dinner and drinks with a bunch of people, and they're organizing a welcome back bbq this weekend, so it feels really nice to be missed, and to have people be excited that we're back. I was a little worried that maybe we'd be too different, or that other people wouldn't understand where we're coming from, but it didn't seem that way at all, which is kind of a relief.

Never the less I've kind of been in this house for two days now, slightly afraid to go out. Maybe not afraid, but a little apprehensive. We went to the grocery store today, the little international market down the street, so that was kind of fun running around looking at locally made organic bread, real tofu, baklava, deli meat, pickles, hot sauce, cheeses, meats, beers, giant jars of olives... It was pretty nice. Brought a smile to my face for sure. Abby has her first day of school this evening, but she's downstairs now taking a nap trying to fight the jet leg! I couldn't do it, but props to her that she can. I'm still in the process of looking for a job, which I don't feel like thinking about or talking about. On an unrelated note, we walked to the market and the total walking time was maybe 20 minutes, and in that span we saw a total of 3 people out walking as well. It's insane with the driving here, so much to get used to again...

Also, please check out this website: http://www.wecansolveit.org/ and consider signing up and signing their petitions.

More importantly look at this page: http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/solutions to read up a little on five ways we can combat global warming (clean energy economy, personal choice, adoption of renewables, enhanced energy efficiency and innovation leadership). This is so much more important this year because by choosing a president you'll also be choosing the course this country will take for the next four years concerning environmental policy. I think that global warming tends to hit people too much as a slogan, but I like the way this group has laid out its info. It's all very nice and well that people switch over to compact florescent bulbs or drive a Prius, but the real way things are going to chance is through the government and its relation to business in this country. It's not even just about global warming, it's about the way we live our lives, the way we let other people run our lives, and right now money and buying shit is the only thing that matters in this world, and that's pretty pathetic.

Well...

So the time has come. Time for me to write about the fact that we're leaving, and make a list of things I'll miss... This is hard to write about, I've tried before, but I'll give it a shot. It's not hard because I'm so worked up I keep crying on the keyboard, but it's hard to write about because I don't think I've ever had two years of my life be filled with such strong emotions, and so many of them. On tuesday my coworkers had a lunch for me: they made a slide show with pictures of me and us, sang me songs, said nice things about how hard of a worker I am (semi true) and how handsome I am (true), and they listened to my requests for food so we had Bicol Express (my favorite pinoy dish) and sweet and sour fish, and chocolate cake, and it was really nice. It was sad, and kind of heart-warming, and I just felt happy and all over good. Two hours after that I was screaming at the top of my lungs "I hate the Philippines!" as the torrential rain that came out of nowhere filled up our front area and proceeded to flood our house (but not too badly). So in that one day I experienced sadness, nostalgia, happiness, joy, frustration, and utter disgust and anger. So now imagine that for 2 years straight, where you'll be fuming about something retarded that just happened and then someone will do something nice, and you'll be happy again.


There are a lot of great things: the smell of frying garlic coming through our window, or the gentle splish-splosh of a neighbor hand-washing all their clothes. Huge lightening displays, the moon shinning through the coconut trees at the end of our street, the cloud shrouded mountains seen from our bedroom window, the utter quietness of such a loud country at night. Watching people on boats and buses pull an endless stream of food from their bags. The fact that you can make anything happen if you just ask enough, and nicely, because there really aren't any rules that's can't be broken. The ease of getting around without a car, once you learn the system. Living in a culture where people only buy what they need. Meeting up with other volunteers and getting to use all those jokes you've saved up for 3 months because no Filipino would understand. Drinking beers at Anthology after a meal at May Lin and ripping on Carrie for requesting a song that has a 20 minute drum solo in the middle of it. Being too lazy to cook and getting fried chicken and garlic rice from Wil's. Living an hour and a half away from an amazing white sand beach, and an Italian restaurant that serves Italian style pizza made with real mozz cheese. Being able to travel to incredible places like Bohol and Sagada. Being able to walk down the street to buy a beer, or beef broth cubes, or vinegar and not having to get in the car and drive to a huge grocery store. The sheer amount of free time we have. Being able to walk to the market, and buy things from people who grew or killed that particular food (most of the time at least...). Walking to the beach, albeit a crappy, dirty one, and having a beer while watching the sunset. Bootleg dvds. The incredible, sometimes overbearing generosity of people with next to nothing. Being cut off from pop culture and all that boring shit, but being much more clued in to world events, and just having a better understand of the world period. CNN, BBC and Newsweek are all way, way better outside of the US.

I genuinely feel that this experience has made both of us better people, and I'm looking forward to getting on that plane and taking all that I learned back with me so I can lead a better, healthier, well rounded and compassionate life, one that involves friends, family, community, living local and eating well, and tons of travel. Travel, travel, travel.

