Tomorrow is Erin's birthday (yay!). I'm not sure how we are going to celebrate it, but I am going to try my darndest to get that girl some ice cream. We leave to visit our permanent site on Tuesday for a visit of where we will live and work. We are very excited, but also, obviously, a little nervous. There are some new pictures uploaded--you can click on the flickr thingey-ma-bobey to the right to check them out. We have some more fun stories to share, but all in due time. We love you all, except the people who randomly drop by. We don't know you--we like you though. No, we love you. Never mind. We love you a lot! Come visit us. Erin is telling me we have to go. Take care and Happy Birthday Erin!!

Saturday April 22, 2006

Myad nga gabi-i! (Good Evening!) I (Erin) have a quick story to share. Quite a few nights ago after a yummy dinner with our host family (which in itself is exciting, since they used to set a separate table for us in the dining room, while the family ate in the kitchen – something about respect for guests and Filipinos eating with their hands, I don’t know, but we’re very thankful that we all eat together now), anyway. . .after dinner, Scott and I were practicing sentences in Kinaray-a. One of the sentences I was saying involved the words mga tiki (translation = the lizards), no sooner were the words out of my mouth then TWO lizards landed on my head. Yes that’s right. Two fighting lizards fell from the ceiling onto my head at the dinner table. Very funny. One jumped right off, and everyone had a good laugh and thought that was it. Meanwhile I was still shaking and pointing at my host sister, as I could still feel one hiding in my hair. After perhaps the longest 10-15 seconds of my life she realized there was another one and brushed it off my head! Such is life here!

Speaking of random animals in the Philippines, Scott was stung by a sea urchin this week – ouch! If you ever get stung by a sea urchin, soak your foot in vinegar – it works miracles.

One more thing, this country is beautiful! If you are considering visiting sometime in the next two years, let me encourage you to do so. Words and pictures simply can not describe it. Amazing blue coastline, rugged mountains, and the cutest kids on the planet! You have to see it for yourself.

Salamat gid!

Thursday April 20, 2006

Today was a great day—Erin said it best this evening as we sat down to journal and write about our day. She said that today was a perfect Peace Corps type of day. I have to agree with her; it was a perfect Peace Corps day. The three goals of Peace Corps are basically to promote understanding among Americans about foreign cultures, promote understanding among foreigners about American culture and to provide a needed service to a requesting host country. We had a great language and culture session this morning where the 5 of us just blazed through the 4 hours and really showcased what we had learned so far. After that, Erin and I successfully navigated our way to the nearest town, mailed some postcards, bought some fresh milk, stopped at the local market and made it back to our house without getting ripped off too much from anybody in between. While we were studying for class, some young girls that were watching us from outside our window finally agreed to play with us, and we had a ball! We played hide and seek in the sweltering afternoon heat, a game where we first threw our flip-flops at a can then at the person who knocks the can over, another flip-flop game of some kind, Erin and I sang some songs in English, the girls answered with some in Kinary-a and we finished with some mixed Kinaray-a/English Simon-Says. We had so much fun, we scheduled another play date for tomorrow with everyone. Later in the evening we went with one of the other Americans’ host family to their 98-year old grandmother’s birthday party. 98 years old. It was amazing to think about how much life she has seen since being born in 1908. Of course our plates were heaped high with rice, pork and more rice. A meal is not a meal here without rice. Actually, one evening during training a few weeks ago we had tacos (which were great!) but there wasn’t any rice with dinner. All of our Filipino Language Instructors went back to the kitchen to get some rice, because for them it couldn’t be considered a real meal unless there was rice involved. After dinner we taught some of the women mingling outside some fun games that we played with the kids at Eagle Village and Quarry Lane a lot. It was hilarious. All of these middle aged women were cracking up watching us teach them and their kids how to play. What a great day! Things are going well (knock on wood!!) and we are learning a lot.

Friday, April 21, 2006

We finally found out our final sites – at last we know where we will spend the next two years of our lives. We will live and work in San Jose de Buenavista, the capital city of Antique Province. Do not let the title of capital city fool you; while it is a big town compared to our village, it is certainly not big by American standards. Erin found out that she is being paired with the international agency called “Save the Children,” working with the ARSH program. It is actually kind of funny that she is being placed there. The acronym ARSH stands for “Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health.” In short, part of her job will be to help teach 9-18 year olds Sex Ed. We told our language instructor Roli that he would have to modify one of our lessons so that Erin could learn the proper vocabulary for what she is going to teach.
I (Scott) got my placement, too, and I will be working in an elementary school, most likely with the Special Education teachers and students. The role of an education volunteer is usually to offer support to teachers in the form of workshops and trainings, but in this case there may be quite a bit of interaction in the classroom as well. I am really excited, but also very nervous. Erin and I will be visiting our permanent site the first week of May, so we will have a very good idea of the capacity in which we will work after this initial visit. If you are reading this, thank you, and if you are thinking of and praying for us, thank you very much!

