A Philippines Peace Corps Blog
December 23Scholarship for Future Educators
Footage from the December 7, 2011 Commencement and Orientation for scholars in the College of Education, Eastern Visayas State University.
Learn more about the Scholarship for Future Educators ... more
December 20
Resolutions 2012
[This image was created using GIMP, a free software. Stop piracy.]
As folks go, I'm not very wise. I've lived 31 years on this green earth and still commit the same shortcomings year after year. Note: this coming from someone who takes New Years' Resolutions a little too seriously.
Every December since 2003, I've sat down and ch ... more
December 16
Interview with the Prostitute
On the outskirts of the city at the edge of a subdivision called Bliss, Tacloban City Convention Center pokes into the bay. A big silo of a thing, concrete, stadium seating for a couple three or four thousand, ringed by two levels of commercial units which consist of half a dozen disco-slash-videoke bars, a few pretentious restaurants, a full-function fitness center. They call it the Astrodome. On your jeep ride call out "Astro" for short.
December 12
Library Book Program
Footage from the Book Acquisition project at Eastern Visayas State University (November 22, 2011). In the past year, over 700 popular fiction books were donated. ... moreDecember 9
Cause and Fall
At the bakeshop I go to most mornings, this morning old senile Lolita turned left, shying a bright white bandage on her cheek. What triggered the bandage is unimportant. It is the turn left--the shy--that I care about. The ancient human instinct, when Eve knew her nakedness. We do not act. Something acts upon us.
That morning there was rain, and a drunk grandson yelling above his lungs at a door for the key. Yelling at a door. Grandson: we all have our old lolitas, even after we ... more
November 24
Thanksgiving in the Philippines
... moreNovember 19
Mid Service Training
One year after you officially swore to make the world better you return to the city that welcomed you, for Mid-Service Training, you and your batch of Peace Corps volunteers. The Manila-gray sky hovers above you, threatening to break open. Tore up paving blocks litter the baywalk along Roxas Blvd, the aftermath of Typhoon Pedring. Street children huddle near you, still plying their one-hand-in-your-face-on ... more
November 12
Adultery, Concubinage
When you move to a new country you know there are going to be moments when you think things should be done a certain way. That their way of doing things is, well, different. That your way of doing things is right. Like, for instance, waiting your turn in line. Or being forewarned that you will be giving a speech. Or splitting the bill. or starting the semester on schedule.
Most of the time I've been able to understand the reasons behind the cultural differences. And most of ... more
November 6
Suicide and Speaking English
Over a leisurely pizza with a fellow volunteer on mild day during a brownout in a medium sized city on a small island in the Philippines, I contemplated a paradox.
My companion had recently pulled out her handy iPod--pimped out with news update capability. She had shown me a single, bleak statistic: for the 2nd year in a row, America has lost more soldiers in Iraq & Afghanistan to su ... more
October 30
Scholarship for Future Educators
As the semester wound down in the middle of October a handful of students in the College of Education submitted applications for a new scholarship. The scholarship would cover tuition. Approximately $50 for the coming semester. The students had to be enrolled in College of Education, had to maintain a good GPA, and had to prove they needed financial help.
After the applications, interviews. The Student Services Department advisor did most of the questioning; a student government repre ... more
October 17
Peace Corps in the 21st Century
Maybe you heard about Congressman Mike Coffman's (R-CO) recent trip to China and his outrage at seeing Peace Corps volunteers teaching at universities (he called the Peace Corps China program an "an insult to the taxpayers of the United States").
This got me thinking, seeing as I'm also a volunteer assigned to a university (in the Philippines). I think Coffman's outrage may have been due, ... more
October 5
Faculty Workshops
During the past semester, the College of Education at EVSU ... more
October 2
Happiness 2
Sometimes you just know you're going to have a very happy day. Such was the case one Sunday in the Philippines. It was a long day and it deserves its own blog post (forthcoming). But first, this: happiness.
This morning, in a reflective mood, I decided to chart my happiness throughout my adult life, using a number crunching matrix thingy.
My criteria:
1. Autonomy: how m ... more
September 29
Teaching Resources
Over the past year, I've created some Philippines-oriented teaching materials during my Peace Corps service. Note: these should not be used as-is. Feel free to bastardize & adapt them to your teaching needs.
