PICTURES!

This is on a street of the University of the Philippines where we often hang out. It's a beautiful campus. Nicole lives on campus so we were walking from her house to downtown Los Banos when we took this.
This is Eric and Karlynn at one of the schools we were presenting at. Just so you know who I'm here with haha!
Our very dirty feet after we walked up the volcanoe at Tagaytay! We were soooo dirtyyy....
Lanie and I standing on the back of our boat as we went across the lake to the island where the volcanoe was in Tagaytay on one of our days off. It was super fun!
Nicole took a picture of me digging through my bag as we walked through UPLB (University of the Philippines in Los Banos). This is in front of the library. That is a statue of a carabao with wings haha!
This is myself and my friends Kaygee and B.A. We are watching everyone else play ultimate frisbee and we were supposed to be cheer-ers but apparently I'm the only one cheering haha. I think B.A. has that face in every picture he has ever been in.
This is us doing a drama in one of the schools. It's really funny and really gets the message across about how HIV and AIDS work in the body.
The mountain that we live near :)
Myself, B.A., and Eric at the University of the Philippines where we drank carabao milk at this store.
Ate Gladys, myself, Edward, Arnold, Faith, and Eena in Calauan where they are famous for their pineapples!

Nicole came over today for the afternoon and we put her pictures on Kuya Jai's computer so here are some pictures from her camera!!!

I have had a very busy day/week and I will write about it sometime but now we are going to the Bravo's for dinner. The Bravos are Eric's host family and we hang out with them basically everyday - B.A. and Thea and sometimes JaJa but he has school. Tomorrow we are heading to a new location called Bicol so pray for safe travels! I think it is a ten-hour drive. We presented our campaign in 5 high schools this week and the response was overwhelming. God is doing incredible things here in the Philippines! It was so great to be able to touch the lives of the students here and teach them about such meaningful things like HIV/AIDS. I will write more about it later on...hopefully I will have internet in Bicol!

Eating, Stray Dogs, and FUN!

Well, my blog posts are getting closer together :) Today we were supposed to go to two schools for presentations, but there is a typhoon coming so classes were cancelled! I am excited to see what a typhoon is like haha. I got permission from Pastor Benjie, my "father" to come to this internet cafe. I met Nicole here, and afterwards we are going to take a jeepney to Calauan, the next town over, to hang out with everyone else. I have strict instructions though that if the winds pick up and it starts raining hard, I need to go straight home. It's so funny because whenever Nicole and I want to do something, we literally like beg our parents here to get permission. They are very protective of us!! We have never been allowed to go anywhere alone yet, so we are excited about today :)

I will start again with where I left off last time. Sunday evening we went to Pastor Dwayne and Ate Gladys's house for dinner. It was cooked by the youth of Los Banos CRC where I go to church and the "young professionals" from LBCRC joined us. It was a lot of fun! Very good food and good fellowship also. I played Uno afterwards with 7 of the "young professionals" (they are college graduates who now have jobs and just shared about their lives) which was really fun. They made the loser drink a litre of water, but the loser never actually drank a whole litre haha.

Oh yes, and I forgot to put in my blog last time about some of the things I have eaten! There are I had buko juice right from the buko which is a young coconut. You just chop a hole in the top and stick a straw in and drink it. Then you cut the buko in half and scoop out the buko fruit with a spoon and eat it. It's very good. They also make it into buko pie which I have had as well. Also, one morning for breakfast I had choco-rice which is literally chocolate rice haha. It was interesting...not really a breakfast food, but we always eat rice and other random things like fish and chicken for breakfast. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant for dinner and I ordered squid which was quite good. The head was not good though. It had a crunchy part which I believe was the teeth or maybe the skull and I didn't like it haha. I also had this dish which is basically a soup of pig's blood. I am eating anything put in front of me now because I have discovered that I have a stomach of steel haha :)

