Thursday, December 22, 2011

Update

I was watching the show intervention recently. Despite all of the emotion of the show, the most climatic part is always right before the credits, when two lines of text pop up updating the audience on the life of the addict. It is as though the struggle the addict has gone through was all for naught if they relapse. This week, I decided to write my update.


While in the Philippines I had the pleasure of working with some extraordinary young people. From two teenagers sisters who successfully ran a week of vacation bible school, to high schoolers in Santiago and Besao who showed responsibility and leadership skills well beyond their years.


When I got home, a youth at my church asked me to be his mentor for his confirmation class. When I went to the class I was dumbfounded by what I saw. I knew many of the students in the class quite well. But I didn’t just know them. I recognized them as exceptional youth who will lay the foundation of their community. One of them had taught vacation bible school with me at the Navajo Indian reservation back in 2008. Another had built houses with me in Kentucky in 2010. The three others, including my mentee, are already well respected young members of my church. I am very proud to be associated with this exceptional group. Ironically, it was in the Philippines where I learned true community pride. I say ironically because it was the only time I was truly removed from my own community. In the Philippines people will often talk about the accomplishments of other in the community with jubilant pride in their role as a mentor, brother, or uncle. In the US we often talk about the accomplishments of other with a bit of competitive animosity.


I have kept my word from a previous blog. After seeing the effects of the diocese lending co-opertive, I have been motivated to get a job at my community bank (I have the equivalent of Grace’s job for my EDS friends). I am contemplating my next step in life right now, but I am pretty content where I’m at. I am playing hockey every weekend and on my days off. I even got back in time to finish the summer season with my Dad’s team. I am truly thankful for the things I have here at home. I really did miss my family, friends, and dog. I also didn’t realize how much I missed driving until I got home. Therefore, I bought my dream car and I have driven it half way across the country a few times to see family and friends.


One of the ways I explained food in America to Filipinos was that we would eat vastly different foods each day. It would be Italian one day, then hamburgers, then Mexican, then BBQ, etc. Since returning home, Filipino food has worked its way into that rotation. I have been making chicken with soup and rice quite often. I am still on the hunt (figuratively) for innards to make dinar dirakan.


(A side note to my Filipino friends: First, I’m sure I spelled it wrong. Sorry. Second, you would not believe how hard it is to get your hands on a set of pig innards. Third, raising ducks is not practical for me right now, but I haven’t given up on my pursuit to catch and eat more wild turkeys, geese, and ducks. The problem is that the laws regarding shooting wild birds are quite strict.) I also tried my hand at making rice wine, but I didn’t use the correct rice, and it’s too cold now to try again before spring.


Finally, I just received some very exciting news from the Philippines. The soccer team from St. James that I coached for a month recently competed in the Provincial Athletic Meet. They took home the silver medal! During the tournament, they defeated St. Mary’s, who had a historically far more established soccer team. I have also heard that some of the St. James player will represent their Province in the upcoming regional meet. It is quite an accomplishment, and I couldn’t be prouder of the players and coaches who made it happen.


Well, that’s it. I don’t know when or even if I will write again. Since I can’t really think of a good way to end this blog, I guess I will leave this pathetic conclusion. Hopefully, it will motivate me to write again someday.    

Monday, July 25, 2011

Besao VI: Gameday

St. Mary’s High School of Sagada backed out of our soccer friendly just days before it was scheduled. The gym teacher, Roger Gawidan, was able to find some soccer players that were willing to play on only a few days notice. They were 6 soccer players on full athletic scholarship at the nearby Mountain Province State Polytechnic College. St. James held their own against the scholarship athletes who were as many as 7 years older than the St. James players. MPSPC was clearly the more polished team, but that did not stop St. James from keeping the game close. At one point in the second half St. James was down only 5-4. However, the experience and advanced ball handling of our visitors allowed them to run ahead to a final score of 8-4. Despite playing soccer for only one month, we were able to hold our own against the best team the Mountain Province has to offer.

I couldn’t be prouder of the effort shown by the players in the past month. St. James is a young team that has shown tremendous skill in soccer in a very short period of time. We started 3 sophomores and one freshman, with another sophomore and freshman each seeing lots of playing time off the bench. Our goals came from senior and team captain Omar Lee Aiudengan, sophomore Jeremy Baguilod, and sophomore Ferdinand Cabog scored twice.