Slideshows
Understanding by Design Simplified
Americanisms & Filipinisms
more
September 27
American Time
One Saturday morning in September I came to school early. Before my afternoon Developmental Reading class, I needed to catalog 200 book donations that just had arrived. Sitting at the faculty computer, I franctically typed while two students--Jessica and John, on campus for a symposium on the environment--helped by dictating book titles and authors. The hands on the wall clock slid forward in their interminable circles. Minutes disappea ... more
September 24
Poem
The passing of a year halfway across the world
From home
Came and went gentle and quiet.
Others took trips to nice patches of heaven
Or all the way to bright and blingy Hong Kong.
They blogged adventures, accomplishments, diseases.
Insights.
I stayed home and wrote only for myself.
I had intentionally shunned the self-reflection
That is birthed in an anniversary.
Unusual--I am a whore to navel-gazing.
Bu ... more
August 29
Stage Right
I dont know when the amphitheatre was built or for that matter why because Id never seen anything going on there like a play or concert or what youd expect
It was concrete with a couple dozen rows of those plastic stadium seats. The roof was canvas stretched over steel beams. There was no back. I mean nothing. The concrete stage just went on for awhile and then turned to dirt and another twenty feet the dirt dipped a ... more
August 22
Fixed Window
I am seduced by all those stories of striving for perfection, striving to the point beyond which the end product justifies the means. The katana swordmakers, the swiss watchmasters, the Ringworld engineers. They worked not simply to produce a durable product, or even a beautiful product. They constructed perfection.
One Saturday in the Philippines I woke with the idea to build a ... more
August 17
Broken Window
At precisely 3:47 on a beautifully radiant afternoon in Tacloban City, a tree burst through the window of a classroom at the Eastern Visayas State University, sending shards of glass skittering through the air.
After a half-second of shocked silence--those milliseconds of cerebral buzz where the human brain marshalls its circuitry to make sense of aberrant sensory data and deliver the appropriate response, an interval that feels ten times longer to the hyperaware eyewitness--studen ... more
August 16
What is the biggest problem in education?
Ten years ago, while I was taking a college class that would more or less shape the direction of my educational and vocational future, my instructor, Ron Scheer, posed this question: "What is the greatest problem facing your generation today?"
He wasn't, of course, looking for a right answer. He wanted us to understand the complexity of language -- how in writing, you need to contextualize your terms, define what you mean by "problem", "greatest", and "generation."
Think ... more
August 14
Zamora Street
... moreAugust 13
A whit of wit
"Ano it karuyag sidngon, 'matam-is'?" the college student said, continuing her interrogation. What is the meaning of the word 'matam-is'?
We stood before the glass display case of a bakery, ubiquities across the Philippines. She'd heard me speaking the local dialect and, like most people here, was surprised and intrigued. So, as I'd experienced many times before (and would probably experience till the day I departed), the college student decided to test me.
That's ... more
August 10
Say What?! (L-edition)
Just a few more words I may or may not have a use for while I'm living in the Philippines.
1. "Lagos": I've done this many a time. I love that there's a word for it!
2. "Lampini": I don't know what this means.
3. "Labatibaha": ...but...give it to whom?
< ... more
August 9
Why is Critical Thinking?
Yep. It's a pretty damn good feeling when your Developmental Reading class--an evening class, by the way, at the end of a long string of classes in a long hot-and-humid day in the tropics--when all the students in your class spontaneously burst into chant: "We want MORE! We want MORE!"
In the beginning, one of my students presented the day's topic. Critical Thinking. She was tall and slender and dark-skinned and she'd scored well on the midterm. She had good English. She wa ... more
August 8
Project Design & Management
"My counterpart and I decided our school need this because, sure, there's information out there from DepEd about UBD, but there's no resources. No materials. And at least where we are, training's only minimal."
Jon Hunter, lean, young, with a geek-chic skinny tie and retro glasses and three days' worth of beard, stood in front of 25 social workers and teachers who clustered around square plastic tables, sipping coffee and basking in the luxury of air-condition ... more
August 7
Faculty Member
After dallying for good a long while, I finally made it official: I'm a faculty member at the Eastern Visayas State University.
