Tagolog & A Cucumber/Cheese Sandwich

Today was a pretty exciting day in the lives of Peace Corps/Philippines Trainees!  But I'll get to that part... first things first!

I started my day off really well by Skype-ing with Mom & Dad!  It's amazing what a good Skype session will do for ya!

We had a session on the "Homestay Overview" so we will know more of what to expect in our experience once we move to our training site (mine = Dinalupihan).  They informed us on the selection criteria for host families: must be open to cultural exchange, distance to training site, "typical" family, reputable member of community, not involved in politics (police, military, journalism), speakers of target language, and healthy family members.  The host family should provide: a vacant room with a lockable door, a bed exclusive for the PCT, nutritious meals and potable/drinkable water, willingness to spend time with the PCT, a shower/bucket bath structure that allows for privacy (inside if possible), a toilet/latrine with privacy (inside if possible), drinkable/potable water, and good sanitation & waste management practices.

We were told that if we don't want to share a certain thing with our host families (i.e. a snack) then we should never show it to them because if they see that you're not sharing, they would be really offended.

Most interesting tidbit: apparently most Filipinos don't use toilet paper (and they don't have bidets) so they will use the "ladle" (I forget what they call it) that they use to scoop the water out of the bucket when they bathe and basically just rinse off down there.  Needless to say, when a bunch of us went to the mall tonight we bought an ample supply of toilet paper to take along.

 We started our language instruction today! We're all learning Tagolog!  Some of us may have to learn a different language when we get to our permanent sites, but we're all learning the same thing now.  We started with a crash course on "Survival Tagolog".  Personally, it's been challenging so far for me because there are so many syllables in a lot of words and they don't yet make sense in my English-speaking mind!  As a little taste... 'Good morning!' is 'Magandang umaga!' and 'I don't know' is 'Hindi ko maintindihan'.  It's the kind of language where all letters are always pronounced the same way and (basically) every letter is pronounced.  For example, 'yes' is 'oo' (pronounced like 'oh-oh').  It's really fun to start learning a completely novel (to me) language!  Everyone in my cluster is having a lot of fun with it.

After lunch, we did some boring stuff on the Dept. of Ed. and how it's structured in the Philippines and how they currently have 2 different curriculums working in the primary schools, and 3 different curriculums working in the secondary schools.  Basically, it's in the process of being overhauled and we have to make sense of it so we can work within its framework.

We talked about some Classroom Culture issues such as the fact that some/most students come from poor communities where their families may not be able to feed them breakfast every morning.  How are you supposed to motivate a hungry child to want to put that aside and participate in his learning??

A couple of other Trainees and I went to the mall after our sessions were over.  We took our first Jeepney ride!  Jeepneys were originally made from US military jeeps leftover from WWII.  They're basically taxis but they're usually decorated really flashily and they're verrrrry popular here.  Here's the one we rode in:

And here is us inside (I'm hard to see on the right):

So we took this Jeepney ride from the facility to the mall, passing through lots of very poor looking areas.

Then, all of a sudden, there was this amazing mall!  It seemed completely out of place and unreal.  So we spent a couple hours walking around, running errands, and eating dinner at Pizza Hut (Hawaiian pizza with some flat Mountain Dew).  That reminds me, our morning snack was a cucumber, cheese & mayo sandwich.  Sooo good!! (Ricky, you would have gagged).

But anyways, about this mall, it had 3 levels and was very impressive and odd.  In one of the "CVS type" stores, we found some Nivea "Whitening cream".  They have "whiteners" in their lotion, and we have "bronzers"... nobody's every happy!

This store claimed to have "Authentic American Style"... not sure about that, but I thought it was pretty interesting!

After the mall, we came back and I studied Tagolog with a couple of the girls.  We had a good time, learned some, and we're going to try to make a habit of it.  I'll need all the practice I can get! 

Well, I've managed to stay awake until 11pm, like a big girl, so hopefully that means my jet lag is wearing off and I'll be able to sleep through the night soon!! Fingers crossed!