Here was a schedule of events:
7:00am- Start cooking 4 kilos of pork, 1 big bag of beans, and 8 kilos of rice. The simple yet hardy lunch costs only $0.60 US cent per head.
9:00am- Church starts. All players are in attendance.
10:30am- Church ends and warm ups begin. We see who can kick the ball through the tire first to determine who will be shirts and who will be skins.
11:00am- Kickoff. MPSPC is joined by one rotating St. James reserve player to complete the 7 on 7 scrimmage.
12:45pm- Game ends, players from both teams eat lunch together.
1:30pm- MPSPC players show some new drills to the St. James coaches and players and leave the players with words of encouragement and an offer for a rematch.
2:00pm- I run some conditioning exercises. A bus passes by while we are doing bear crawls, undoubtedly causing some new unpredictable stereotype.
2:15pm- I declare practice is over and everyone is free to go home.
2:16pm- All the reserve players (players who didn’t play vs MPSPC) and a few starters set up goals and have their own scrimmage.
4:30pm- The scrimmage ends and we all eat the leftovers from lunch.
5:00pm- I bid farewell to the team and we finally disperse after a rather epic day of sports.

Kicking the ball through the tire

Pregame






Lunch Time

Monday, July 18, 2011

Besao Part V: Bryan Baldas

I have now been working at St. James high school for one month. It did not take me very long to notice one student that seemed a little bit different. He is a senior that had expressed interest in the soccer team named Bryan Baldas. Turns out the reason for his difference is that he is 21 years old, 5 or 6 years older than most of his classmates. I recently spent some time talking to him and I found his story fascinating. It starts after graduating from elementary school in Besao. He moved from Besao to Baguio (The biggest city north of Manila) where he spent 5 years unable to stick around at the high schools. This was partially due to very large class sizes. It is exceptionally easy for an unmotivated youth to fall through the gaping cracks in a class of 50. In those 5 years he accomplished little as an out of school youth. He went to class for a few days at the beginning of each year, then dropped out. He did what he could to eat, and slowly developed his trade as a car mechanic. Then he went to a weeding. This weeding took place in Agawa, his former home and a barangay of Besao. While in Agawa his grandfather informed him that as an 18 year old he would enroll as a freshman at St. James. Shortly thereafter he began the school year as a freshman for a sixth and final time. Despite many predictions to the contrary, he found success at St. James. Rather than disappearing through the cracks he became heavily involved in many church and community activities. He currently co-captains the soccer team and is an active member of the cultural troop at St. James.

When I asked him about what was next, I was admittedly taken back by his Billy Madison-esque response. The next step for this six time freshman was college.  Not only will he be doing his undergrad work next year, but he will be going to college with an eye on seminary afterward. I cannot recall a better example in my short lifetime of a person relegated by society as a failure accomplishing so much in 3 years towards reaching his full potential. He is the epitome of success for a school like St. James. 

Friday, July 8, 2011

Besao Part IV

It has been a few weeks since my last blog. The reason is that Besao has been abuzz for the past 2 weeks due to a group of Korean college students visiting. I traveled with them on their hike to a remote village within Besao’s Municipality. Besao is a huge Municipality by area. Some places in Besao take over 3 hours to reach by car or jeepney. Their leader, Rev. Peter Choi, was extremely nice and it was a pleasure to share a couple of laughs with some fellow travelers. 

The past few weeks for me have been a blast. I have continued to teach soccer to the students during their PE period. Soccer has been nothing short of a phenomenon in Besao recently. Every moment the weather allows there are kids playing soccer on St. James’ field. Even when I show up at the beginning of the school day, there are 4 sticks in the ground representing the goals from the pre- 8am pick-up game (A game that I have never either played in or actually witnessed). Next week will be our interest meeting, yet they are already having student-led practices this weekend. Like I said in my previous blog some of these kids are scary good. I am almost glad I will be leaving in late July, because if I stay much longer than that my students will surpass my skill level in soccer. A friendly against Sagada (Besao’s neighboring municipality) has already been scheduled, and they were kind enough to squeeze it in for before I leave.