I wear this ID badge around my neck Monday thru Saturday, and it's fascinating how people in the community react differently to me when they see it. Downtown, instead of assuming I'm a Mormon, they're now very curious why I'm teaching in the Philippines. ... more
July 20
To See What Else is Possible (Part 2)
[read part 1 here]
Interactions with people like Sir Bong and Ma’am Joyce convince me that local community leaders with international perspective are the key to reducing poverty. To do something about poverty you have to plant many seeds: grout cinderblocks for sturdy homes, feed the hands of hollow street children, thaw their wounded mothers, loan our sweat to sharecroppers and our shade to rice ... more
July 19
To See What Else is Possible (Part 1)
In a room no bigger than my bedroom back home, a large table is littered with course syllabi, grade reports, and back issues of the Philippine Inquirer. From a television in the corner, the voice of gameshow host Willing Willie blares two ticks too loud, while nearby, three computers sleep, unused. Faculty shuffle in, out, monsoon rain rattles the aluminum roofing, Willing Willie echoes off the concrete walls, and in the midst of all and everything, smiling and serene, sits Sir Bong.
< ... moreJuly 18
Happiness
On an otherwise unremarkable Sunday on a small island at the edge of the Pacific, I felt zen.
There was no good reason that day should have yielded me inner peace. I'd spent the morning--a hot, humid morning--wandering the bustling downtown of Tacloban City, its usual urban noise pollution compounded by the fact that on that particular sunday there was a brownout, and stores that had them were running loud--actually, slightly deafening--generators.
I wandered all mornin ... more
July 17
Say What?! (G-edition)
Once again, while looking up a word in my Waray dictionary, I was amazed at the personality of this language I've come to love. It has words that don't exist in English. Words that reflect the life of Filipinos. And words that are just plain awesome.
1. Girikgitik. "The act of tickling; touching lightly which causes little shivering; th ... more
July 16
Baby in a Jeep
She climbed the jeepney at St. Paul's Hospital--a heavyset woman, in her upper 30s was my guess, though she could've been closer to my age, 31, just weathered by a life on the margins of poverty. She beamed from ear to ear. In her arms, a bundle.
July 15
This is MY Peace Corps
I've been in a visual mood lately. This is what it's caused.
Using wordle.net, I took the text from my Peace Corps blogs and generated a word cloud. Then I superimposed the image of my ... more
July 14
Dog
Her name was Nicole and from the moment I saw her I was in love.
She walked with me at dawn when I went to the bakery, she trailed after me longingly when I left for school, she was there to greet me when I returned, her stub-tail wagging always.
She was prettier than most. And she was smart, smarter than any dog I'd encountered in the U.S. She had to be. As a dog in the Philippines you gotta keep your wits about you. Scrounge for scraps when your family has none to spar ... more
July 13
What is Reading?
Question: what do you do when what you want to do is different than what you're doing?
A Peace Corps volunteer. That was me. For one semester I'd stood in front of Filipino students at the Eastern Visayas State University, co-teaching a class called "Developmental Reading."
The students: math education majors.
The point of the class: improve students' reading ability. So their ... more
July 12
50 Things I Love about the Philippines
1. Even if there is a typhoon, you might as well keep smiling.2. Complete strangers will feed you till you cannot eat anymore.
3. On your birthday, friends come to your house at 5am and sing songs to you.
4. Airlines lend you an umbrella to cross 100 feet on the tarmac.
5. If you gain weight, you are becoming healthy.
6. If you lose weight, you are becoming sexy.
... more
July 5
Holly Lovejoy
"I'd say you're a mix of Artisan and Scholar," said the volunteer beside me, her eyes sizing me up and down as bobbed next to her in the rumbling jeepney. "But of course, underneath, you're a Priest. Just like me."
