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!