Lumpia, dances and teaching

Rolling Lumpia

My veggie lumpia

Our group in Dinalupihan

National Dance Troop

Orchids, about 12 on a stem

 So much has been happening since we are so very busy so I am playing catch up. I have included a few photos of our language group cooking some Filipino dishes. We had to go to the palengke and buy the ingredients and then prepare and cook at someone’s home. We made lumpia, mine had no baboy, and adobo and fried chicken for others. Yummy sticky rice and pina for dessert. My favorite Filipino dish so far is kalabasa squash, sort of like acorn squash, cooked with green beans in fresh squeezed coconut milk, ginger and garlic as seasonings. Other photo in front of the DepEd logo is our group after conducting a morning session for adults who left school but want to continue their education. We did sessions on interviewing, self esteem and problems with burning trash and littering. We were fortunate to see the National Dance Troop perform and they were incredible, live music, beautiful costumes. Our elementary group did a community project that consisted of a teacher training on reading/library resources, science, math and English. I did the science part and we did several easy but exciting experiments. We all look drenched in sweat, I told you that by 7am I am sweating, hair slicked back. No one came  here to win a beauty contest for sure.

It has been raining for a week, several typhoons have passed close by. An immense retaining wall of a landfill burst due to the rain and garbage spilled all over a town and killed several people. Sad, death by garbage slide. There have also been a  lot of photos of Manila bay with an incredible amount of floating garbage in it from the rains, kids were actually swimming in it scrounging for anything of value, the pictures were unbelievable. Folks here tend to throw trash in the open sewers along the roads, the sewers drain into rivers and then the rivers drain into the ocean and bays. It is sad to see so much trash in such a beautiful country. Floods have wrecked havoc in many towns due to the hard rain for a week, no floods by me, but Manila has a lot, almost waist deep. We are in the home stretch for training, next week is language testing. Tomorrow we FINALLY get to go to a beach, I have three things of sunscreen and have not used any and it is Sept.! Hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow. We will do language and technical sessions at the beach. My next blog installment will be about WWII and Bataan Peninsula. We toured all of Bataan and it has some amazing history so I want to do it justice with photos and facts.

We swear in as volunteers soon and then head to our sites, very exciting. We are hoping that the Ambassador from the US will attend (last year they had Hilary Clinton..) I will miss several PC folks, but honestly, some have gotten on my nerves, not unusual when you get a group of leadership folks together 24/7 for an intense training. Sometimes I have felt like I was in a high school youth group…..there is something to say about “been there, done that” – age does occasionally grant you perspective on what is and isn't worth getting upset about,  “ingat” take care.  I will post my mailing address soon, I would love to get some snail mail letters, newspaper clippings from home, etc. Miss everyone!!

Me teaching science