Her name--really, truly--is Holly Lovejoy (was baptised Holloway Lovejoy, but that's another story, and anyway she's always gone by Holly). We'd spent the morning helping another Peace Corps volunteer with a remedial reading class. Now Holly Lovejoy and I were ru ... more
June 26
50 Years of Peace Corps in Region VIII
In 1961, the first Peace Corps volunteers arrived in the Philippines. Over the next ... moreJune 17
Say What?! (Part 2)
Starting my second semester teaching at the Eastern Visayas State University was worlds different from my first. Classes with my co-teachers zinged--we seamlessly volleyed teaching across the front of the classroom. Students greeted me like an old friend--not an inexplicable, goofy-looking foreigner. And during lunches with co-faculty (where conversation stayed mostly in the local dialect) it was nice to feel like just...another...teacher.
During one of those lunches, Sir Joel, a Musi ... more
May 28
Malong Dance
At Tudlo Mindanao 2011, Peace Corps Philippines volunteers perform the traditional ... moreMay 24
Tudlo Mindanao Cultural Presentation
... moreMay 23
Tudlo Mindanao Tour
... moreMay 12
T Shirts
2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, and 50 years since the first volunteers arrived in the Philippines (they showed up in December).
Accordingly, the Peace Corps office strongly encouraged volunteers to take the opportunity to publicize Peace Corps in their communities. Accordingly, ... more
May 12
Day Without Time
"What will you do after this?" Ariel asked me, dividing his attention between the conversation, the barbeque chicken, and the shockingly pretty girl at the table across from us.
I knew it was late. Ariel and I had left our boarding house around dusk to play basketball at the Mormon Church (Ariel had been converted by missionaries a few years back, and anyway, the Mormons had the best court in Tacloban City. We'd played four games, and even though I towered over most of the players-- ... more
May 4
Summer Reading
Every morning on my way to the jeepney stop I passed the Royalle Bakeshop. Every morning while shaving I could look out my bathroom window and watch the bakery storefront opening. Every morning, there, arranging bread or sweeping the floor or, more frequently, just standing idle, would be Nary.
From 5:30 dawn till 7:30 dark she was there. For 3 months I passed the bakeshop and passed Nary. Sometimes ... more
May 1
Scholarship for Future Educators
This video was created with the help of my wonderful students. For information on the scholarship, and to donate, go to markfullmer.com/scholarship. ... moreApril 27
Say What?!
I've always loved language. And I love the language I'm learning now, Waray-Waray. The sad thing is this: it's dying. Every generation, the old vocabulary shrinks a little, pushed out by Tagalog and English. Here are five quick reasons that this language needs to live on:
It's words like this that possibly exist in no other language that touch my heartstrings. This one's probably just a typo, but nevertheless...it gets you thi ... moreApril 24
Why Have You Forsaken Me?
"Mamatay hiya?" Nine year-old Joanne-May looked up at me, cautiously, but without fear. He will die?
"Oo. mamatay hiya," I nodded. Yes. He will die.
We two stood at the top of Calvary Hill, waiting for Jesus to be crucified.
Every year on Good Friday, Filipinos reenact the death of Jesus. In some cities there are crucifixion plays of the stations of the cross. In others men walk the streets flagellating themselves with whips, their backs a bloody ... more
April 22
Manila
At a Mini Mart in the heart of Manila in waking morning a middle-aged Filipino sat eating his box breakfast of fried chicken, rice, instant noodles. His button-down shirt and tie suggested a hardworking man with a good job. His girth suggested a long, long time since he'd gone without a meal. Directly in his line of vision, outside, leaning against the spotless window of the Mini Mart, a street kid.
Barefo ... more
April 6
Stole Worker
After weeks of rain April came, and with it, the Filipino sun. Even very late in the afternoon one Wednesday, a warm breeze skirted the Eastern Visayas State University and equatorial rays seared the treetops. The semester over, the campus was nearly deserted. But in one classroom on the first floor of the silent Science building sat an American, alone in the front row of wooden desks. He wore a form-fitting polo and dark skinny jeans. Well-worn sneakers. A few days' dark beard clothed his ... more
March 26
Book Donation Project
What: Donate used books to EVSU's library
When: Ongoin ... more
March 22
Precious Hearts Romance
This is a story about love, and will, and inertia, and destiny. There is a girl, of course. A young, attractive Filipina. She is hardworking, almost to a fault--stays late at the office most nights. She is pious--attends mass, erm, religiously. And she is lonely. Let's call her Graciel.