I would love to tell you more about each and every kid that has amazed me with their talent and ability to improve, but I can’t. There probably aren’t many other results when you google Besao soccer, and I don’t want to give Sagada a scouting report. 

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Besao Part III: Soccer

There is a joke that has recently come to mind: Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym. It has become quite obvious to me that this joke is perpetuated by those who work in a cubical. They are jealous that there is someone making a living running around on the grass they gaze out the window at (if they work enough years to earn the ability to gaze out said window). Teachers are obviously collateral damage to reach the punch line.

I have spent the last 2 days as the newest assistant teacher at St. James Episcopal high school. I've been teaching soccer to kids as young as 11. It has been an absolutely amazing experience. I thought the students to be similar to my American peers when I was their age. I fully expected a few girls to refuse to jog or participate in the activity. However, to my amazement, there has not been a single person who has done that. In fact, when they are playing soccer or doing drills, they are all enjoying themselves. I expected to see that pure enjoyment on the faces of a few aggressive boys, but the fact that everyone shared the same smile made my month.

That is not the only expectation they have vastly succeeded. During one of my classes, there was a boy who is an inch or two shorter than any other boy in the school. He listened to everything I said, and after one hour, he now has the best passing in Besao. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he had never played before. Perfect form, quick feet…he’s a natural. I can’t wait to put him on the field during a scrimmage and watch him school a 17 year old.

Other than forgetting to wear sunscreen yesterday, my first week in Besao has been nearly perfect. It has become very obvious why all of the St. James alumni speak so highly of the school and the community. If there is one sentence to describe Besao, it is this: Everyone who has ever spent time in Besao calls it “home”. I hope to include myself to that list before I leave.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

My Besao Experiance: Part II

One of the things that being in the Philippines has really taught me is about what I want and what I need. I wrote a long blog entry about it when I first got here. I spoke about living a life without what I thought I needed. Besao is essentially round 2 of the want vs need experiment. This time the biggest change I am making is adopting the Besao diet. I am living the next month without a refrigerator. There is also no market in Besao, and the meat available is either canned, frozen, or, if you’re lucky, from whatever animal was slaughtered that day. So far it has been a lot of fun. Going to the store is a lot like on Iron Chef when they pull of the sheet to reveal the day’s secret ingredient. Friday it was chicken thighs, Sunday it was pork liver. Sunday morning I had 5 potatoes, garlic, pepper, 2.2 lbs of green beans, 1 onion, 1 pack of Ramen, soy sauce, oil, half a bag of peanuts, and 1 lb of liver. I made liver and onion adobo with green beans. It was only a couple hundred grams of rice short of being a proper Filipino meal. I ate what I could, and I will eat the rest for lunch and/or dinner tomorrow (if ants don’t find it). I’m no expert, but I think this is basically how many people in the Philippines live every day. They take what they have, and make the best dish they can out of it.

So…why am I telling you this? It certainly wasn’t for sympathy. I got to eat a piece of meat that was so fresh it had never needed to see any form of preservation. Only a hunter or fisherman can truly know how special that is. I can’t really find the words to explain why I wrote this, so instead I will tell you a story that happened to someone, somewhere, sometime.

The NFL is currently in a lockout. People question, “Why can’t these millionaires and billionaires just be happy with everything they do have and play football.” Then they go to their refrigerator and say, “there’s nothing to eat” and get a little bit bummed out. The moral of the story isn’t to feel guilty, it’s just to take your own advice. Appreciate what you do have, because to many people you are the millionaire.

Anyway, it’s late at night. I hope you can understand the mad ramblings of a tired missionary.

PS. The mad ramblings of a tired missionary would make a far more appropriate blog title.