On Monday, we did our first school presentations at a school in Calauan. Our presentations go like this: we do a quiz at the beginning that tests the students on if they know the way HIV/AIDS is transmitted and stuff like that. Then we take up the quiz using pictures, posting them on a board under either "Safe" or "Risky" - for example, a mosquito bite is "safe" because you can't get HIV/AIDS from a mosquito bite. Stuff like that. Then we do a really funny drama demonstrating how HIV kills the immune system and allows for things like a cough, fever, and diarrhea to stay in the body and eventually kill it. The drama is a big hit haha. Then we have a speaker who is HIV positive come. We have had 2 different ones so far and their stories are very compelling. After that, we do a talk about God's perfect plan for sex involving the Right Person, Right Time, Right Attitude. Then we do 5 "refusal stations" and each of us leads one with a Filipino young person with us also if we need translation. There is "Activities" in which the students list and post activities they could do to help them not to think about sex. There is "Abstain" where they talk about knowing your date, knowing yourself, and knowing your limits. There is "Avoid" where they talk about avoiding things such as secluded places, drinking, drugs, being with your date when no one is home, etc. There is another A-word which I can't remember in which they talk about saying no when the opposite sex pressures you with lines such as "If you really love me you'll do this with me" and "Waiting for marriage is old-fashioned". Then there is my station, "Advice" where the boys and girls separate and write advice to eachother about avoiding sexual temptations and then read it to eachother. There are some very interesting pieces of advice that they come up with! It's really fun. After that, we do a closing and a prayer. We have only done it in a Christian school so far, so it will be interesting to see the response in a secular school or in a Catholic school which we are doing later this week.

After our presentations on Monday, we all decided to go back to Los Banos to hang out (that's where I live in case you forgot). There wasn't enough room in Ate Gladys's car again so Eric, B.A., and I took a tricycle, then a jeepney, then another jeepney to get there. I just love the public transportation here! It's super fun. We played frisbee in the park at the University again but Nicole, Kaygee, and I walked over to the "fertility tree" which is the humongous magical tree. It is gorgeous. It's like a dome of branches and it is just really cool. We also got "zagu" which is this delicious drink thing. I can't really explain it. It's kind of like a slushee but not really. I also talked to this little boy on the street who was trying to sell us flowers that he had picked. I asked him questions about where he lived and why he was selling the flowers. He was selling them in order to get food and to have money to go to school apparently. Actually, I asked the questions and B.A. translated because the boy didn't seem to understand English. I love talking to the little street children haha. :) When I got home Monday night, we had adobo chicken which is the most delicious meal ever. Hapi is going to teach me to cook it sometime.

Yesterday we had the day off, so we went to Tagaytay which is about a 45 minute drive away. We took two vehicles because there were a lot of us. Pastor Dwayne drove one with Eric, B.A., Thea, Kaygee, Lanie, Nicole, and Matt in it. Ate Gladys drove the other with myself, Lisa, Karlynn, and Kuya Jairus (my "brother" - Kuya means brother). We got to Tagaytay, ate lunch, and then took boats across to the volcano island which was super fun. We then hiked up a long, dusty, winding, difficult trail to the top of this place which had the most incredible view ever. We were dying of heat though haha. And we were SO dirty and dusty by the time we got to the top. But it was fun. It was a lot cooler at the top and the view was totally worth it. On the way back to the mainland, we asked our drivers to stop the boats and people jumped into the water. I did not though. I had no desire to be wet for the rest of the day haha. On the way back, I rode in the van and we played cards. We taught our Filipino friends President and they taught us a fun new game called Monkey Monkey haha.

Anyways, that's really all I have to say for now. Not really any funny stories, sorry family! I haven't been at home much...this week has been very busy so far and it will continue to be busy. Tonight we have Bible study and prayer meeting, and tomorrow we are doing presentations at schools in Pila. Friday we are presenting in Calamba, and then there is a retreat thing with the youth from the 5 churches. I believe we are singing karaoke :) I will try to come on the Internet again next week!

