books books books

“You want to give up everything? After all these years of working, because, one night, some woman and her books—“

“You should have seen her, Millies!”

“She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that. I hate her.  She’s got you going and next thing you know we’ll be out, no house, no job, nothing.”

“You weren’t there, you didn’t see,” he said. “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.  You don’t stay for nothing….you ever seen a burned house? It smoulders for days. Well, this fire’ll last me the rest of my life.  God! I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night.  I’m crazy with trying.”

“You should have thought of that before becoming a fireman.”

“Thought!” he said.  “Was I given a choice...” ~Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, pg 24).

I’m currently blessed with the opportunity to live out my dream.  I am living and working in a community of people who at first glance appear very different than me.  We come from different countries, languages, cultures, ethnicities, religions…and these differences are made very clear, on a daily basis, as I’m reminded just how “American” I am. Yet, just as often as I’m reminded how abnormal and ignorant I am compared to everyone who has kindly and graciously accepted me as a friend and member of the family, I am equally often reminded of the humanity that connects us and allows us to share this experience we call life.  Together we question, together we laugh, together we sit, together we learn, together we misinterpret each other’s languages, together we eat, and together we pray. 

For the next two years I am teaching at Anda National High School in Anda Pangasinan Philippines.  I can not articulate with words how much I have fallen in love with the classroom. But, I will try. 

Growing up I was certain that I would never be a teacher.  I’ve wanted to be a lot of things, but I have never wanted to be a teacher. I don’t know how to clearly express ideas, I don’t have the creativity, and I don’t have the knowledge.  I spent fifteen and a half years trying to escape the classroom and break free into the “world.”  How naïve I was, and probably still am in some respects.  If it weren’t for the classroom, both the physical structure in a school building and the numerous chances I have had to meet people different than myself as I’ve seen and felt different places, I wouldn’t know the world.  I wouldn’t know there was anything to break free into. 

When I get fired up it’s hard for me to focus, so I apologize because this is going to become quite the chaotic description of my current feelings and ideas.  Luckily I have a soundtrack called “For the People” playing in the background to keep me centered.

I share five different classrooms a day with 40-50 students/teachers in each.  The transformations I’ve been experiencing day by day are overwhelming. The good kind of overwhelming. The kind of overwhelming where you are so excited, and see so much hope, that you need to force rationality and logic into your mind to keep you grounded to the soil that forms the foundation of your school.  It’s also an overwhelming that while filled with hope is also filled with frustrations and discouragement.  Things just seem wrong and unjust.  They seem so easy to fix, yet there seem to be so few solutions, at least tangible solutions. 

I’ve always been easy to anger.  I hear about one mention of an inequality or system of oppression and I’m the girl on the street shouting for a revolution of the system, the girl standing in front of rooms full of people demanding more effort towards empowerment and less focus on pity aid, the girl writing and submitting dozens of pages proposing solutions with words I hope defend the abused, the girl shedding tears as I aimlessly walk the streets that house the people I love as I wonder why change is so hard to achieve.

I remember many conversations and debates, or rather rants, concerning education reform around the world. I have all these utopian ideas on the way things should be and how the world would be a better place if we could just solidify a system of education that creates maximum opportunity for every human being.  On paper the theory works out.  On paper it’s easy.  Re-allocate some funds from here to there, get some teachers who possess a pure passion for the future and understand the development of a person, offer children a place of security where they are given food, where the words they read take them to a place of liberation, where they see themselves as capable independent thinkers who possess the power to transform the world into a place of unified love and support. 

I think words are the most powerful gift a person possesses. While papers can be burned and mouths can be silenced through terror and violence, words remain resilient.  Words spoken by one person are forever a part of the listener’s soul.  It is permanently engrained into his/her being whether he/she is conscious of it or not.  I need to believe this.  I also believe that words felt and sang by a person’s heart will always be a part of that person.  No one can silence a heart.  That is one right, one freedom, that can/will never be stolen. 