A busy month: a wedding, whale sharks and COS

It's been a busy month. Not with work mind you, no silly, with travel! After we got back from the farm, the next week we were invited to a friend's wedding. Actually, it was the brother of a friend whom we had never met, but that's ok. Weddings here seem to be less about family, and more about how many local celebs you can get to show up: the vice mayor, us, a barangay captain from a neighboring municipality... We didn't see the actual service, but went to the reception expecting a party. I mean, receptions in the US are usually a party, and Filipinos can turn anything into a fiesta, so I figured it would be huge. I was wrong. It was just food, and then the gifts came out. This is where it all got weird, because you never, ever open gifts at a party here. You give someone a gift at their birthday party and they hurry it out of sight as quickly as possible before they die of shame. But here at the wedding, all the money was brought out and counted, out loud, over a giant sound system. I was really surprised by the whole thing, but no one knew because I was hiding in back, trying to avoid being brought in front of everyone to give a speech or some shit. Other interesting wedding facts: people at the reception buy incredibly expensive rice snacks and shots of good booze, as a way of giving money to the couple; the night before the wedding a traveling band of bakla (men who dress/live as woman) come by the party and put on a show, get everyone dancing, and the guests pin money on the bride and groom; everyone is expected to make themselves scarce by about 4pm, when just the family goes back to the house; local officials and other rich people are listed as sponsors, which means they get a seat of honor in exchange for helping pay for the wedding.

A few days after that we headed down to Bicol, which, if you look at a map of the Philippines, is a bit like Luzon's Florida, dangling precariously off its tip. Bicol is known for their love of spicy food, and for being repeatedly decimated by every storm that blows through the area. We went for the whale sharks that hang out there in March and April. We stayed at a really nice (and by really nice I don't mean fancy, just, you know, nice) resort down there that was within walking distance of the WWF sponsored whale shark eco-tourism project. Back in the day, the locals would just kill the sharks, selling parts in the market, and the rest to the Chinese to blend into heart powder, or whatever the hell they do with all those endangered animals parts. Now they've realized that by taking tourists out to swim with them, they can make a lot more money. That's where we come in. The weather was pretty terrible when we were down there - cold and rainy - so the first day we didn't see any. We didn't even get in the water. Despite the expense, we decided that we had come all the way down there, we might was well go out the next day and try again. The weather the second day wasn't much better, in fact it was worse, but within the first 10 minutes we were Navy Sealing off the side of a bangka. The experience was pretty amazing, they did a fairly good job of keeping the groups small, so the spotter would see one in the water, yell at us to get ready, and then we'd jump off the side of the still moving boat and follow our guide. The water is full of plankton, the main reason why the sharks are there, so the water is pretty murky. The first one just burst into view from the murk, about 5 feet below us. We ended up seeing 7 really good ones, and a few we were even able to swim along with for a couple minutes before they dove back down. After 3 1/2 hours being out in the pouring rain, we called it quits and went back, still on a high.

Those are just some pictures I took, no big deal... Wow, I'm funny. No, they're from the internet, but that's what they look like. Pretty sweet when they're only 5 feet away from you in the open ocean!

After that I had PDM, Abby came back to Calapan, and a week later we met back up in Manila for our COS (Close of Service) conference. The conference itself wasn't too rigorous, just some talks on readjusting to life in the US (ironically given by two people who had left their service directly for PC jobs and hadn't, in fact, been back to the US yet themselves), paperwork and medical. If there's one thing PC loves, it's paperwork, and boy do we have a lot. So, much fun was had by all, a few alcoholic beverages were consumed (ok, fine, an entire dump truck full) and some goodbyes were said. With that we enter our last month, saying goodbye to people in town, our friends, our coworkers, our PC friends... Between that, going away parties, paperwork, last minute work around site and facing the reality of going home, I'm kind of wishing I could just close my eyes, wake up and have it be June 1st. Am I ready to leave? Yes. Am I ready to return? Not really.

Up North: Baguio, Sagada and The Farm

Over holy week we decided to head north because it's nice and cool up there, and hotter than hell down here. Also, we hadn't been there yet. The area we went to is usually known as the Cordilleras, which I learned when I was looking for a wikipedia link means "range of mountains" in spanish, which is what they are. How convenient. It's actually a mountainous area in northern Luzon made up of 6 or 7 provinces, and since the whole area is at an altitude of something like 1500+ meters, it's noticeably cooler up there. During the winter it can get as cold as 4C, which is flippin' cold for the Philippines. The area is amazingly beautiful, and part of it (specifically Banaue) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We didn't go to that part, but apparently there's great hiking over there, and it also has the dubious distinction of being the place where Julia was killed.