OH, I forgot to talk about the stray dogs! They are everywhere and are very noisy at night and in the morning and stuff. But funny story, the other day Ate Gladys was driving me home and there was a tricycle in front of us (those are the little motorcycle things with the sidecars) and the tricycle ran over one of the stray dogs! It was pretty funny. The dog didn't die though, just was yelping. Then later, Kuya Jai told me that one time Pastor Benjie was driving to the next province to visit his mother and he ran over 3 stray dogs. They said that the street kids love it when people run over the dogs...they laugh and think it's fun!

Market, Hiking, and Practices

Well it is Sunday afternoon here. It is crazy to think that at home, it is 1 in the morning last night haha. I will just keep telling about what I'm doing everyday...I wish I could add pictures but unfortunately I have taken probably only 5 haha. I don't want to see really tourist-y taking pictures all the time! Plus, I don't have a cord to hook up to a computer...so yeah, that's my excuse. Ok, I will start where I left off last time, after Nicole and I were on the Internet:

Well, first I will tell about the people I am here with. Nicole Weesjes is going into her 3rd year at Calvin in Speech Pathology and French. She was initially going to Niger, Africa but there was political unrest there so she came to the Philippines, and I'm sure glad she did!! She lives in Los Banos but goes to church at Pila CRC which is 45 minutes away. We see eachother every day which is fun! Lisa Kaastra goes to Kings University in Edmonton and is becoming an elementary school teacher. She also was supposed to go to Niger. She lives far away from us in San Pablo which is probably an hour away so that's a bummer. She also is going into her 3rd year. Eric Steyhouwer lives in Calamba which is probably 20 minutes away or so. He graduated from Calvin this year and is going to a seminary next year for some sort of youth ministry thing. Karlynn Vis lives in Calauan and she graduated from Dordt in Iowa this past year and is going to be teaching in Louisiana a week after we get back! So those are my new friends :)

Ok, so last week after Nicole and I went on the Internet, we decided to explore on our own! So we just started walking down the street and then Lanie found us! Which was great. And then we went to the market and bought pai-pais which are these fan things. After awhile, Pastor Benjie picked us up and we went to the Bernardino's where Karlynn is staying because it was Karlynn's birthday. Pastor Ver Bernardino is the pastor of Calauan CRC. We had lots of fun there...all 5 of us were there so it was fun. It's really nice getting together with them because then we can speak English for once haha :) It is difficult just listening to Tagalog all the time and not understand people. ALSO, we ate BALUT! I'm not sure if that's how it is spelled, but basically it is an egg that is boiled that has a chick in it that hasn't hatched yet. They take it away from the mother before incubation period is up. Sounds disgusting, but it wasn't that bad. It was hard to eat though because you could see the head and feathers and beak.

On Wednesday, I didn't really do much. Mostly relaxed and read in my room. Played card with Hapi and Ate Malu. Then we had Bible study and prayer meeting at the church which was fun because Nicole was there. The kids at LBCRC are so incredibly musical. It's crazy. They don't have any music and they are just SO GOOD! I can't even describe it haha. They're also very very good singers.

On Thursday, we started our practices for our HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns in schools. We couldn't start them this week because of Swine Flu, we had to wait until we had been in the country for 10 days. We practiced in Calamba first. We will be going to a school there this Friday. We practice in all the different cities because Filipino youth are also doing the presentations with us. After our Calamba practice, some of the Calamba youth took us to the house of Jose Rizel, a national hero. It was Rizel day on Friday, a holiday for everyone. We then had practice in Calauan. After that, Nicole and I went to the surprise birthday party of Rigel, a girl from LBCRC. She turned 18. It was pretty fun. Also, Nicole and I bought pineapples in Calauan :) It is the pineapple city around here. There is a giant pineapple in the square there!