Friday, June 17, 2011

The Besao Experiance: Part 1

My work with my projects has started to wind down as they prepare for my absence. Therefore, I have had a little bit of extra time to pursue other interests. There were limited options in Santiago, so I had to expand my search a little bit. Luckily St. James high school in Besao, Mountain Province invited me to spend 5 weeks as a physical education teacher. The high school was established by some of the first Episcopal missionaries to come to the Philippines in 1910’s. It is also the alma mater of many of my friends and bosses in Santiago and the ECP. Besao is one of a few villages that nearly every Episcopalian in the Philippines can trace their roots to. While most of the Philippines is overwhelmingly Catholic, Besao is almost exclusively Episcopalian.
I have been in Besao for only a day and a half, yet I have already gotten a very distinctive homely feeling. My dad came to visit a couple of weeks ago. We traveled to Santiago, Sagada, Baguio, Manila, and Hong Kong. While in Sagada, we were invited by Atty. Floyd Lalwet to his home in Besao. My dad and I agreed that while the other places were all nice, Besao was special. The landscape here is incredible. There are lush green mountains with bright rice terraces everywhere you look.  There are seemingly hundreds of hiking trails here that go to every farm in every corner of this municipality. There is also a large grass field about a 2 minute walk from my house where I will be teaching gym class. I will also be headed directly there to sharpen up on my soccer skills right after I finish my blog. Anyway, I am a little bit short on stories were because I have only been here a day and a half. Hopefully my next blog will include stories and pictures from my hikes and classes. I promise, you won’t have to wait as long for the next blog. 

Friday, May 20, 2011

Compare and Contrast

The United States and the Philippines are two completely different places, each with their own rich culture. One question has come up a lot recently: which one do I like better. I have really been analyzing my relationship with the Philippines, and I have been relating it to the United States. I have come to the following conclusion: The United States does a few things better than the Philippines, the Philippines does a few things better than the United States. Most things, however, are a simple choice of preference and familiarity. For example, who has the best food system? The Philippines. Who has a better transportation system? The United States. Who has better food, or desserts, or college system, or 90% of the things you can think of? That answer depends of where home is. People naturally enjoy the things they are familiar with. It’s why I will always take a slice of pie over halo-halo, and why every Filipino thinks I’m crazy for saying that. It’s also why everyone considers the scenery in their hometown underrated.

Therefore, I prefer the United States. But, if I were born in the Philippines, I would prefer the Philippines. And if I were born in India, I would prefer India. However, I chose to spend this year outside of my comfort zone, and I chose to live in the Philippines. I choose to stay every day when I don’t fly back to my comfortable life in the United States.

This does lead to a more important issue. The issue is the few things that are actually legitimately better in one country than the other. It hurts my national pride a little to say it, but the way we get food in the United States is overcomplicated and vastly inferior to the Philippines. The US would do very well for itself if we stopped engineering our fruits to look bright and colorful 12 months a year. Rather, we should be selling 90% of our fruit only when it is in season. Our fruits would go back to actually tasting like fruit. Also, if the US government stopped paying everyone to do nothing, people would find jobs for themselves. Jobs like hunting deer and selling the meat at a market, or raising ducks for slaughter. This would greatly increase the availability of meat that has never seen a slaughter house.

Another thing they do better in the Philippines is small scale banking. In the United States many people rely solely on banks and payday advance loans when the need money. In the Philippines, there is another very attractive option: Co-operatives. Basically, co-op is a community bank where you can invest your money or take out a loan. It is only available to a certain group of people, usually just one barangay. (A barangay is a sub-city usually large enough for one small elementary school.) The key to co-ops is that the money stays in the community, rather than go to banks, who will decide what everyone’s interest rate is. Since the co-ops are made for community well-being instead of shear profit, they are able to offer almost similar lending and investing interest rates, with only a small difference to go towards paying one or two employees. Credit unions come close to accomplishing this goal, but they tend to be inclusive and drastically underutilized. 

When I return to the United States, I intend on supporting the implementation of some of these ideas. I think both of these ideas have huge possibilities in an economically struggling city like Kingston, NY.

I am encouraged by beer, but not in the way beer usually offers me encouragement. When Americans and Brits visited mainland Europe, they realized that Belgian and German beer was vastly superior to the stuff we had in America. Next, people started brewing craft beef in micro-breweries. Now, American craft beer is on the same level as European beer(Of course, I think it better for the reasons stated in the first paragraph). 