The high school I’m working at has a very limited number of books, and the books they do have only contain stories that are a maximum of five pages long.  My students/teachers are craving more words.  They are craving stories and histories and truths.  I am so impressed by the words they write and the thoughts they are developing and the questions that transpire in my hours with them each day, but I feel I am robbing them of a true education as I can only give them a fraction of what they deserve. 

I believe the “teacher” should be guidance, not a master, not an expert.  A teacher should inspire investigation, questioning and argument, and a classroom should be a space of exploration and discovery.  However, in my classes I have found that, even in this short period of time, my students/teachers look at me as an all-knowing guru. We talk about philosophy, history, culture…life.  But, because we don’t have computers or access to internet and we don’t have books, my students take my words as truth.  They have no other opinions, no other insights, no other opportunities to hear or red a different perspective.  While I try to give two sides to every view my students are intelligent and can see my biases.  I’m a jaded person after my years of exploration, and my students are adopting my interpretations of the world as reality.  I need books. I need other people’s words.  I don’t remember history enough to be an expert.  I don’t know enough about the world to be an expert in anything.

Also, my students want to read books.  They want to read stories and poetry.  They want to hold a text and flip through the pages.  They want to have the skills to read a book and comprehend it.  Today they asked me if we could read more, and write about what we read.  I said class is only an hour each day, but we could stay after school some days and make a reading club.  The students were ecstatic about this proposal.  I’m going to see what I can do but I’m afraid that this is currently impossible. There are no chapter books in order for this to happen (I don’t want to use their text books because I don’t want some students to be sections ahead of those who don’t come to the reading club).  I have a few books on pdf files on my computer, but there is no way for me to print them, and even if I could, I can’t afford to print them. 

I want students/teachers I work with to realize they have the ability to think. I believe this realization is possible through the reading of books.  Books have the ability to take us to places we couldn’t previously imagine, and they make us discover ourselves as they take us on journeys throughout time and place introducing us to people we know and the most bizarre strangers.  Books allow our minds to expand.  When we realize we have the power to think, we realize we have the power to speak, and then the powers to share and change.   We realize we are real people who possess rights and futures.

“So come out of your cave walking on your hands, and see the world hanging upside down, you can understand dependence when you know the makers land…I need freedom now”~ Mumford and Sons, The Cave.

If you know any way to send books to the Philippines, or any organizations that donate books around the world, PLEASE PLEASE let me know.  We need books.  We need a future of active, confident, thinkers who strive for a better world. 

the beginning

Hey! I’m now in Anda, well not now now cause I’m in a different city using some internet, but now as in this point in my life.  I like life in Anda a lot.  It’s what I imagined from the Peace Corps and so far appears to be a community of people I can’t help but love.  I haven’t seen another foreigner yet on Anda (it’s a small island), although I’ve heard rumors of a foreign missionary.  No one knows what country she’s from though, but maybe I’ll bump into her somewhere along the way.  Interesting fact: the mysterious missionary is apparently teaching at the only college on the island, Asbury College.  I think it’s somehow connected to the Asbury my dad went to seminary at, but I haven’t confirmed this.  Obviously there are still a lot of things I need to figure out. 

What I love about Anda:

*Andanians.  Everyone is incredibly kind and hospitable and I feel at peace around them.  I feel like a lot of people here feel a pretty magical connection to the earth.  It’s an amazing experience to be around people who are so conscious of all life.

*my host family.  They are incredibly and have definitely made me feel at home. I’m so comfortable here and enjoy spending time.  They are patient and understanding and always willing to share their lives with me.  I’m very lucky. 

* so much less drama than Olongapo. 

* no creepy white men

*the food.  Sobrang marami fruits and vegetables.  It’s heavenly. 

* The jungle and the farms and the ocean.  I love being in the middle of the jungle seeing farms everywhere I go while being surrounded by the ocean.  A natural paradise.