On Friday, it was a holiday, so some of the youth from LBCRC "kidnapped" me and took me on a huge hike. It was Hapi, Cecille, Edward, Mon, Lik-Lik, Bryan, Ruwena, Wren, and myself hiking. We hiked up a mountain (around 4 km I think) to the "mud springs" which are craters formed by the volcanoe that have boiling mud in them. We had a lot of fun there. There is a little river beside the mud springs that has cold water which is crazy. The high school boys swam and so did Ruwena, but the rest of us just waded. Later that afternoon, the high schools boys (who are Wren, Bryan, and Lik-Lik) wanted to play basketball with me but I fell asleep at home and Hapi didn't want to wake me up! So I was pretty disappointed. But we will play some other time I'm sure. On the hike, we saw a HUGE wasp. Honestly, it was ginormous. And Hapi said that if it stings you, you are sick in bed with a fever. Then the boys started throwing rocks at it and I like freaked out haha!

Also, one morning I squished a little lizard in the shower with my shampoo bottle by accident! :( It was so sad because the little lizards are very cute haha. I felt really bad. I also learned to cut a pineapple the "proper" way haha, I will have to show my family when I get home.

On Saturday, Ate Gladys (the missionary) picked me up early and we went to Pila CRC for the HIV/AIDS presentation practice there. After that, we chilled in Pila for awhile then headed to San Pablo which is about half an hour from there. There wasn't enough room in the car for everyone, so Nicole, B.A. (that stands for Bon Alfred I think but everyone calls him BA, he's from Calamba), and I took a jeepney to San Pablo and then a tricycle to the San Pablo CRC for the practice there. It's funny because last week Saturday when we were doing our HIV/AIDS orientation thing, we had to act out scenarios where someone was hitting on us but we rejected them haha, so my partner was this boy named James from San Pablo CRC...and I was like "you're really good looking, let's hook up later" because that's what we were supposed to do, and then he's like "no" or whatever, and then after, he asked Lisa for my e-mail! hahahaha because Lisa is from San Pablo CRC. So that was kind of awkward but really funny. Anyways yeah, we all have cell phones now because every Filipino has a cell phone, and often they have 2! They all think it's crazy that none of us 5 "foreigners" had cell phones. Nicole and I were supposed to go to Rigel's "debut" on Saturday..a debut is when a girl turns 18 they make a huge deal about it and have a big party. So yeah, but we were done our practices too late so we didn't get to go :( But when I got home, I went to the market with Pastor Benji and Hapi. Ate Malu is in the US right now for a week. Then Joshua and Jairus found us at the market which was funny. I watched fish being killed with a mallet and then scaled and gutted haha. FUN!

Oh yeah, and the other day I had this huge pink lizard thing in my room! It was nuts. It just like crawled up the wall right beside my bed and scared the crap out of me haha. Then I tried to chase it out the window because I have no screens on my window.

This brings me to today. Today is Father's Day. This morning at church, they had all the fathers stand up and they were giving them all a gift, and I just started blubbering! I miss my Dad!!!!!!!! It was embarassing haha. And Lanie was sitting with me and was like "you miss your father?" and I'm just like *sniff sniff * "yeahh" :( So Daddy, I miss you!!! And I hope you're having a great Father's Day without me! After church, we went to a resort and got together with Pastor Benji's family. We swam in a pool that was naturally very warm from the hot springs around here because we are right near a volcanoe. It was basically a hot tub.

That's basically all the news I have. This week, we will be going to 5 schools, doing multiple presentations in each school. Each of our presentations takes 1.5 hours and we do a lot of interactive fun things in them. Tonight we are having dinner at Ate Gladys's house with some youth from LBCRC (that's Los Banos CRC in case I didn't say that earlier, where I go to church). I am basically dying of heat right now haha. There is no fan in here (I'm in the church office right now).