The tricky thing for me has been to try to introduce American improvements to the Philippines. Nobody wants to be told by an outsider an aspect of their culture is inferior. However I will, with all due respect to the other 99% of Philippine culture, give one quick example. The addition of more organized physical recreation into Philippine culture could do wonders for community health and camaraderie.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Sagada, Saliuk, and the Toledo Mud Hens

I spent holy week in Sagada. Sagada is a kind of touristy town in the mountains that gained popularity due to its hiking trails, caves, and American landscape. It is also one of the home bases of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines. The Mountain Province and Baguio are the only places where Episcopalians are the dominant denomination. In fact, most of the Episcopalians elsewhere in the Philippines are migrants from that particular region.  I really enjoyed my time there. I was able to spend the whole day hiking and come back to a big meal and a cold beer. The inns were all sold out, so I stayed with some local Episcopalians who had made friends with Melanie, the last YASC volunteer. They were the best hosts I could have ever asked for.
I had started to go a little stir-crazy in the office, so I took some time last week to get back to my roots, and help teach a week of VBS in the very rural village of Saliuk. I say get back to my roots, because I really got my start in mission work at St. Christopher’s mission in Bluff, Utah. For 6 weeks since 2000 I have flown down to the mission on the outskirts of the Navajo reservation to assist in teaching a vacation bible school to the Navajo children there. I learned many great lessons there that came in very helpful last week, such as the attention span of 10 year olds and the expansive definition of the word “projectile”. My job in Saliuk was songs, memory verses, and games. I introduced some of the Navajo’s favorite songs such as “in right out right”. I also taught them a classic game with a twist. It’s called pato, pato, gezu. If you don’t know what that means, read my last blog post. I spent the week living in Saliuk, where I had the opportunity to eat ants, ant eggs, and snake. Anyway, I must not have screwed up too bad, because I might get a chance to help with help with another VBS week in the nearby village of Abra soon.    
My aunt bought me a Toledo Mud Hens hat so that everyone in the Philippines would know where I came from. Sadly, in Benaue, I lost my hat. The next week I search through all the 2nd hand clothes and hat shacks in Baguio to look for a replacement. I actually found one! I've been wearing it with pride ever since. I didn't put the hat there. The thorns were so sharp on my hike that it actually took my hat right off my head while I was hiking.




Saturday, April 9, 2011

Pato


I though a nice light-hearted blog about my new hobby would be in order. After my mom went back to the USA, I started raising ducks. For the first few weeks I just had 2 ducks, a male and a female. I had been looking to buy 2 more females the whole time. However, nobody has given me a fair price on the ducks. Out here it is assumed that white people are all filthy rich, and don’t know the price of anything. Whenever I have inquired about buying ducks, everyone has doubled the price and explained to me how they were giving me a good deal. Finally, while I was visiting a wonderful local church, I found a house open to selling their ducks. When they found out a white guy wanted to buy 2 ducks, they didn’t see dollar signs, they just laughed. They loved the fact that I was raising ducks. They didn’t sell me the ducks for market price, or even Filipino price. They sold me two ducks for a friend price. They did this because they appreciated that I was raising them (They also said that I would be in big trouble if they find out I took them home for butcher). They really made my day.
Experiences like this are exactly why I came to the Philippines. I am here not only to assist as a technical advisor, but I want people to see me enjoying work they consider to be “below” white people. I can only imagine the amount of gossip that take place by people who have seen me raising ducks, harvesting rice, or walking down the road. They laugh because it is signs that you are poor or rural, and I am white, therefore I must be a rich city-slicker here to look at rice paddies and marry a Filipina. I don’t mind getting laughed at during times like these, because they are laughing at the absurdity of a white guy doing Philippine work.
I really have enjoyed raising these ducks for the last few weeks. They have subtle personalities and complex social structures. Plus, feeding and observing them actually gives me something to do after work. I find the ducks to be so low maintenance (and delicious) that I may continue raising ducks once I get back to the States.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Batad

As you could tell from my previous blog, I needed some time off. I left Santiago for the weekend to hearken back to my days as a backpacker (It’s been a long year and a half). I went to a rural community called Batud. I chose Batud because it’s famous “amphitheater” rice terrace and it has a nice day hike to a waterfall.  My weekend started by catching and early bus from Santiago to Banaue. Once in Benaue I caught a jeepney to the part of highway closest to Batad. After a two hour hike, I finally arrived in Batad and rented a room just in time for dinner. The next morning I had a quick pancake and was on the trail before 8am. Anyone who knows me knows how unlikely it is for me to wake up that early on a weekend voluntarily, but I had to if I wanted to get all my hiking in before dark. 