* the isolation. I’m sure this will drive me crazy eventually, but right now it is nice to be so far from…I don’t know what, but far from something that isn’t here.  It’s nice not to have that something although I can’t quite figure out what that something is.  Right now I’m back to that optimistic honeymoon stage, but as I’m in that stage I have this sense that no matter how difficult things are over the next two years it will be nice to be isolated as I figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing with my life and who I really am.  You can’t help but spend so much time contemplating these things as there aren’t really people so far for me to talk to about any of this.  My Tagalog is below elementary I would say and seeing as I have come from such a different background than many of the people I’m surrounded by I can try to explain my past, my being, but I can’t talk about it in the same way I could talk about it with many of you.  that means a lot of internal contemplation and debate.  This may lead to insanity, but right now it’s leading to clarity.  Maybe insanity is clarity. 

*the time.  Holy moly is there a lot of time in a day.  I think in the u.s. we often forget how much time 24 hours actually is.  It’s a lot.  I have time to be.  Time to think. Time to read.  Time to watch tv (my most recent favorite hobby). Time to learn how to weave bags and hats and mats out of dried palm leaves.  Time to get to know my students.  Time to enjoy this place.  Yet, the days go by quickly.  But quickly doesn’t mean I feel like I should have done more or I didn’t get enough done or there are things I wish I could have done, quickly meaning I feel I did everything that needed to be done and now it’s time to spend 8 hours sleeping.  While I feel this will also lead to frustration at times as I often get frustrated if I don’t “accomplish” enough, I feel I’m learning that accomplishment isn’t synonymous with being busy.  Accomplishment is being present and breathing and living and feeling and listening.

*my students.  They are remarkable.  I’ll talk more about them in a minute.

*teaching.  I could have never anticipated that I would like teaching.  Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s one of the only careers I have told myself I would never do, let alone considered doing.  It is amazing and so inspiring.  Every day is different and I get to spend my day with people on a journey of discovery, people who are going to be leaders and parents and thinkers and creators.  I’m not going to lie, sometimes I get so discouraged or frustrated with various systems or injustices that I see through teaching, but my students give me great hope.

Things I miss from Olongapo:

*my host family.  They are amazing and luckily I get lots of texts from them.

*my cluster and Ester.

*free wi-fi at mcdonalds

So…get ready for a long one.  Actually im going to get some banana-q before I start this.

Sige.  If any of you ever visit I will be making you lots of banana-Q and kamote-Q.  You might be saying, “Really? You’re going to cook?” well, yes.  These two things are to good not to cook.  They may also cause diabetes at a tragically young age, but when in Rome.  Actually, that’s not really funny.  There is so much sugar and fat in most Filipino diets that a lot of people really suffer medically and people seem to die pretty young from “high blood” and heart attacks.  That’s for another day though.

Sige. I’ll start off with a story because I don’t know where else to start.  And then I’m sure this story will lead to more stories.    Today as I was dismissing my second to last class a student raised her hand and asked me what my talent is.  I laughed and said “hindi ko ng mga talent” meaning I don’t have any talents.  She got a very firm look on her face and stood up.  She then said “but miss (I got my students to call me miss instead of ma’am…quite the achievement in itself) Kaitlin, you told us on Monday that everyone has talents.”  I laughed and said “tama tama,” or true.  This made me really happy because 1) at least someone in one of my classes is listening and understanding what I am saying, 2) the look on her face would suggest she really believes that statement when a few days ago she seemed hesitant to believe she was gifted. if I do nothing else I want my students to know that they are talented and that they have great gifts to offer the world.  If this process is already starting to happen I feel blessed.  3) Before I got here my trainers, the Peace Corps staff, and the teachers of the school told me my students wouldn’t speak in class in front of me because they would be embarrassed of their “poor english.”  I was also told that my students would never correct me if I made a mistake because of the respect given to “authority figures here in the Philippines.” Her statement defied both of these things as have many different class discussions this week.  It’s only been one week and I feel my students are already increasing in confidence and starting to ask questions.

