Day in the Life of our Philippines Experience

Pancakes cooking

Hard rain at night.  Still coming down in the morning and radar shows a tropical depressions blowing up west of Palau.  Climb into the old jeepney which blew a flat two days ago on the same road up to the hill village where some of our students are staying but we need to make the rounds, not that our students care.  They are having the time of their lives.  Heard they went to the cock fights on Sunday and ended the day stargazing on their backs in a mango orchard.  Some of our friends cooked pancakes for me; I look forward to pancakes in this village every year, cooked on a big wok over a coconut husk fire, with a pinch of sugar are the best I have ever tasted.

Debriefing with students at their homestay

Headed back down the hill.  Blew another tire. Spare had not been repaired.  Left the driver in the rain, grabbed a pedicab down to the main road, then a public jeepney packed beyond capacity, then another pedicab, all in a good, steady rain, up to the Habitat for Humanity village that hosts another group of our students.  Arrived unannounced, but of course the host family insisted we eat lunch.  Don’t you always cook hot lunch for unexepected guests? Students reported playing cards and singing karaoke until late at night and visiting the local slaughterhouse where they saw that meat is not born in cellophane.

Friend picked us up in a car.  Headed to third village.  Way blocked twice by raging rivers and flooded bridges.  Made it around to our next group who had just finished catching and killing a chicken for lunch.  The boys this year have little inhibition about cutting the throats of chickens. Scoped a project to repair/rebuild the day care and community center that had been damaged in the last typhoon and falling down for lack of repair funds.

Back to town.  Rain tapering off. Ended the night as guest judge of the “Beauty Meets Brains” pageant to crown Miss Education Student of Silliman University in front of a crowd of several hundred.  Tough job, but after a day in the rain, someone had to help grade beautiful and talented Ed School students!