Bobby and I each said a few words and we were about to return to our seats when the Vice-Mayor started to speak. He said that the thing that impresses him most about Robert is that he has been faithful to me this entire time even though there are so many beautiful women around. I was SHOCKED. It is generally accepted to have affairs here. I was just shocked that at a city council member session to talk about what goes on in the bedroom with people who are there to be recognized. Bobby hadn’t said anything so I jumped in and said something to the effect that he has been faithful because he is afraid of me; I am strong! Then I threw some fake punches at him. It really got me thinking about the morals of the highly religious people here. We have to pray before anything is started here. There is no separation of church and state at all. There are prayers at the flag raising, before the session starts, before you eat, and even before the ferry boat leaves. They pray for everything then moments later basically say that it is expected for a man to pursue any pretty girl around.

It really bothered me because a statement like that puts Bobby’s morals into question and my worth. I know it was not intended to be anything bad in any way, they see nothing wrong and possibly expect all males to slip every now and then. A man should not be commended for being faithful to his partner, if you are in a relationship you are SUPPOSED to be faithful, otherwise, why enter into a relationship? Every now and then we hear comments that Western women are loose or that most westerner get divorces. I think people get divorces because they do not NEED to be married. Marriage is an institution for those who respect and genuinely WANT to be together, if you don’t want to be together anymore, you get divorced. I think also for respect for the other person it would be better to get divorced. Here, people tend to marry the first person they sexually engage with, typically because the girl got pregnant and stay together until death do you part.

Certainly a clash of cultures and ideas. I can honestly say that this is not a day I will forget soon.

Of course there is the HUGE difference that it is my choice to not have earned any money this year. It was Bobby’s choice to give up his job to join the Peace Corps, and it certainly wasn’t influenced by earning any income. Having thought about the different perceptions between life in the States versus life in the Philippines, it makes me a bit nervous for what we will experience next month. We may be in a place far worse off. Here, everything exists for those who can afford it. It may be lacking in selection or quality but it is possible. We may be in a place where there may not even be water for those who want it, regardless of what you can afford.

We are getting closer and closer to the end of our time here. We are still not sure where we will even be this coming April. We may be still in the Philippines, Indonesia, Afghanistan or perhaps Sudan. These all might sound pretty shocking, to us, I don’t know how we would handle just going back to the United States right now. Of course we will eventually… sloshing cold water over yourself for a shower does seem to get pretty old. Not right now though. We still have so much more to do, to help, to understand.

Tomorrow is another phone interview for him, so we will know more very soon!

We officially submitted our applications to Peace Corps two days ago. We are excited to get the process started and hopefully we will be able to complete everything that they require on our behalf while we are still in the Philippines. After that it is basically just a waiting game.

We have started looking for work now which will fill the gap between the end of our time in the Philippines and the start of a new service. Right now it looks as if India or Tajikistan may be our best bets.

We only have about 3 weeks left at our home here in Kabankalan. It is a very bitter-sweet feeling. We have been plotting our next step for so long and now the finish line is in sight. I will truly miss our host family here. I don’t feel quite so sad but I think I am really taking the time right now to appreciate everything. This upcoming week we will be in Manila, it will be the last big hurrah for batch 263 before people start leaving the country. These next few weeks will certainly be busy and exciting.

We used to cook in the kitchen upstairs where we live but we returned from out last little getaway to find that the stove DISAPPEARED. They just picked up and moved the stove to the downstairs part, which is essentially another house. So now there are 2 stoves down there, 2 sets of gas burners and probably 4 burners to use with the coal or wood. Not only that, they moved the gas burners OUTSIDE of the kitchen. So it is right next to our little coup for our lady turkeys who are sitting on their eggs and now I get attacked with mosquitos and get mud all over my shoes just so I can go and cook. But what baffles me is that there are technically 3 kitchen areas in that house. So they evacuate everything from all of those areas to put them outside in the dirt and mud!?!?! WHY??? Why spend the money to have this kitchen built which we used to use to then move everythiug outside to basically the front yard??? I can’t even imagine someone in the use taking all the efforts to pick up a stove and relocate it down stairs not only down stairs but to the front yard to do all the cooking. But also there are 3 rooms which used to be used as kitchens at one point!!