The Peace Corps wants us to co-teach.  This is to promote sustainability of our teaching techniques etc.  However, there is a lack of English teachers at my school right now for a variety of reasons so on Monday I was thrown into several classrooms on my own. I was given no lesson plans, no books, no curriculum…I had no idea what my students were supposed to be learning. I asked my year one class a couple days ago what they were learning the last time they had a teacher (for some classes they haven’t had a teacher in 3 weeks) and they said past tense of verbs. I then decided I should try to be teacherly and teach the future tense of verbs to carry on where they had left off.  I failed. I have no idea how to teach grammar, even in something as simple as verbs.  The English language doesn’t make sense. It’s confusing and complicated. I decided to scrap that lesson.  Instead I taught the south African philosophy of “ubuntu” and the west African philosophy of “unity through diversity.” 

I’ve been teaching years one, two and three and in those various classes we have talked about African philosophies and the power of liberation speech throughout the history of slavery and oppression around the world, we’ve talked about the differences between socialism, communism, democracy and dictatorships in asia and all of their roles in the Asian Economic Crisis as well as in their role in the return of the Asian economy, we’ve talked about racism and ethnic conflict, we’ve talked about reservations for Native Americans, we’ve talked about homeless ness and poverty and the students have created their own tragic poems about things in their lives, written essays on what makes them happy, composed skits to add alternative endings to poetry about poverty, written about their feelings and thoughts as if they were Native American children being sent to a school set up by the white people, given speeches as if they were running for president in the Philippines about the things they are proud of and the things they want to change, and created their own life philosophies.  Now, don’t assume this means there are no language barriers.  We use lots of stick drawings and lots of role playing and lots of moving around the classroom to demonstrate native amreican migrations and China’s open door policy etc, BUT I think my students understand what we are talking about, which is the greatest feeling in the world. 

Actually, even better than that my students now ask questions.  Lots of questions.  They aren’t embarrassed to speak even if their grammar may not be perfect.  They laugh and participate.  Today we were reading a story about a Pueblo Girl being taken from her parents and when I asked if they wanted to keep reading or work on the art activity I have to go with it they all yelled “keep reading!.”  I could have never hoped for such a response.  Students then connected her story to the treatment of some native peoples here in the Philippines.  This was all without my initiation.  It was my hope, but I thought it might take a few more classes.

This is all astonishing.  Truly.  I know I’ve only been in the Philippines for just over three months, but from what I’ve studied, observed, and been told reading is something that isn’t really a very common things here.  Even in the schools students aren’t typically asked questions that spark critical thinking or debate.  They answer questions that they are able to answer without understanding text.  For instance, “what is the boys name on page 3?”  The first couple class discussions definitely took some work, but once the students started discussing and asking questions they couldn’t stop.  It’s amazing. 

Also, a remarkable thing is the honesty my students give me.  On the first day I had some of the classes write a “sad poem” about anything in their life that makes them sad.  Since I’ve been in the Philippines I’ve never heard anyone mention being sad.  People typically laugh things off and try to cover up sadness (from what I’ve observed), but my students shared words that I couldn’t believe.  Their poems were powerful, raw and overwhelming.  When I had them write their life philosophies I was blown away by their wisdom.  Such young people with so much understanding and clarity.  I am learning so much from them. 

The first couple writing assignments my students seemed nervous to write.  In the Philippines the focus of English education is grammar.  I’ve seen students’ papers that are destroyed with red ink. I don’t want to use the word terrorism, but I know as a student I was always terrified to turn in any assignment because I never wanted to be told my work was bad or I was dumb.  I don’t want them to be scared to share their words because I think words are one of our greatest gifts. I want them to know that their words are powerful and their words are theirs and only theirs and those words that are theirs need to be shared and heard.  They are valuable and have the potential to empower others and create change. 