There is a guy. Older. A world traveler. Confident, capable, assured. Some would say handsome. Let's call him, uh...Mr. Portez.
But rather than going to the trouble of re ... more
March 21
Infinite Love
Let me tell you about a day. Which should have been like any other. A hot, bumpy jeepney ride to school. A few hours' downtime in the faculty lounge. Chika-chika with faculty. Then a final exam to administer. Lunch. A recognition ceremony for graduating honors students. Then Mauli na ako--I'm heading home.
Should have been.
The jeepney ride goes as planned. Hot, bumpy. I show ... more
March 19
Top 10 Peace Corps Moments
(Sep 2010 - Mar 2011)
10. Speaking at the 49th Peace Corps Philippines Swearing in Ceremony. In the local dialect, waray-Waray.
9. Eating Thanksgiving dinner with 25 Peace Corps volunteers on a remote beach in Northern Samar.
8. Slipping, thigh deep, into black river excr ... more
March 14
104th Foundation Days
A video summary of the activities of EVSU during the 2011 Foundation Days (February 1 ... moreMarch 9
Overheard in the Philippines
It started with a stereotype.
A young, attractive Filipina sat in an internet cafe videochatting with a COWM. A Creepy Old White Man.
Yeah. We expatriates living in the Philippines had, in true Filipino style, given the phenomenon an acronym.
The COWM is most frequently sighted in Filipino shopping malls, those bastions of air-conditioning and public restrooms and American-style sooperkrazyconsumerism. He is most often fiftyish with graying hair, though we ha ... more
March 8
Happy Birthday
I've never been a fan of birthdays. Not because of the "they remind us of our mortality" line. For me, quite simply, I shrink from the limelight. Those faces (friendly, even beloved) gawking at you as you make the wish, blow out the candles, slice the cake. The thought that people have taken time out on account of you. I don't know. It embarrasses me. I don't know. Maybe it's a defense mechanism: it's easy not to cry when you have no proof that people care.
Whatever the case, by t ... more
March 3
Spreading the Beans
"What else?!" the voice of Miss Faith R. Apurillo reberberated off the concrete walls of our perenially echoing classroom. The young woman stood, fingers knitted neatly in front of her chest, eyeing her students with a half-wink. A lock of combed and coifed hair dangled across the front of her school uniform. Starched and pressed, naturally. I would've never expected such volume to be achievable by my petite co-teacher. But a bellowing set of pipes, I'd learned, was a primary requirement fo ... more
February 19
Biometric Authentication
A few minutes before eight on a cool and cloudy Friday morning, I stepped into the faculty office. The room, like the campus, was quiet, sleepy. Half a dozen faculty members, clustered familially on two couches, lounged, chatted, texted, or dozed in the Monet blue of the morning.
"Maupay nga aga!" I waved. I ambled to the couches. High-fived Ma'am Divine. Winked at Ma'am Billa. Situated myself on the arm of the nearest couch.
"Nag-enjoy ka kagab-i, Sir Mark?" asked Divin ... more
February 13
A view from the window
A rainy Sunday. A brownout Sunday. A view from my boarding house window, in the V&G subdivision of Tacloban City, Leyte. ... moreFebruary 7
If Only I Would Have Listened
After midterm season, emphasis in my Developmental Reading classes turned to reading comprehension. Accordingly, I suggested to a co-teacher that we have the students practice "shared writing" by composing a story in groups. She liked the idea and showed up to the following class armed with half a dozen topics, inlcuding "If I Were the Teacher...", "Why Weekends Should Be Longer," and "Why Are Soap Operas So Popular." The topics that elicited my favorite responses, however, were "Why Are So ... more
January 22
New Years (part 1)
This is how I ended up in a broken down van on the side of the road, in the rain, in the dark, in the same white t-shirt and khaki shorts I'd worn for the past three days, with the equivalent of 80 cents in my pocket, on New Year's Day.