It drives me crazy!! I understand that there is an “energy crisis”. I was watching the news this morning and stepped away to get a drink, when I returned the tv was off, unplugged and the fan turned off!! I can understand unplugging the tv when it is not in use (it’s kind of annoying when I was watching it) but a fridge is ALWAYS in use!! that is the whole point of a fridge, to constantly keep things cool. That is why we can never serperate the ice bags we have in there because they are melted and then refrozen until they all join together to become one ridiculous block!! Not to mention all the food that spoils and then makes my expensive butter taste like shit!!!

I doubt this will ever be resolved unless we move out and live on our own but seeing that there are only a few months left of living here it is not really worth it. I guess the plug/unplug war will continue still for quite some time.

Smoke fills our room twice daily from our neighbors meticulously sweeping every particle of unwanted matter (household garbage, plastics, glasses, yard waste, etc) directly beneath our window and igniting this. As I have today learned, it is not just one culprit. We have two main windows and 3 neighbors whose property we see from these 2 windows. They all burn, as does our household as this is just the way that things are done here. We are attacked on all fronts.

But wait… there’s more!!! We also get the twice a year harvest of our local sugar cane, which surrounds our little housing complex. After they harvest the cane, all of the leaves are cut off and left on the field to dry out. After a few days the entire field is torched leaving a lovely orange glow to the night sky of Kabankalan. Last harvest season it left me not being able to get a full lung full of air for 3 days and then finally decided to get an inhaler only to find out that the 3 closest brands to the type that I wanted were sold out.

The good news is that any type of burning is ILLEGAL in the Philippines under Republic Act 9003. The bad news is that this is not enforced; nobody really thinks anything bad of burning since it has worked for them for as long as they can remember. What is worse is that there are few alternatives to burning. There technically is garbage pickup but that is really only along the main strip of town. Our little cluster of houses doesn’t even have a proper road for a truck to fit on, it is nothing more than a dirt and rock strip.

But alas, solid waste management is not a truly that important to people here. I admit, I didn’t care about it before I came here but that was always because I didn’t NEED to worry about it. In Manhattan, every building has their label trash bins to segregate the trash and I always abided, to even think of burning something in New York is simply absurd, talk about a fire hazard!

I’m sure eventually things will change in the Philippines. More information will get out to the general public, better infrastructure will be established regarding solid waste management. I guess in a way, my experiencing the burning of trash is a good thing, it opened my eyes to how things were done before the dept of sanitation came into being. I look forward to the time when I once again can leave my windows open without worrying about the smoke from the burning piles of trash and the malaria carrying mosquitos, and when I can drink the water without worrying about cholera, typhoid, dysentery, etc.

So there is still no real outcome of all the political situation, who knows what will become of this. I arrived in Manila to find it to be it’s usually seething self, nothing out of the ordinary. None the less we were advised to leave as soon as possible and avoid Makati at all costs. So we went to Makati…well, they have the most movie theatres there!! I am still thrilled we went because I found the best bookshop there. It was a book shop of how I imagine the old mom and pops to be, the staff not only selected the merchandise to be sold but personally read every single book there! I love Barnes and Noble just for the sheer enormity of it’s locations and the diversity of the merchandise sold but there is really nothing better than being able to just shoot out a title of a book you love and have a similar one suggested! It was quite pricy, still cheaper than B&N AND it is actually IN the Philippines! That made my year and washed away any concerns of riots or protests.

Saturday night we took an overnight bus to Tuguegurao trying to get to Batanes, the islands furthest north. It was just a stopping point because nobody in Manila seemed to be sure whether or not there was any flight from there to Basco, Batanes. We got lucky and managed to get on a flight first thing the next morning.

Batanes itself was unlike anything else we have seen in the Philippines. The first thing we noticed when we disembarked that the air was fresh and smelt of ….nature!? It was such a shock, especially coming from Tuguegurao, a city which according to our lonely planet book has a population of 12,000 people and 14,000 trykes! According to Thor, the Peace Corps volunteer up there, there are a total of only 9 jeepneys and possibly even few trykes on the entire island of Batan!

