Happy Thanksgiving!
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration in Pandan, Antique with about 15 other volunteers in our region. It was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember. Four turkeys were killed and then roasted on the beach! We feasted on mashed potatoes, stuffing and pies, pies, pies, things we have only dreamed of tasting for the last eight months – and it was everything we dreamed of! DELICIOUS! After eating, we walked along the beach, played cards and ate some more. Here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving celebration. Happy Thanksgiving to all! We are so thankful for your love and support this year

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner on the beach - can't beat that!

Live Turkey

And, not so alive anymore. Four turkeys were killed, boiled, plucked, stuffed and roasted all by fellow volunteers.

Ian and Lloyd roasting the turkeys on the beach

The whole gang!

Our New Friends. . .

We have friends!
Ok, maybe not real friends, but we have kids who come over and call us Tita (aunt) Erin and Tito (uncle) Scott. That is close enough to friends to make me happier than I’ve been in a while here. Since we arrived in the Philippines, it seems we have been in constant transition: from orientation, to training, to host family, to site, to new host family, and finally to our house. All of this moving combined with the cultural and language barriers have made it difficult to build relationships. In picturing Peace Corps before we began, I imagined living in a tight knit community with friends and neighbors always in and out of the house, a flow of children to read to and play with and meals shared between friends. I guess I pictured my Peace Corps experience to be like Mission Year in Oakland was, only this time, international. Well, so far, this has not been the case. Meeting people seems full of barriers sometimes. . .

-Kids and adults are shy around us because we are foreign.
-Kids and adults are intimidated because we can speak English.
-More often than not, children run and hide when we’re around (they aren’t exactly lining up to play with us)
-People prefer to yell “Hey, Joe!” rather than learn our names. (read Scott’s last post about THAT one)
-Conversations tend to be superficial when we are speaking a foreign language. (What’s your name? How old are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? Do you have children? Why not? What’s wrong with you? Etc.etc.)
-Instead of getting to know people, we are often having the same conversations over and over again. (What’s your name? How old are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? Do you have children? Why not? What’s wrong with you? Etc.etc.)

I was beginning to let go of my picture of our ideal little Peace Corps community – I figured it just wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully, I may have given up too soon. There is hope of community on the horizon!
It all started one regular morning last week. I was waiting at the corner near our house for a tricycle to go to the market. In our new barangay the wait for a trike to town can vary from 5 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on the time of day. This time it was about 20 minutes—Just long enough to have one of my regular conversations with some new faces from our barangay. I launched into my spiel, the same spiel I give everyone and to most people more than once. While I only know so many sentences, other people seem to only know so many questions, so my half of the conversation almost always sounds like this.
“Ako si Erin. Taga USA ako. Peace Corps volunteer ako. Nagaobra ko sa NGO nga Save the Children. Oud, may bana ron ko, ngaran tana si Scott. Indi Pinoy tana, kano man. Wara pa ti bata kami. Nagaistar kami jan sa Dalipe.”
(My name is Erin, I am from the US. I am a volunteer working with Save the Children. Yes, I have a husband, his name is Scott. No, he’s not Filipino, he’s American too. No, we don’t have any children yet. We live here in Barangay Dalipe).
Then, I asked my usual questions of the one adult and 7 kids standing around staring at me while I waited on the corner. The difference this time was, THEY ANSWERED. No one ran and hid. It was amazing! The kids told me their names and ages and grades in school. YAY! They can speak. Just when my spirits started to soar, a trike rolled up, and away I went. I thought that was probably the end of that, but I was happy. I had a two-way conversation with people in our neighborhood. Exciting! (we go for the little victories here)
Well, thankfully, I was wrong again – that was not the end of that, but just the beginning. The next morning, the kids stopped in front of our gate and yelled my name. I thought I was hearing things – there was no way Filipino children were actually yelling my name. But it was real. There they were standing at the fence. They were gathering firewood along the road for their families to use for cooking. I told them to come on in and together we gathered up all the wood in our big yard. Our yard was full of branches and brush we had been meaning to burn, but since Scott and I cook with gas, we didn’t need it. The kids were overjoyed at their find and I was overjoyed to have people at our house. After all the wood was gathered they offered to clean up the yard for me, because they didn’t have any work or school that day. I said “Sure,” and they swept and burned all our leaves and debris while I washed clothes. After their hard work, I invited all 6 kids inside for juice and paid them each 5 pesos, a pencil and some USA stickers. They were so happy! I was so happy!
So, truth be told, yes, I bought our new friends. I am not ashamed. They are poor and I am desperate for companionship. So, I bought them for some firewood, 5 pesos and some American trinkets. In total, I paid them each 10 US cents to hang out with me for the day. It was well worth it. And most importantly, they have been coming back every evening after school to read and play . . .for free!