I have to tell the story of our first night at our host family’s house, because it is so incredibly funny. You might need to come over here, enjoy a cool beverage and sit back and relax as Erin and I retell the tale, because it is much funnier in person. Alas, for most this cannot be attained, so we will have to rely on the descriptive word to convey the hilarity of the situation.

We were whisked away to our host family’s house on what is called a “trike.” It is basically a motorcycle (a term to be used loosely—I don’t think one trike here has more than 100cc’s of power. They are more like scooters) with a covered sidecar. Most of the time there are like 8-10 people piled on the bike, in the sidecar or on the side or top of the sidecar. We were fortunate in that there were only 6 of us driving to our house. We got to the house, settled in, ate some dinner and were shooshed to bed at about 7:00, because the family kept insisting that we were tired. We actually were not very tired, but Erin and I retired to our room, happy to unpack the rest of our things and to have a little time alone to talk about what had happened that day. Keep in mind this whole time, that it was HOT and the air was heavy. I mean, it is usually hot and humid in Michigan during the summer time, but here the heat is intense, plus, it looked like it was going to rain the whole day and it hadn’t yet. Maybe the heat has something to do with our all-cement house with the metal roof and poor air circulation trapping the hot air in our room like an oven, but it might be my imagination.

8:00 p.m.

We turned on the fan, lay in bed, ready for sweet sleep to come.

8:07 p.m

A knock came at the door. It was our supervisor bringing our mosquito net for us. We were happy to see her, chatted for a minute and then she left, leaving us to go back to bed.

8:09 p.m.

The bugs were not too bad (to me at least), so we decided to just lie down without putting the mosquito net up and went to sleep. At least I did.

8:37 p.m.

I was pleasantly enjoying the wonders of REM sleep patterns when Erin woke me up. “The bugs are horrible honey. I can’t stand it. Can we plllleeeeaase put the mosquito net up?” Now, if you are a member of the Farver family, you know that “we” means Scott. Me. So, of course, “we” rolled groggily out of bed and unpacked the mosquito net to hang over our bed. Remember that the house is all cement, so we cannot exactly tack nails into the wall to hang up the net. Being the resourceful sort of fellow that I am, I had rolled duct tape onto my water bottle before we left the country, so I meticulously hung the net, being careful to reinforce the tape, creating a mosquito-free sleeping paradise for my wife and I.

9:03 p.m.

The mosquito net is successfully hung. Sleep is on the way (again).

9:19 p.m.

Erin and I were lying in bed, when a tremendous noise hit us. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!! It was the local village practicing their dance and drum competition—25 feet outside of our window. They actually were not bad, however, it would have been nice to hear at 9:19 a.m…before we went to bed. “The soothing beat would help us to go to sleep” I told Erin. Yes, yes it would.

9:42 p.m.

Sleep again. Oh, sweet reprise! You, whom I have chased after, longed after for such a time. Come to me sleep! Let me wrap my arms around you and …Nope. I actually was asleep again when *Plop!* I felt something hit my nose. Darn mosquito net. The oven-like heat had made the duct tape not work so well. “We” fixed the problem. Used more duct tape. It was a great idea in my head at the time.

9:51 p.m.

Mosquito net was successfully hung! I plopped back down into bed, my head throbbing and bobbing to the relentless drums outside.

9.59 p.m.

Just about ready to sleep again. Still hot, still loud, but I was really tired now. Sleep was so close. *Plop!* Wow. I didn’t know whether to swear or laugh. I was determined now. I was going to defeat this mosquito net. Nothing could stop me from hanging this net up. I was going to be a Peace Corps Volunteer! I would drink from Nalgene bottles and shower from buckets! I am hard core! This little mosquito net was not going to beat me.

10:36 p.m.

I win! I win! With a little string, some clever use of the curtain rods and good ole’ fashioned Midwestern determination, I beat that mosquito net. If it fell again, it would bring the whole house down. If not, I am pretty sure that I would.

11:43 p.m.

Sleep is restless as the drums keep beating. I am hot, the net had not fallen, but the adrenaline is still pumping from my battle it. I…must…sleep. All I can do is dance to the drum beats. Sleep is teasing me from afar.

12:39 a.m.

Surprisingly, the drums stopping wakes us both up. The silence is deafening. Erin and I both sit upright in bed, our ears ringing with the sudden quietness. I feel like I have been front row at a Def Leopard concert (which I have been before. I met the band, too, even the one-armed drummer, but that’s beside the point). We smile and go back to sleep.

