Photos From Home and School

The junior class's mass demonstration at our high school intramurals (three days of students playing basketball, badminton, volleyball, chess, and boxing. Yes, boxing!)

Me on the bus from Legazpi to my site. I go to Legazpi a lot, so it seemed fitting to document such an important part of my life.

Isabelle and Biboy, three and six years old respectively and two of my best companions.
Haha, we had a birthday party for a one-year-old, and I was thinking it would be no big deal, but then fifty kids, their families, and a clown showed up at our door. It was a fun time!Me with some students from my high school on a field trip we took last weekend.

Photos From Peñafrancia

These are from the Peñafrancia festival in Naga City that we went to about a month ago. Peñafrancia is the Bicol region's largest and most famous festival.

Wikipedia [cringe] says:
The city celebrates the Feast of Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia Our Lady of Peñafrancia, the Patroness of the Bicol Region, starting second Friday of September each year. The start of the feast, which is the largest Marian devotion in the country, is signalled by a procession (called Traslacion) which transfers the centuries-old image of the Blessed Virgin Mary from its shrine at the Peñafrancia Basilica Minore to the 400-year old Naga Metropolitan Cathedral. Coinciding with nine days of novena prayer at the cathedral, the city celebrates with parades, pageants, street parties, singing contests, exhibits, concerts, and other activities. Finally, on the third Saturday of September, the image is returned shoulder-borne by so-called voyadores to the Basilica Minore de Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia via the historic Naga River.

Myself and several other Volunteers enjoyed some fiesta food and socializing while we watched the excitement build and the statue go by on a boat at a host relative's house on the Naga river. We waited hours for the procession to go by - I can't imagine what it would be like to have to wait out on the water.

A cathedral in Naga:
I can't claim credit for the following land photo that A took, but it lets you see the statue a bit closer as well as the throngs of people doing everything they can to get close to it.

Cats!

This cat lives with me now at our house. He doesn't really have a name - we call him Ikos ("ee-koos") which means "cat" in Bicol. He keeps me good company and helps me relieve stress, unless he's trying to steal food off the table. He has half of a tail and meows a lot, all the time. My host family says that he says "ming ming ming." Isn't it great that animals say different things in different languages?



This is Bella. She is a very young kitten that some friends of mine discovered one day hanging out in their sewer. They already have two cats so they're trying to talk me into taking her sometime soon. I'm not sure if I can yet, but no doubt she and I are good friends!

I'm still trying to figure out where I can take Ikos, and maybe later Bella, to the vet. I might have to take them boxed-up on the bus with me for a long time to go to a place in Legazpi.

My host family thinks it's really funny that I want to take Ikos to the doctor - not exactly a common practice here in the Philippines. That's one thing that has jumped out at me every time I've been to Asia, that there are so many, so many, so many cats and dogs, and a lot of them in pretty sad shape. I can understand that when money is tight, providing medical care for animals doesn't rank high on one's priority list, but it still makes me sad.

Ikos and Bella are two lucky cats to have befriended the Kanos in their towns!

Photos From Snorkeling Trips In Sorsogon

Photos Of Our House

Photos From Swearing In

These are photos from our counterparts' conference and swearing in ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Manila. Very fancy!

Photos From Bataan

From the bottom: two pictures from my birthday party, which was our first day with our new training host families, two pictures from the memorial on top of Mt. Samat in Bataan to commemorate those who died during the Bataan Death March in World War II, one of me holding up an alien Christmas tree like object on the beach, one of our cluster pretending to be album cover art, and one of a little boy blowing flour out of a cup so that he can get to a coin at the bottom at our community project.