In the Philippines cheating and copying is a common part of the classroom.  On the first writing assignment I told students that I don’t support cheating and anyone who cheats will need to do their work again. Still, as I walked around I saw cheating. Students, I think, are afraid of getting bad grades and they lack confidence in themselves. They think their peers are smarter or more capable so they are willing to sacrifice their ideas for the words of another person.  We’ve been working on the cheating thing in a variety of ways, and yesterday I received no copied papers! Each paper was completely unique.  I tell the students I won’t grade for grammar seeing as I don’t know grammar and that I love mistakes because it shows your mind is in the process of thinking and creating ideas instead of focusing on details, thus loosing sight of their ideas.  I really believe these things, and I really believe grammar will come through more reading and more writing, but already I have seen that as the students focus on what they are trying to see their grammar is already getting better.  It’s strange what less pressure does to a persons ability to perform and prove himself/herself.  Just because I wrote that it reminds me, I an increased number of my students now write him/her, she/he, man/woman.  It makes me happy. 

I don’t know what a teacher is or what a teacher is supposed to do, but seeing as I’m just trying to figure it out day to day, I’m trying things and so far my students are blowing my mind. They are so patient with me and my attempts at teaching. I have told them that we are all teachers.  They are my teacher and I am their student just as I am their teacher and they are my students.  I feel like they are starting to believe that I said this honestly.  I can’t tell you how many students come up to me to thank me for the comments I write on their work.  I see them carrying around their papers and reading them again and again at lunch or vacant time.  It all just feels right.  I think people need to know someone sees them the way Zulu people see each other. 

Okay, thank you for reading. I know that’s really long but I’m just really excited and I’m excited to continue to get to know my students/teachers and work with them over these next several months.  I really feel lucky to be in such a remarkable place with so many remarkable people.  I love waking up and going to work.  Every day is a new adventure and somehow ridiculously predictable at the same time.  Oh life. What a brilliant Orchestrator (not a word…exactly why I shouldn’t be teaching English) of exchange.  

P.s. I’m not a historian so I don’t know much about Asian history and I know very little about Filipino history and/or culture.  We only have the text books the school has and the text books mostly have writings from Americans. If anyone stumbles upon books concerning asian history for me that would be amazing, or if you miraculously find a book of Filipino literature or folk tales I would love to get a copy of it.  I don’t want my classes to only read American literature (and it’s only two pages from any book they actually take the text from, which is a shame) and I want to be able to answer questions about Asian history that are asked to me. 

I love you all.  

educational borders

There are some things that continuously boggle my mind.  One of those things is how there can be abundant opportunity and wealth adjacent to crippling poverty.  As I was driving to Antipolo yesterday I was listening to Immortal Technique’s “The Point of No Return.”  The man is brilliant.  His music has the ability to connect you to the lives of people you have never met.  It provides insight into the emotion felt by those on the other side of the window. 

“Living in the hole, lookin' at the world through a crack…Concreate jungle, guerilla war out in the streets.”

When this song comes on all I can imagine is a ballet danced by the ignored masses.  A strength captivating the spotlight.  Yet, their power wasn’t enough to stop my bus, or any other passing vehicle.  Hundreds of people packed into homes made of trash and kids playing in a once flourishing jungle shredded by bulldozers and suffocated with cement. 

There is one neighborhood that looks like a complex labyrinth from the street. I wish I could walk its’ allies and meet its inhabitants.  I wish I could hear their stories and have the chance to exchange our humanity with one another.  Instead I just pass them on my way to Antipolo. 

This space stirs something inside me more than some of the others. I think it’s because it borders a complex that represents progress and change and future, yet the two communities are segregated by societal hierarchies too great to allow a fluid movement of people from one time to another.  Instead, their faces remained trapped behind the bars of wealth, class, and college degrees.

The haven on the other side of this neighborhood is headquarters for CHED (the Commission of Higher Education).  Literally aligned on an invisible line that separates two groups of people as distinctly as the wall between the U.S. and Mexico, these two places stand.

CHED’s mandate:

*Promote quality education

*Take appropriate steps to ensure that education shall be accessible to all

*Ensure and protect academic freedom for the continuing intellectual growth, the advancement of learning and research, the development of responsible and effective leadership, the education of high level professionals, and the enrichment of historical and cultural heritage.