Batanes is known for it’s green rolling hills, old limestone houses (drastically different from the Nipa huts of the Visayas), and fierce typhoons. The heat was sweltering nearly the entire time we were there except of course the day before our flight when the typhoon swept in. Perfect timing to cancel our flight and leading to me missing my expiration date of my visa. We got lucky that a little 6 seater plane was going to fly out the next day to Tuguegurao, the storm had cleared enough. This plane was the type where you could actually put the windows up or down if you want to! They actually let me sit in the pilot’s seat and take some photos. It was worth it for that alone!

We managed to extend my visa with little trouble and got on the next bus out of town that was supposed to be a night bus to Baguio. Now the bus was supposed to only take 9 hours and ended up being 12. Then we got on the first bus to Sagada, perfect timing as our bus from Tuguegurao didn’t arrive until 4:30 or so. This left just enough time to go to the “24 hour” pizza place that was telling us they were closed for cleaning when we got there. We managed to talk them into serving us by making them feel guilty for not really being 24 hours but 21 hours.

Sagada is always a treat, the weather is much cooler, vegetables flourish and the vistas are gorgeous. I was thrilled to get to spend my birthday there and to get a chance to have a wonderful meal at “the Log Cabin”, probably the best quality food in the Philippines. Sagada is also known for its weaving, there is one main vertical mill there where they also sell there merchandise. We designed a laptop bag and are having them make it for us, hopefully next time we go up they will have it ready and perhaps add it to their collection. We also made the long hike to try to go to the “Deaf Weavers”, they are known for having slightly more intricate weaving patterns and the owner is deaf. We were getting a little lost and each time we would stop to ask someone Bobby would say something that was more like “the Death Weavers”, this made me picture the Greek myth of the sisters would spin thread for each life and then cut the thread when you life was over. The people who he asked were thoroughly confused and would all reply “Jeff Weavers?? No I don’t know him”. Next time I guess I should do all the talking.

This past week has been crazy for all the celebrations for Charter Day, the anniversary of Kabankalan being named a City. We had the city’s first art workshop and art exhibition. Bobby and I have been judges for the body painting contest and also for the barangay booth competition. All 32 barangays are to build nipa huts using indigenous materials and fill it with their local crop or merchandise. Its been great having so many different things going on. In two weeks we will be back on the road, to make some stops in Pinay and then back to Manila and to Sagada. I suspect that we will be quite busy until I leave around Thanksgiving to go to the States.

I just feel like none of the constant changing of presidents will do any good. It seems like there is no sense of synergy here and people are often kept from effectively doing their jobs because of personal problems that they have with a co-worker. They will just continue to block each other and nothing is ever accomplished! Ah, this is too heavy on me right now. I guess I will have to sit back like everyone else and watch and wait.

I think at this point we will reapply to Peace Corps but it doesn’t matter what country we get. Bobby wants to enter into a more scientific field of study where a language requirement is not necessary. I still don’t have any more clear of an idea than I thought that I had origionally when we were planning on going to the Middle East to study Arabic. I figure these next few months will be packed with plotting and dreaming. It is exciting to think of where we may be this time next year. I am looking forward to our time here coming to a close and moving on to the next chapter.

The other day I was riding my bike through Kabankalan and someone to my surprise shouted not Joe but “‘Miga” short for Amiga,or friend. I loved this, it acknowledged that I am a female by the “A” ending, it is a certainly amicable term and it just sounds nice. So I have a plan to eradicate the term “Joe”, well at least try to in my own way. Every time someone shouts Hey Joe, I will shout Hey Migo!! Then they will hopefully remember me as Migo/Miga instead of Joe and just get in that habit. Its worth a shot!

One thing that is great about this country is that is really cheap for medications. I have a UTI, when this had happened to me in the US before, I needed to get Cipro, this was in high demand because of the sensationalized West Nile scare New York had going at the time and I had to pay about 80 USD for that! I just bought it now for 380 pesos, or 6.78 USD. I have no prescription and no insurance and still, it was quicker, cheaper and easier than it would have ever been in the US. What a great place. Now if I could only get GOOD western food here!! Fortunately our big supermarket in Bacolod, 2.5 hour bus ride away just started stocking mozerella cheese, its a start!!

Bobby just left for a week training that will be on Luzon. He took the laptop with him so it will be a long week for me. I have books and little Jon Jon to keep me occupied so hopefully that will be enough!