Suspense is overrated, so here's the moral: in the Philippines, you quickly find that so many things that normally stress you out or piss you off or, or whatever, just don't. Because there's nothing you can do about it and you might as well have a ... more
January 20
Photocopying
Midterm season. Forty-plus plastic chairs fill every last inch in a classroom at the Eastern Visayas State University. Forty-plus college students mill around, chatting, cramming, finalizing this space-maximizing arrangement of chair-desks. Apparently it's supposed to prevent cheating. Not that it will. During the exam, my co-teacher and I will sit and listen for whispering. When it comes, my co-teacher will quiet the students, but then, after a time, inevitably, the whispering will return. ... more
January 12
Textbook Acquisition Program
A video request for a partnership program between Fullerton Colleg ... more
January 9
Thinking on my feet
What do you do? You walk into a room. 130 shining Filipino faces hush, turn to greet you. Someone with a microphone (the emcee, you assume) rushes your side, beams, wags your hand up, down, down, up. Then::::::Surprise, surprise!:::::::: he introduces you as the speaker for the afternoon. The microphone is in your hands. You had no idea. The microphone is in your hands. What do you do?
Micturation, clearly, is one op ... more
January 5
Literacy in the Facebook Era (Part 5 of 5)
[written for PAGSUBAY, the graduate journal of the Eastern Visayas State University; read part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4] < ... more
January 5
Literacy in the Facebook Era (Part 4 of 5)
[written for PAGSUBAY, the graduate journal of the Eastern Visayas State University; read part 1 | part 2 | part 3]
III. Analysis
With the repeated caveat that internet usage amon ... more
January 2
Literacy in the Facebook Era (Part 3 of 5)
[written for PAGSUBAY, the graduate journal of the Eastern Visayas State University; read part 1 | part 2]
Research and Data
Given this contextual background, I turn to a qualititative case study: I teach at the more
December 28
Literacy in the Facebook Era (Part 2 of 5)
[written for PAGSUBAY, the graduate journal of the Eastern Visayas State University; read part 1 | part 3]
The State of English in the Philippines
Before making any conclusions about the impact of these new reading and writing practices, where exactly ... more
December 23
Kids
It has been a long day and it is not yet over. You sit--or crouch, rather--sardined in a jeepney. Rain pelts the steel roof. The engine drones on and drowns out conversation as quickly as it surfaces. At each stop the vehicle lurches rudely to the side of the road, fares are handed down the aisle, the human cargo shuffles in, or out, and you rub--or rather grind--your temples between sweaty fingertips. This is your nightly commute. On a good day it takes forty-five minutes. If there's rain, ... more
December 12
Christmas Outreach
Imagine 150 elementary school students, in six lines by grade, standing under a small roof. In front of them are twenty high school students and half a dozen teachers, plus bags and bags of presents waiting to be handed out.
This is Taguite Elementary School, in Babatnon, the adopted community of the college where I teach. On this particular Sunday, a bunch of us piled into the oldest and junkiest jee ... more
December 8
Community Cleanup
Question: how do you get 300 people from a blighted riverbank community to show up at six a.m. on a Saturday morning to clean up this:
Answer: very carefully.
During the three weeks leading up to International Volunteer Day 2010, Peace Corps volunteer Mei Chen made the rounds through the Tacloban community to promote ... more
December 7
Swearing In
[Delivered at the 269th Swearing In Ceremony, Peace Corps Philippines, 12th November 2010]
Waray-Waray: Yana nga gab-i magtitikang gihap an sunod nga duha ka tuig han kinabuhi ngan trabaho naton. Angay naton mahinumduman nga an duha ka tuig diri la kinabuhi naton, ngan trabaho naton, kondi an trabaho gihap han iba, ngan kon ano man an aton mahimo, matatabo la ini kon madig-on an aton relasyon ha mga Pilipino nga aton kaupod.
December 3
Mano Renie
[written for a reading appreciation lesson for Developmental Reading I, Eastern Visayas State University; adapted from the folk tale]
In a very small barangay not very far at all from your own, there once lived a man called Mano Renie. He was very old and very thin, and he was also very poor because he was just a pedicab driver, but he was also very nice, and everyone in the barangay knew him very well a ... more
December 2
The Consultant
[written for a reading appreciation lesson for Developmental Reading I, Eastern Visayas State University; adapted from a modern folk tale]
One day not very long ago when the sun was masirak-sirak, an American was riding a jeep from Tacloban to Ormoc. He was dressed in expensive clothing and had expensive leather shoes and all the people on the jeep were ka-awod, or shy, be ... more
November 22
Learning the Language
"Mano, pwede ngadto ha City Hall?" I called to a pedicab driver slouching casually in the afternoon sun.