Right next to a population of people who will most likely never have the opportunity to step foot on a college campus live inches away from a clean green field that welcomes its’ wealthy visitors through large stone walls.  The passing of degrees, a mere piece of paper signed from one man with a title to another man who will soon grow into that given title, cement the world into socio-economic castes.  

confusion lang

My English has gotten progressively worse over the last few months. Not that it was ever too good to begin with.  But now it’s just plain bad.  I would like to blame it on my impressive tagalog skills, but, let’s just say the word “skills” is but a dream for the future. Actually, speaking of that, I had my language proficiency interview today.  I was nervous. So nervous that before my interviewer asked me anything I gave a long monologue.  Here’s how it started. “magandang umaga po.  Pagod na ako kasi gumising ako alas tres ng umaga. Hindi ko alam…siguro kasi nerbiyos ako para sa LPI.  Pero bumasa ng magaling libro tungkol ng Muslim lalake sa New Orleans.  Matapang at pinuno siya kasi tumulong siya maraming ibang mga tao….” (for those of you who have never read Zeitoun, you should.  It’s a great book. It’s what I was talking about). And It carried on like this for a while.  Then I finished and the interview started and the interview finished and it was all over.  She asked me what I would do after the interview.  All I could say was “magtutuolg ako.” Or, “I’m going to sleep.” Unfortunately the sleep has yet to come but tonight I will be asleep by 7:45 if I’m lucky.  Or maybe i’ll watch some tv shows.  I’ve become a tv addict.  I bought a hard drive and maraming people have given me their hardrives filled with tv shows that inspire morality for our future generations (aka gossip girl…although when I watched an episode of this I sort of had a breakdown). But I did get planet earth!

So, as I was supposed to be studying for my LPI my procrastination skills (and this time the word “skills” is accurately used) gave me plenty of time to live it up on facbeook.  Basically, I saw so many photo albums of weddings and proposals and talked to so many people who have found their careers or are on the way to their careers or are getting their masters.  I realized I’m in such a different place in life than so many people I know.  It’s not a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just a thing.  It’s just a weird realization.  For the past 22 years I’ve been on the same track doing the same thing everyone else around me was doing. The school thing.  But now it’s different.  I’m going to come back in a few years and be so…I don’t know what word cause I want to say behind, but I realize there is no behind or forward as life is a cycle and every persons journey is a series of different paths.  But, really, I think I feel it might be behind.  Not in a bad way, just meaning it will be such a different place than society has tried to convince me I should be in at this point in my life.  I don’t know if that makes sense.  I guess it’s almost like time is frozen over here, while it’s still moving very fast for everyone else.  That’s weird to say because i’ve been here about three months and it feels like a day, but people are having babies and spouses and looking for houses and jobs and I have no idea who I am or what I want to be or what I want to do or where I want to be.  I feel like my wandering is just beginning.  It’s just strange.  I enjoy where I’m at but it is weird to hear about all these things going on back in the states when I feel I’m so far from it all…I feel so young and immature still.  I guess everything is a process.

This week has been a really good week. I had a rough week last week.  Just a lot of things were piling on top of each other, and really it’s not important what those things are.  I gave myself some pep-talks telling myself to get more positive again etc etc etc.  I also prayed a lot that I would have a mood change and see the good things again.  Amazingly, as always seems to happen when it needs to, the universe came together to encourage me and reconnect me to the positivity spread and shared throughout humanity. 

There is a beautiful woman who spends her days sitting on a bridge I frequently pass and her nights in this ally cove behind the pirated dvd store.  She has come to recognize me now and smiled at me earlier this week.  It’s amazing the power of a smile, especially from someone who rarely makes eye contact with those who pass her.  Then another day she said “magandang umage” to me and since then every time I pass her we exchange greetings and she smiles and the world is right.  In those moments, her physical transformation from a person who refuses to hold her head up to a person greeting a confused lost white girl reminds me the value of simple human interactions.  If we all were to simply see (the “sawubona” see….the see where you are looking at a person and seeing their core…seeing that they are you and you are them) each other imagine the pain that could be dissolved.  Imagine the hope that could be spread.  She has given me a great amount of hope and strengthened me at a time when I really needed to believe in the goodness of people. 

