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!