I'm trying to think of the questions people have been asking. Mom wanted to know the temperature and I have no idea what it is. There aren't thermometers here. It's definitely 30+ everyday. The rains are very welcome because they make things cool off, but only for half an hour or so. My fan is my best friend. At night, I put it on full blast and point it right on me haha. I don't really have any funny stories from this week....the kids from LBCRC wondered if I had ever entered a beauty contest haha. They think I would win. I am looking forward to seeing Nicole this afternoon and everyone else tonight...it's good that we have phones now because now we can text eachother.

Oh yeah, Nicole and I have lists of things we want to do in the Phlippines, and she has basically done her whole list but I haven't really done mine! Some of mine include riding a motorcycle (which is going to happen..Lik-Lik's dad has one so he's going to let me ride it haha), riding a caribou, learning guitar (the boys in my house are REALLY good at guitar, and so are all the youth at LBCRC so that shouldn't be hard), learn to cook some cool Filipino thing, play basketball, eat crazy stuff (like isau), and see a Filipino farm. Nicole's included planting rice which she did this week which is pretty cool.

Well that's basically all I have to say. Thanks for reading haha, this is pretty long! :) and I'm sorry I don't have pictures!

Roosters & Rain

I forgot to mention two very important things in my last post!

First of all, I live beside a rooster farm. I am woken up every morning at 4 a.m. by the crowing of probably 30 roosters or more. It is ridiculous! I go to bed early though because it gets dark around 6:30 here and we don't go out at night, so I still get enough sleep. But the crowing is crazy. I took a sound clip of it on my camera and you all will be amazed to hear it. SO LOUD. Also what contributes to me waking up so early is the bread boys. They have loud bells which they ring round 5. Super annoying. The other thing that wakes me up is the tricycles. They're motorcycles with sidecar things attached, but not like you would think. They're like scrap metal and really crappy haha. They are our only form of transportation to the main road where we take jeepneys everywhere.

Second thing is RAIN! It rains like crazy here. Like major rainstorms. I can't even explain it...but it's nuts. ok that's all!

Laundry, Music, & Rice.

so this is the first time i've had internet since last time. I'm so happy! I'm in an internet cafe place. Anyways I'm going to try to make this a good blog haha. Kristin sent me a pretty mean e-mail saying how my blog was super boring sooo yeah! k here goes

So I got to the Garcia's home last week on Thursday. There is no air conditioning. The heat is basically unbearable...fans are my new favourite thing. They are so necessary. All I do is sweat all day long. I have yet to meet a Filipino who is taller than me. I am like a celebrity though haha, people honk and stare and wave at me. It's a little awkward but I'm getting used to it. The transportation is crazy also. I can't even explain it. It's so hard to put everything into words! Kristin says I need to make paragraphs, so now I will start a new paragraph:

So yeah last Thursday I went to the music practice at the church with Hapi, my "sister". They were sooo good! They were all high school-aged kids and yeah it was really fun.
On Friday, we had a Classis Sportsfest where the 5 churches in the classis met for a day of sports. It was Filipino Independence Day so everyone had the day off work and school. I am with the Los Banos CRC, Lisa is living in San Pablo with that CRC, Nicole is in Pila, Eric is in Calamba, and Karlynn is in Calauan. So we don't see eachother very much. I basically just chill with my family. There is poverty everywhere here, so much so that I don't even notice it anymore. It's just normal. But I think that if my family came here, they would be shocked that I'm living here! I haven't taken any pictures because I don't want to seem tourist-y but maybe I'll start taking some sometime....

On another note, I will never complain about laundry again! Laundry machines are incredible things. I took me 2 hours to do one load of my laundry. They have a machine, but it is not the same as at home. Wringing out clothes is very difficult; I had blisters haha. They were like "haven't you ever done your own laundry before?" and I'm like..."umm..it's very different at home" haha.