My host dad was wearing a shirt I complimented.  The Philippines is all about nationalistic t-shirts, and the one he was wearing was nothing short of such a shirt.  The next night as I was washing my clothes he threw it into the bucket of water.  He told me he was giving it to me as a rememberance.  It was such a nice gift. I almost cried. I don’t know why it seemed so amazing, but it just reminded me of the immense kindness and hospitality I’ve been shown by my family here.

My host sisters like to draw in my tagalog notebooks.  Sometimes they rip out pages I need or color on things I’d prefer not to be colored, but the other day I opened up in my notebook to study and I saw a picture of four girls and the top of it said “4 wonderful girls,” with each of our names under one of the people. I’m going to miss them. 

Okay it’s the next day/the day after I wrote everything up to this point.  I’m heading out to my permanent site on Saturday and I leave my training site tomorrow at 6:30 in the morning.  I’m exhausted and excited and nervous all at the same time.  I feel when you combine all those emotions in me at one time I just become a real boring person with no real ability to do much. For instance I want to write about All Soul’s Day, but I can’t right now because I don’t have the energy to do it.  But, at the same time all I want to do right now is write, so you are getting this rambling of nothingness. 

Oh yeah, so I just started packing and I was getting way more help packing than anyone could ever want. Somehow in the middle of the chaos that engulfed my room Francine found my American cell phone, which I had completely forgotten about. I plugged it in to the charger and listened to a bunch of saved messages.  it was so nice to hear everyone’s voices. I resaved them all in the hopes that a few months from now, I will again stumble upon my phone and listen to the messages again as a reminder of home.

It’s been three months. In the past I’ve never spent more than 4 or 4.5 months abroad.  As I’m packing my room up now I feel as if I should be moving back to someplace comfortable, someplace I know with people I know who I can again talk to about the things going on in the world or the new things challenging my mind and heart. 

I’m really glad that I get to have an extended time here, but I’m nervously anticipating this next step as I’ve just spent three months taking in every new sight, sound, smell, feeling and way of interacting with people.  Trying to adapt to a new culture full of both things I like and don’t like, without loosing myself and my own identity and culture.  It’s an exhausting experience.  Just being so conscious of everything all the time.  That’s part of why I like being abroad, it’s a challenge and it makes you question just about everything you know and believe, but I already know that this next step is going to be a repeat of these last few months. Another new place, another new family, another new school, another new supervisor and co-teachers, another new language, another new system of beliefs, another new daily routine…another new culture and lifestyle.  Obviously, this is very exciting, but it is also daunting.  I think it’s partially daunting because I’ll be alone. I’ll of course be surrounded by people, probably more people than I will often times want to be with, but the isolation of the experience is bound to be a challenge.  Just processing everything on my own and having to explain everything I am time after time on my own. 

Okay, it’s now a different day.  The day that I left olongapo.  While I’m intimidated and nervous about these next two years, at this moment, I can’t wait to be more on my own. While I think it will be a great challenge being the only volunteer on my island, I’m excited to be separated from some of the “American” characteristics, comments and assumptions.  I have this romanticized vision in my head of me leaving Anda two years from now adapted to small island life, able to build a fishing net and successfully catch a mornings load of fish off my three bamboo pole width boat, able to harvest rice and maybe build a few things out of bamboo.  It’s a great image of success.  Success not meaning wealth or status or recognition, rather success meaning I’m able to cope with the extended amount of time I have to contemplate myself and this world we share.  Success meaning I haven’t gone crazy.  Success meaning it will be hard for me to adapt back to American society.  Success meaning I have built relationships with my neighbors. 

These next two years will be quite the ride.  I think I’m almost ready.