A Very Good Day…

“Hey Joe!” is easily the most common greeting that I receive as I struggle through the semi-urban jungle of San Jose de Buenavista every morning, deftly maneuvering and pedaling between smoke-belching trikes and jeepney drivers who are religiously set against any using of brakes or blinkers, on my way to school. The greeting, which stems from the US of A’s illustrious stay here in the archipelago of more than 45 years, and the soldier “Joes” who were (and somehow still are) synonymous with every American ever born, is not meant to be derogatory; I know that in the depths of my soul—these people are reaching out to me, trying to be kind in one of the ways that they understand. Somehow, though, it hurts. I don’t understand. Every time I hear it, part of me, the deranged maniacal part that I keep bottled up and only let out when I play video games, wants to jump off my bike, throw my helmet at their heads, run at them, scream and wave my arms, all the while letting off a slew of that’s-not-my-name-just-because-I’m-white-doesn’t-
mean-I’m-an-American-even-though-I-am-that’s-not-the-
point-my-NAME-IS-NOT-JOE-it’s-Scott-and-I’m-a-person-
and-I-have-a-PERSONALITY-if-you’d-just-stop-calling-me-
Joe-and-got-to-know-me-you’d-find-out-that-I-came-here-
to-help-in-some-way-but-when-I-get-screamed-at-like-that-
by-people-like-you-I-want-to-go-home-and-forget-that-I-
was-ever-here
sort of tantrum at them (though I’ve never really thought about it really…). Instead, I smile as big as I can, nod my head, raise my eyebrows in the ubiquitous Filipino greeting, and cheerily shout out “Myad nga aga!” which means “Good Morning,” even if sometimes in my head I translate it to mean “I Don’t Like You Even Though I’m Smiling At You.”
Actually, as far as greetings go, “Hey Joe!” isn’t as bad as the occasional “WASSUP DUUUUUDE!” chanted by small groups of young, pre-pubescent boys who’ve equated everything western with rap and hip hop (thank you MTV for your wonderful stewardship of American culture). Usually that greeting is paired with a short burst of fancy, hip-hoppish, dancy sort of footwork and ends in some sort of hand signal that makes them look as if they are trying to form a shadow butterfly on the wall. Regardless of the greeting, my answer, like my pedaling and my route to school, is steadfast and sure. Smile, I tell myself. Look. Eye contact. Myad nga aga. Oops, veered off the road. Veer back on. Thaaaaat’s it. Once I think about it though, even a thuggish “Wassssup Dude!” is better than the “Hey Mr. Scott, F&*# You!” I got from one of my doting 2nd graders, whose less-than-perfect-grasp of the English language didn’t quite allow him to understand why that might be considered offensive in some parts of the US. It was a teachable moment if nothing else.
All of that said, I was pedaling my way through the bumpy gravel ruts loosely referred to as a “road” around the corner from our house this morning, mentally preparing myself for the onslaught of greetings sure to be flung my way, wishing that people would just get to know Erin and I as people. Our barangay is pretty small, I just want people to know us here. Usually, we're just "Joe" or "Dude." As I was saying—I was making my way to school when a trike passed me; in itself, not an unusual occurrence. Oh no! I thought to myself, A trike FULL of young kids. Great. What’s my response to them going to be? Do I just nod and smile? Should I risk a wave on this road? I have to grit my teeth whatever I do. I HATE it when they call me Joe. I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. Gosh, I want to knock people OUT when they do that. Goodness, this road is bumpy. I wonder what I'll have for lunch. As my mind reels and my tires slide around and through the loose gravel, I look up just as the trike pulls in front of me, and instead of just a bunch of kids riding this trike, lo and behold, an angelic host of children sit upon the smoky beast—their voices ring out above the whiny din of the 2 stroke motor, through the black shroud of exhaust and flit about my ears, tickling and tingling as they reach me, enveloping me in warmness even before my mind recognizes the sweet content. Can this be real? Am I still in bed dreaming? Nope, that was a big pothole—don’t get many of those in my dreams. A smile wraps itself from ear to ear, goose bumps penetrate past the 90 degree early morning heat and I want to stop my bike and dance for joy. If I went home right now, I would be happy. My time is NOT wasted here. Even as I continue to ride on, my mind replays the scene again and again, each replay making me forget about the problems of the day (and the oncoming trike—yikes, veer to the right! VEER! VEER! Phew! That was close…). Instead of “Hey Joe!”, “Wassuuup Dude!” or even the random explicative tossed my way, those children, those beautiful examples of everything that is good in humanity today, greeted me with the simple harmonious chorus “Good Morning Sir Scott!” Nothing could get me down today after that. Except for that jeep, HOLY SMOKES FARVER are you even watching where you’re pedaling! You’re not going to get many more greetings like that if you don’t look where you’re going…