The driver looked up, pondered my statement for a moment, then dropped his jaw as if sucking on an invisible egg. This being the Filipino nonverbal sign for "I have no idea what you just said and I suspect you might very well be an idiot."
Three months into learning the local dialect, Waray-Waray, I had been feeling pretty confident about my language skills. I could c ... more
November 5
A Filipino Student Asks a Question
A few weeks into teaching in the Philippines, I finally got the chance to give a writing assignment to my students at the Eastern Visayas State University. I wanted to know what they could write. I wanted to know what they could think. But most of all I wanted to fill up the final minutes of a class session which my co-teacher had sprung on me moments before students arrived. Their assignment was this:
Respond to one of the fol ... more
October 13
A virtual tour of my house
... moreOctober 10
Judging Contests
Even before arriving in the Philippines I'd heard from volunteers that we could expect to be asked to judge any and all community contests. Beauty pageants, debates, dance competitions, sports tourneys--you name it.
Oh yes, we had zero qualification. Zero. But apparently unearned deference was part of the Peace Corps deal.
It still came as a surprise when, by my third week in country, I'd already been asked to judge a singing contest at the local college and a high scho ... more
September 27
Slideshow No. 1
Created for the students of St. Angela Merici Catholic Middle Schoo ... more
September 22
Going to Church
By my third Sunday living "in country" (Peace Corps parlance) I was noticing a few cultural adjustments. For one, I'd started feeling guilty about toilet paper. I had not yet converted to the bucket-and-hand method favored by my family, however. I was regularly picking every last piece of flesh off chicken bones, having noticed that every time we ate chicken there was one less resident in our backyard coop. I'd suddenly become very conscientious about dental hygiene. And I'd become hypercon ... more
September 18
Even the Eggplant Cannot Be Trusted
"This is not my daughter!"
We watched the ruddy-faced man in the ruddy Lacoste polo gaze with amusement as his daughter walked by. His name was Tony and he was center stage, entertaining the six Peace Corps volunteers he'd invited to his home.
"Because a man cannot...buh!" Tony's hands traced the shape of a pregnant belly on his well-endowed gut. He surveyed his stunned audience. All afternoon Tony had been regaling us with his endless supply of wisdom, superstitions, a ... more
September 10
First Day of Class
"Excuse me, Sir Mark? But are you still single?" seventeen year-old Gladys whispered behind a shyly raised hand.
Immediately a chorus of giggles burst from the forty-plus students sitting in tightly packed rows of desks. Or-- more accurately -- rows of plastic garden chairs. Forty-plus sets of eyes staring up at me. Forty-plus hands covering coy smiles. A breeze blew through the open-air classroom at Eastern Visayas State University, Tanauan Campus. The yellowing butc ... moreSeptember 8
Jammin at the Balay Kapitan
Filmed on Friday, September 4, 2010... more
September 5
Courtesy Calls
"Welcome, all of you. I am mayor of Palo. I was recently elected in the May election, before this I was the governor of Leyte, for three terms, that is the most terms allowed, and before I was a congressman, and most recently I worked for PAGCOR, not for the gambling but for th ... more
August 29
Arrival in Barangay Baras
"Be careful! Be careful for your head!" my nanay Rowena warned as I stepped into my kwarto, nevermind that the doorway was seven feet tall and I didn't reach six.
The room that would be my bedroom for the next 3 months was spacious, at least in comparison to the room I'd had in New York: a bed and a half in length & width. I had a sneaky feeling I'd been given the largest room in the whole balay. Wh ... more
August 26
Philippines Education 101
The two things I liked most about the first days of orientation were, number one, walking around our extremely posh compound/jail (we were virtual prisoners at a resort in Cavite City) seeing so many new but familiar faces, most of which I could attach names to, sharing sna ... more
August 23
Lifting Off
* names were changed for confidentiality *
This is a story about waiting in a very large airplane before said airplane lifts off for a 20-hour flight from JFK International Airport to Aquino International Airport. And though it has nothing to do with the point of the story, you might be interested to note that both airports were named after assassinated political figures. The point of the story is being present.