By 3 pm I finally made it back to the highway, where I talked to some locals and waited for the next Jeepney. That’s when I saw a white man walking down the highway. I asked him if he had walked all the way from Banaue. He said that he had, and it took him only 3 hours. He also pointed out that he was 59 and if I didn’t hike back to Benaue, I was a [wimp]. The man had a glorious Irish accent, and answered me with profanity laced excitement that only someone who has time with real Irishmen can recognize as respect. I hiked back to Banaue, caught a jeepney to the main highway, and finally took a van back to Santiago. After a well deserved McDonalds Cheeseburger (my first in a month) I made it home. 

Here are the pictures from the hike itself:


P.S. Dear 2011 YASCer who is going to the Philippines and is reading my blog while trying to decide if that is a good or bad thing, It's a good thing. Do it. And shoot me an e-mail if you have any questions. 

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

One Year Ago / One Week Ago

One year ago I got a call from my dad. He had just found out about the Young Adult Service Corps. A day later I called Douglas Fenton, who explained to me more details about the program. He also told me that even though the deadline had long passed, if I could get an application and references in immediately, I could go on the discernment weekend in two weeks. I told him to let me sleep on it. I woke up the next morning deciding to call him and accept. Before I could, I checked my e-mail to find my flight itinerary for Florida. Two weeks later I met about a dozen people that were shockingly similar to me. We were all crazy enough to want to leave America for the great unknown. I became fast friends with most of the guys. I also met a couple of former YASCers on that weekend. One of them described their experience by saying, “The tough times are really tough… but the good times are really really good, and at the end of the day, I’m glad I went.” That is when I decided to commit to YASC. This line has stuck with me a bit, because it is completely true. Christmas alone sucked. But my day trip to Lon-oy more than made up for it.

Lon-oy is a small barangay in the diocese of North Central Philippines. I was there to observe an ECP micro-hydro project that has been extremely successful since the early 90s. The whole time I was there, I couldn’t believe the natural beauty of the area. It is where a major river begins, creating corkscrew-esque carvings in the rocks. A felt like I was in a level on Tomb Raider. There were long handmade footbridges, giant spiders, and shaky ladders hanging over steep cliffs.





Another thing the really impressed me were the people. I couldn't talk to the locals as much as I would have liked, because they usually just ask me questions about how the heck I ended up in Lon-oy.  However, I did observe their dogs, and you can tell a lot about a person from their dog. The dogs moved towards people, meaning they get pet more than they get hit. They looked healthy, meaning they are well fed and looked after. Not one looked like they had ever been in a fight. Seeing that set a really nice vibe for the rest of the day.


In the United States, I am quite interested in politics. The reputation of Filipino politics is that it is even more corrupt than in America. However, I saw two things that give me a great deal of hope for the future of the Philippines. In Lon-oy many people have to travel a great distance every day to tend to their farms. Some farms are on the top of the mountain. In the middle of town there is a large green fertile field. The grass was greener than anything I have seen in the Philippines. It was not a farm, but rather a field for elementary school kids to have recess on. Its presence means that no politician or leader has ever taken the land for himself, and the people put an extremely high priority on education and recreation.  


The second thing came from my time in La Trinidad. La Trinidad is not like Lon-oy. It is a big city that has to deal with a lot of big city problems. They invested a lot of time and money in a environmentally friendly landfill. This is a truly rare sight, even in the US. Most environmental project concentrate on everything the public can see. However the leadership of La Trinidad installed a collection system to collect and quarantine the environmentally hazardous runoff from the slowly degrading plastics in the land fill. Even in the US this stuff usually finds its way to the water when nobody is looking.



