My New Home: At Work

Once again, it has been a while since I last posted. I blame all the video games and comic books I have downloaded to my laptop. My work at San Remaigio National High School began two weeks ago, and it progresses much as you would expect any school in the world to progress: I stand in front of a group of young people, say some things about some stuff, and then put them to work at something or other. Standard.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to get everyone acquainted with my life here in Cebu. I thought it would be best to begin by explaining my daily work at the high school: How I get there, what it looks like, and what the job is like (though you will find my brief description above to be quite accurate.)

My day begins at 6:30am when I wake up in my room at the Rondina Residence. It is a nice home, the food is great, and the family is incredible. When I walk out the front door and turn left, this scene greets me:

This is the highway that cuts through the town. Besides the intersection with the highway that goes to Bogo (city status recently revoked), San Remaigio is a loose collection of 27 Barangays, or barrios/villages/collections of houses, spread out along the highway. Meanwhile, the intersection is the commercial hub of the area, featuring a market with a dozen stalls, two eateries, three lechon manok stands (rotisserie chicken), an internet cafe, a few auto repair shops, and a few stands selling random things like sandles, beanies, basketballs, and cheap sunglasses.

The left before that intersection is the road that leads to my high school. Strangely enough, the corner is adorned with two mortuary services, so every day I pass by stacks of oranate coffins. It makes for a rather macbre commute.

This is the road down to my school. To the left behind the sign is the coffin shop (try before you buy?).

Here is the school. A large area for only 1,800 students, but much of the space is haphazardly used due to large gaps of time between construction projects. As a result, the high school suffers the classroom shortage problem common to high schools throughout the Philippines. Of course, half the issue is a lack of funding for new buildings. Despite this shortage, the faculty and staff of San Remaigio National High School are resourceful, and non-traditional classrooms spring up throughout the campus.

The grounds are rife with lush vegetation, as each section (group of about 55 students, of which there are 36) is responsible for its own garden. Some classes grow eggplants, some tomatoes, and others grow any number of plants that are outside my botanical ability to identify. These efforts turn the campus into a mass of vibrant greenery, and often result in a "Green School of Cebu" competition victory for the school (they won a LCD Projector last year.)

My only noticeable impact on the school environment is this flier for the December English Month writing contests. Not so bad after only two weeks on the job.

The classrooms are cramped and hot, but the students and teachers are tough. I just sweat an obscene amount (makes the chalk rather hard to use, actually.) The smallest normal classes have around 55 students, the largest around 75. But thanks to cultural differences, it is actually easier to manage 55 Philippine students than 30 jack-ass American kids.

So far, I have assigned only two assignments. The first was a one-page essay on the students themselves. I asked them to write about their families, their daily lives, and their dreams for the future. While I think this assignment is essential for my understanding of the local culture, I regret giving it. I currently have 400 papers at home waiting for me to read them. *sigh*

I then assigned a love poem, based on Robert Burns' cliche` Red, Red, Rose poem. In order to provide practice for figurative language, I cut out the similes and hyperbole of the poem and turned it into a sort of mad-lib for the class to fill in. As a result, I sat and listened to 300 students recite 300 love poems yesterday. Some of them have a great deal of potential. I was definitely better for me to use one class period for recitals than to bring 300 poems home to grade by myself in the evening.

That's my job. I'll get back to you about the rest of town.

Pilipinas Halloween

Halloween occurs in the Philippines on November 1st, and October 31st more or less goes by unnoticed. Though thanks to the International Date Line, that means the Philippines and America celebrate the holiday more or less simultaneously on opposite sides of the great sphere. There is little resembling the two celebrations, however.

While the American holiday is a candy-eating, costume-party fest of varied forms of debauchery, innocent and not, the Philippines version is much more subdued; half because of the nature of the tradition, and half because of recent laws instituted by the government.

On November 1st, I accompanied my host mother to various graveyards around the city where her relatives are waiting patiently for the coming of Judgment Day. The places are packed of nearly as many live people as not, and the entrances, and even interiors, are packed with the petty mercantilism which defines most Philippine holidays and celebrations. You can buy anything you need for the traditions: candles, matches, flower arrangements, peanuts, snacks, Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes. The water-hawkers wander through prayer services shouting "Tubig-tubig-tubig!" (water, water, water!)

Once you have navigated the merchants and become equipped with candles and flowers, you go to the grave of your relative, perhaps tidy it up a bit (I saw one fellow redying the lettering of his relative's grave, kids work at scraping off moss, mud, and other filth), light the candles, place the flowers, and offer prayers for the individual so that he/she might make it from Purgatory and into heaven.

Space is at a premium, so many of the graves are solid cement blocks, and when the next family member passes on, a new one is constructed atop the old, forming a sort of ancestral monolith. Along the edges of the graveyard, these towers of the dead form a macabre wall, as if they were set there to ensure everyone else stayed inside where they belong. These are the public graveyards.

Nearby are the private graveyards, which resemble more the ones we are familiar with in the States. However, death is a great opportunity for the living members of the family to show off their wealth and social status. Gated mausoleums for single graves are often nicer than some of the homes of the living. They sit quietly at the edge of the grass field, the gentle slopes of the island mountains rising behind them in the distance. Its like the Hamptons of the city of the dead.

However, on November 1st, the family arrives in the evening with a feast of food and a music player and has a bit of a party over the grave of their kin. In the past, a full scale fiesta would take place: drinking, karaoke, and gambling. But the government recently decided this disrespects the dead and has made those things illegal in the graveyards. I don't know; if I had to spend a year with other dead people, I'd want a party over my grave.

If the graveyard is a little too hard to get to, a family party will occur at someone's house, and candles will be lit in the driveway to guide the spirits to the fiesta. And you can drink and sing there. Big plus.