12:39 and 30 seconds a.m.

Cock-a-doodle dooooooooo!!!!!

What? Roosters at midnight?? We were actually laughing out loud now. How could this night get any worse?! Hahahahahaha. Oh, what a funny story to tell someday!

1:07 a.m.

The laughing is done. I am mad. A new kind of quiet has come. One where electrical power enabling our wonderful cooling fan to pump air towards our sleeping bodies has ceased. Our first brownout. No fan make Erin mad. Mad Erin no good for sleeping Scott. Sweat. Sweat. More sweat. So much liquid that I couldn’t tell the sweat from the tears.

2:08 a.m.

I love life! The whir of cooling has begun anew! The power came back on, sleep will come soon after!

2:22 a.m.

Have you ever heard rain on a metal roof? It can be very soothing and melodic when you are enjoying a cool summer rain in Grandpa’s barn, eating corn on the cob and drinking iced tea. When you are sweating your butt off in the Philippines and have slept 17 minutes so far in the night, “soothing” is not exactly the word I would use. I can’t type the word I used, because my mother-in-law will read this (sorry Karen!).

3:18 a.m.

The drone of the typhoon overhead is deafening, but it stops. Finally, it stops. Sleep is possible now.

4:00 a.m.

The whole Filipino archipelago wakes up and greets each other with radio’s blaring. Rooster answer in turn, and the stray dogs remember to chime in, too.

I love this story. Now. Not then. Definitely, not then.

This past weekend I celebrated my 26^th birthday in high Filipino style. It was definitely one of the best birthdays I have ever had, possibly top 3. That being said, let me explain a little of why it was one of the best:

First, before we get into that, our host family is great. Our host mother is almost 70 years old, so one of her daughters who works in Taiwan at the moment, has a house behind our host mother’s house. We are staying in the empty house right now. It is not furnished and is not fully finished (picture a lot of gray cement) besides a bed, nightstand and couch, but it gives us a considerable amount of privacy and we have our own indoor bathroom (complete with a flush toilet!). We eat and hang out with the family in the main house, but at nights we get shooshed to our room pretty early, which gives us time to study and journal. The language we are learning is called Kinary-a, which about 300,000 people in the whole world speak, almost every single one of them living on the island of Panay in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. The language lessons are going well—we have 3 other people learning with us, and we are a good team at pushing each other every day. We have class from 8-12 Mon-Sat, with the afternoons reserved for us to go out in our community to practice what we learned and to help us to foster relationships with the people in our village. That is a short synopsis of what we do, back to Saturday (my birthday).

So, the town that we are near is named Guimbal, which is an old word meaning “drum.” Basically, hundreds of years ago the local people were happy and productive, living their coastal life with no worries. Suddenly, Moor pirates came, tore through the area and left, destroying the village, killing most of the men and taking a lot of the women with them. So the villagers got wise, erected a series of towers on the coast to look out for intruders, and when the saw any, they would beat a special drum (called a “Guimbal”) to alert the villagers, and because of their preparation they successfully fought off any would-be attackers. The celebration in the town of this event is called “Bantayan” and the whole festival revolves around this event.

There is a special drum and dance competition during the Bantayan festival where villages compete against each other to portray the history of the town in as loud and dramatic fashion as possible. Fortunately for Erin and I, our village (the reigning champions from last year) let us get a preview of this year’s show. Unfortunately for us, the practice was literally 25 feet from our bedroom window and our first night here lasted well past 1:30 in the morning. It was LOUD! But, we got to see the final product on Saturday, and it was fantastic! 11 villages competed (so we got pretty good at knowing the history of the town, having seen it reenacted 11 times over the course of 3 hours) and we had sweet seats. The mayor of the town was kind enough to invite all of the Peace Corps Trainees to sit in the VIP area (under the shade!), and we all got front row seats to the terrific performance. Afterwards, we celebrated with our village and the other Americans in our language group, dancing and singing and just having a good time. Since none of this island attracts any tourists (ever), the fact that we are all Caucasians living in a small town has given us rock-star-like status. We attract gawks and stares nearly everywhere we go, and the fact that we were joining our village celebrating their performance just made everyone go bonkers for us! It was great! We had so much fun, and people were so welcoming and gracious to us.

So now, we are working hard at learning the language every day. Here is a sentence for anyone who is interested:

Nagakaon ang gami nga lalaki kang panit nga kanding sa baybay.

(Translation: “The small boy eats goat skin at the beach.”)

You can see that we are doing very well and are learning practical things to say.

-Scott