Here is what happened Friday at the landfill: The director of development for the ECP, Floyd Lalwet, knew La Trinidad had a highly advanced system for producing wood vinegar (aka liquid smoke), but they did not know what to do with the carbonized byproduct. My charcoal project utilizes carbonized material, but we have struggled to produce very much wood vinegar. So on Friday I met with a Japanese volunteer who designed their wood vinegar production system and an engineer from the mayor’s office. I left La Trinidad that afternoon with about 3x the knowledge of wood vinegar, as well as a rough design for a more efficient production system. I left them with training on how to grind, mix, and mold their bio-waste to produce eco-friendly charcoal. Within a week or two, La Trinidad should begin production of this charcoal. 

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

December Report

I guess when I delay my blogs like this, I end up having to write about things that happened weeks ago. However, I really do need to talk about the completion of phase one of a major solar project in Catubangan. Catubangan is a remote village that had previously been without electricity. They still have cell phones, but they have limited light to study under and no TV to gather around at night. They used to have to travel 10 kilometers, often by walking, to charge their phones and lanterns. The old school was heavily damaged by last fall’s typhoon, so now they study at the animal feed warehouse/ temporary Episcopal church/temporary Elementary school/ solar charging station. The project is still only in its initial stage. Within a month or two we will be installing a piping system of my design to provide the village with clean potable water.

I’m designing a solar powered water pumping system that uses one imported pump instead of two local pumps. By using one efficient submersible deep well pump we will keep the costs low and the system simple. Most of the local engineers have initially told me (and more importantly, my boss) that my design will not work. I then show them the pump specs and I can usually ease their concerns. However, this project will represent my competency as an engineer. A lot of people have at least a suspicion that I will fail, but I’ve done the calculations, and I know this project will be successful. Hopefully I can use the success of this project to gain more respect as an engineer instead of only as a volunteer.

I am also writing to you for the first time since Christmas. It was a tough Christmas for my family and me. There was no snow, no Christmas tree, and no hot wax fight with my sister during silent night at midnight mass. Instead, I spent Christmas alone at a hotel in Manila. I did however get to Skype with my whole family for about 3 hours on Christmas morning. December 26th was a different story entirely. That is when I started my new year’s vacation to Japan. My first stop was Kamakura. It was a beautiful old style Japanese town with a long woodlands hiking trail around it. On these trails were dozens of temples and shrines. I was able to spend the whole day hiking (which I love to do, but haven’t been able to do hardly at all since August), looking at wonderful Japanese shrines that were unlike anything I had ever seen before, and eating sushi. The guesthouse I stayed at even offered me the opportunity to eat a sushi dinner with them. The coolest part was after the meal, we ALL rock paper scisored for dishes duty. I can think of no better way to make me feel at home than actively trying to get out of doing the dishes. It was a wonderfully refreshing change of pace. That’s not to say I didn’t miss the Philippines. The fast food noodle places in Tokyo were convenient, but they have nothing on Mang Inasal. Tokyo itself was a really cool city, but the best part of the trip was meeting up with 3 of my fellow YASC volunteers. Exploring Tokyo, while sharing experiences and stories with my friends was a special experience. I already miss chatting with Steven, Christine, and Spencer. Chatting about nothing in particular is something I miss. It was very nice and refreshing to be able to do that for a week.

This is me at the fish market. Yes, that is grilled octopus. It was very cold in Tokyo compared to the Philippines. I usually had to wear all my light weight jackets I brought to the Philippines at once.

This is a giant bronze statue of budda.



This is the dinner I was talking about. All this food was shared by a Japaneese couple, their baby, a Japaneese girl, two Scots, one Spanish man, and myself.

This blog was not originally going to be about Christmas or Catubangan. It was going to be about Mickey. Mickey is a puppy that belongs to my neighbor Auntie Andrea and her family. Every dog in the Philippines acts more like a guard dog than most American dogs. They have to be a little mean to keep from being stolen. Mickey was different. Every time I opened my door he came running to my porch to greet me and play with me. I jokingly called Mickey my nephew. I travel too much to get my own dog, but I could always play with him for a couple of minutes whenever I wanted and then send him back home. Much like hockey was in New York, playing with Mickey was often the lone highlight of any tough days. I was heartbroken to find out he passed away while I was in Japan. This tragedy couldn’t have happened to a nicer dog, or a nicer family.