We we ... more
August 19
The Trip to Staging
I spent the five hour flight to Peace Corps staging reading an account of Greg Mortenson, a mountain climber turned Karakoram-humanitarian-school-builder. Which is a mouthful. But so is his work: from 1993 to 2003, Mortenson raised funds for, then built, 55 schools for girls. The book, Three Cups of Tea, stylistically speaking, wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. I blanched at some of the purplish prose passages that obtrusively fetishize the man, such a ... more
August 12
Hanggang (Tagalog Song)
A week before leaving for the Philippines, when I should have been ... more
August 4
Packing for 2 Years
Prior to joining the Peace Corps I taught college writing in California, and one of the sections I loved to teach was film analysis, and one of the films I loved using was Gran Torino, a 2008 Clint Eastwood flick. In it, the venerable actor plays a grumpity old crotchety old man trying to live out his life in a rough Detroit neighborhood which is getting rougher by the day.
I would tell my students that the film, though set in cont ... more
July 22
Social Networking
At the end of July, I spent one morning in a Hasidic-neighborhood Brooklyn doctor's office getting my H1N1 vaccination (as required for Peace Corps service). In the waiting room I watched two women recite their morning prayers, their fingers gliding over the Hebrew prayer books in their laps. Every few minutes one of them would rise from her seat, arms raised in supplication. Their devotion was a little mezmerizing. I realized that, for these women, their entire lives had been lived in the ... more
June 30
Why I Am Doing It
It was well after midnight. I sat in a Lower East Side basement theatre watching artist after artist step up to an open mic, tell stories, sing homemade jamz, howl poetry, dance the human condition--pretty much anything you could imagine as long as it didn't involve fire, or glitter (house rules) ... more
June 22
By the Numbers
As my departure date approached, I was all too aware that the Philippine history, literature, facts, and figures I was studying would be about as useful in my day-to-day Peace Corps work as a PhD at a Super Bowl party. But I persisted. Mostly out of a desire to know, but also out of a desire not to look like an idiot: a friend had recently claimed that the Philippines was below the equator; I was fairly sure it was above but not sure enough to dispute.
Scanning the demographics of ... more
June 19
How I Got Here
One.
During the year before my Peace Corps Philippines departure, I'd wandered the country from Los Angeles to Taos to Houston to New Orleans and finally to Brooklyn, where I spent the summer moving from sublet to sublet: hipster Williamsburg, Polski Greenpoint, industrial-wasteland Bushwick.
In Bushwick, my roommate was a heavyset gay man with a quirky sense of humor and a tendency to wax philosophical. He invited me to a Scientology meeting (I accepted); I invite ... more
June 17
Cavite
The first Filipino film I ever saw, which I saw only 2 months before my arrival in the country, was a 2006 thriller titled Cavite. Cavite is the name of a province just south of Manila which Wikipedia describes as an "historic, picturesque and scenic province providing a place conducive to both business and leisure."
I found Cavite among the 208 Tagalog-language films in Netflix's database. That's 208 out of over 100,000 titles, or 0.2%.
The premise is simple ... more
June 11
If Open to Any Person
Through my teen years, which coincided with that liminal period between the heyday of text-adventures and the rise of MMOs, a period I am convinced history will remember as the golden era of videogames, I did my share of gamewhoring. For a long time afterward I regretted the hours, days, weeks spent in blistery-eyed self-obsessed wanton youth. More recently though, I have made peace with the past and now I view it with something like nostalgia.
One of my all-time favorite games was S ... more
June 10
Burning Heart
It was two months till my departure for the Philippines and I was biding my time in Brooklyn while writing my first novel and learning Tagalog and living off the savings of three years teaching college writing. New York had just turned southern-summer humid, an effect that made the center of the urban universe feel only that much more real--intensified the feel of taxicab smog, the stink of subway urine--and I loved it.
I spent the morning in my apartment redesigning my website, a fro ... more