But yeah on Saturday, we did some training for the HIV/AIDS thing that we are doing. It was
pretty fun. It lasted most of the day. The kids in the Los Banos CRC just love me. The high school boys are so great. They think my eyes are beautiful, and they fan me and hold an umbrella for me when it rains! Here, the kids finish high school at age 16 and go to college, so they are younger in high school than at home. They were disappointed to hear I had a boyfriend. They were amazed when I showed them my contacts. And they call me "Ate Kelly" which is "Sister Kelly". Ate is pronounced A-tay.

Funny story, one day Ate Malou (my "mother") made too much rice and she was complaining that we didn't eat it all, and then one of the kids suggested we give it to their dog named Chestnut. She replied, very seriously "Chestnut doesn't like rice" in her Filipino accent and I burst out laughing because it was hilarious. Everyone else was just looking at me, wondering why I was laughing so hard haha. Kind of awkward, but really funny.

On Sunday, we went to church which was mostly in Tagalog, but I knew the songs (some of which were in English) because I went to 2 of their music practices. They tried to make me sing a few times but I refused haha. After church, we went to Calamba for "fellowship" with the youth from all the other churches which was really fun. The Los Banos youth are the most fun! Lisa said the youth from San Pablo were all asking her for my e-mail so I had to give it to her yesterday ahha.

Yesterday, we toured around the University of the Phlippines (UP) campus with Eena as our main tourguide. She is the "sister" of Nicole. We went to the High School of the Arts which was a gorgeous campus on top of a mountain, then we walked part-way down the mountain to see something else. We had to walk up which was like a 45 degree angle, I swear. It was killer. And on the way up, Lik-Lik, a boy from LBCRC creeped up behind me and grabbed my leg and growled and I actually thought it was a wild animal. I screamed super loud and everyone started laughing haha. It was pretty funny.

The kids from LBCRC are always trying to make me eat gross things, mainly "isau" which is chicken intestines on a stick. They ask me 5 times a day if I want to have isau. I've eaten some really strange things though. I can't even think of them right now....and I can never remember their Tagalog names. ummm one was bamboo shoots. Another was like all the leftover parts of a pig - ears, cheek, nose, etc. A lot of other stuff too that's not really unidentifiable..but nothing's been gross so far, although I wouldn't eat this type of food every day.

Tonight we are going to Pastor Ver's house where Karlynn lives for a party because it is Karlynn's birthday, so that should be fun.

Nicole, Eena, and I are together at this internet cafe place and we are probably leaving soon. I want to go read all the other SMPer's blogs so this is all I'm going to type! But I'm having tons of fun in this crazy new culture. It's great. :)

my first day!

ok so kristin (my oldest sister for those of you who don't know) really wants me to blog so here goes. It's hard because I'm just on an iPod touch so it's slow going. Our first day here was super fun though! We got to los banos at 2 this morning. It was about 1.5 hours from the airport. We are in a hotel place on the campus of the university of the Philippines which is beautiful. Not as beautiful as Calvin though(ps mom and dad, I want to go there) so yeah we woke up around 12 and met up with a girl named Lem and her husband and went to Lem's family's restaurant for lunch then went on some jeepneys which are these super cool vehicles where you just jump in the back... And yeah then we went on this trolley thing on an old railroad that was pushed by some guys. The land around the tracks is government land so there are lots of homes along the track and the only way to get there is the trolleys. Then we toured this rice farm place. The people here are so incredibly friendly and they treat us like celebrities. On the main street every jeepney honks its horn at us and they're all waving and saying hello. They all stare a lot too. So yeah then we left Lem and decided to play frisbee in the big park called freedom park and while we were playing some guys invited us to play ultimate frisbee with them which was really fun. Then some of them showed us this local restaurant type place which was really yummy and cheap. THEN we got CHEESE ice cream for dessert!!! It was crazy haha. So that was my first day here! Tomorrow our host families are picking us up at around 10 I think. Hopefully they will have Internet. So this has taken me a really long time and I am exhausted so I'm going to bed!