We went to Baguio for a day, just to break up the 16 hour trip up to Sagada from our site, and it was nice, for a big city. Really hilly, with a lot of good restaurants, shopping and jeepney exhaust. After that we headed up to Sagada along a semi-paved road that offered great views down the precipitous cliffs we were teetering along on our little one-lane road. Sagada is a great little town with a decent tourist presence, but not too much. The people there seem to understand that a lot of tourists and/or big tour groups would really destroy the quiet tranquility that's such a huge part of the draw there. There's still work to be done, but hopefully they keep it like that, instead of going over to the dark side and becoming the Boracay of the north. We went caving there, which was pretty amazing, spending 2 hours poking around barefoot in a cold limestone cave. We also went on an incredible hike to a waterfall that led us down into a valley carpeted with rice terraces. Unfortunately we also had to hike back out, which was straight up.

The guesthouse we stayed at in Sagada

The best way to carry a giant bundle of leaves

The trail to the falls

Apparently there are no roads to the villages in the valley so they carry everything in

Unbelievable, and not even the best the Philippines has to offer (apparently)

We had to make it through the terrace maze to get down

Just called "Big Falls" I think... 72 meters tall

Great swimming after a hot hike, ice cold

The next series of pictures is from the farm that's owned by the host family of our friend Sherry. A bunch of us went there for the week to hang out and work (or in our case, just hang out). It's a pretty amazing place, an hour walk from a small town, so it's totally isolated, amazingly quiet and pretty much the perfect place to go to get away from whatever it is you need to get away from (in my case: allergies, tricycles, the heat...). We ate really well, hung out a lot, went hiking and got some amazing produce from the organic garden. It's registered with WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) so if you are ever in the Philippines and would like a week or a month of work in exchange for free lodging and awesome scenery, check it out. You can hang out with Adam and Beth.

Hiking through town

Halfway down (or up) the super steep path

The farm. It's hard to tell, but there are different terraces for various kinds of crops

Adam and Beth, weeding the green onion

Weeding for their supper

A hike we didn't go on because we weren't there yet, but still a sweet picture

Sunset from the farm

Don't ask why there's a cat in the picture, it's a long story...

Malaysia - Borneo

We went to Borneo kind of randomly (it happened to be the cheapest place for us to fly to), but I'm really glad we made the detour and stopped in for a few days. The big attraction in the northern state of Sabah, where we were, is Mt. Kinabalu, which is one of the tallest mountains in SE Asia and also one of the easiest to climb. It was also a little out of our price range, so we admired it as we drove by in the bus that took us to the Kinabatangan River valley. In truth, we weren't that interested in mountain climbing because we had a sweet homestay set up, and some jungle adventures planned. The homestay is a WWF project to provide livelihood for people in the area, so besides having families host tourists, they also train people to be guides, boatmen, back office people and anything else that might go into running such an operation. The family we stayed with was big and shy, but we got to chat with them a fair amount, watch some Malaysian soccer, eat some good food and have a cooking lesson that consisted of Abby dumping some chopped veggies into a pot and the mom declaring "done!" The boat tours were nice, it was just us and our guide Joel, so we got to putter around on the river for hours, looking for wildlife and dodging the occasional power boat of a bigger, much more expensive jungle operation down river. The wildlife was amazing: wild elephants, monitor lizards, a variety of macaques, proboscis monkeys, crocodiles, orangutans (which we didn't see), kingfishers, hornbills and egrets, wild boar and a few other things I'm probably forgetting. We tried to set up a jungle hike to maybe see some animals up close, but the hike was more like a 15 minute walk into the jungle to the eco-camp they're building, and not much else. Oh well...

There was another group there so we got to sit in on their cultural show. The cultural dances were almost exactly the same as Filipino dances, minus the weird Spanish colonial dances. I half expected them to come out and do tinikiling, and when I asked they said they have the same dance, it just goes by another name there.

They asked for volunteers to come up, so I got to bang on some drums in a Borneo version of the hippie drum circle.

Kingfisher

Monitor lizard - about 5 to 6 feet long

We happened to be there during the annual elephant migration, so we were extremely lucky to see a herd of elephants. In fact, we were so lucky our guide literally jumped up and down in the boat saying "we're so lucky!"

We came across them a second time, and this time they were out in plain view. Unfortunately it was getting dark, so most of our pictures were a little blurry, since we couldn't use a flash, obviously.

This is the best picture of a mom and baby. We watched them eat for about 10 minutes.

Proboscis monkeys, hanging out in the trees.

Macaques

The river at sunset. It was pretty muddy from the erosion caused by all the recent flooding.

A lake we hiked to.

This photo is actually the reflection off the incredibly still lake.