19. Not the Philippines

I have plenty of pictures to post from the Philippines still, but I'm in the midst of work chaos and have had to take a break. We had evaluations (read: report cards), monthly lesson plans, end of the month exams all due at the same time (again, they really never learn). Plus, today was "Market Day", which was a special event -- the children have been earning 'money' for a little while, and today was the shopping day. As of yesterday at 6:00 absolutely nothing was planned, despite the foreign staff having asked many times what was happening. This morning was chaos, or as Suzanne likes to say - "a gong show". To add kerosene to my already burning nerves, I have been given the gift of 5 new students (4 of whom came today, the other one will be back tomorrow) whose level of English is about 6 months behind what my kids are capable of. I'm a little stressed out.

So you will understand why I found the following so amusing. Lest you think I am merely corrupting the minds of Korea's youth, I will give a bit of backstory. I have been teaching the "Summer Intensive" class for the past month. It consists of 4 students with extremely low English ability. One of them is a boy named Dan, who actually has been going to our Hagwan for several months, but he is a brat (to put it nicely) and spends pretty much every class yelling at me in Korean. The other kids are constantly trying to explain to him that I have no idea what he's saying, but he doesn't care. It's doubly frustrating because I know he knows some key phrases in English like "Bathroom please" and "Water please", but he refuses to use them. It not only frustrates me, it frustrates the other students, especially the oldest girl named Judy, who I'm fairly sure cursed him out in Korean on Friday. (She turned to him and in the coldest, nastiest tone I'd ever heard come out of her mouth let fly a stream of unpleasant sounding Korean words, and then turned to me and went beet red.) Anyway, yesterday he was being particularly frustrating and she turned to him and managed to put together what I think was a brilliant English sentence for someone who has only been learning English for about a month or so. What she said was this: "Dan, are you alcohol drinking, a lot?"

I burst out laughing, and then decided that as an educator, it was my duty to teach her how to use that expression properly.


After that, I taught the entire class how to say it. Because it's important.


I had some pictures from today to post as well, but blogger is deciding to be annoying so you will have to wait for those. But I thought you'd enjoy the movies so... hope you did.

18. The Philippines: Part 3

So, Boracay… Well, getting there was interesting. We did the 5 hour van ride; which, as previously stated, was wonderful. The ferry ride over to Boracay (or rather, to be more specific, to another island where we caught a short 15 minute ferry to Boracay), however, was um… well, not wonderful. It wasn’t horrible, but, well there were bunks, which we slept on… but on which I saw cockroaches (and then couldn’t sleep anymore). I didn’t tell the other girls, so that they could sleep.
Here’s Anita and Kara asleep on the top bunks
And here’s me and Suzanne on the bottom bunk.

Anyway, we then spent the night sleeping in a ferry station – or rather, Suzanne and Kara slept, Anita tossed and turned and I stayed awake all night. In the morning, we caught the little ferry over to Boracay.
My boat! Heehee. I can’t remember if this is the boat we took to or from Boracay, but I wanted you to notice that in order to get in these boats, you actually have to walk through the water… this one was actually fairly close to dry ground, but many of them are actually fairly far in… you get wet getting onto the boat.

It was early in the morning, and it was kind of flooded, I was exhausted… welcome to paradise! This is us eating breakfast – Kara, me, Anita and Suzanne. Wet, and tired. I believe I’m wrapped in Kara’s blanket. After some discussion and wandering we settled on a hotel.
This was actually an awesome place… great hammock on our own personal balcony. It was really great.

We were in the middle of monsoon season, and we did get a few rainstorms, but for the most part, we had awesome weather!

We managed to get a lot of beach time in…



Now, I’ve discovered I’m a bit of a beach snob… Bermuda beaches have spoiled me, really… but let me say, without reservation, that this beach was gorgeous! (Don’t worry, I still think Bermuda has the best beaches, but this was a close second.) Here are some pictures of the beach for you to peruse and be envious.






And here’s a sight we saw over and over again… there were many Korean tourists in the Philippines, and they were actually easy to spot. Most of the Korean women wore high heels… in the sand, on the dirt road, on the beach! If you look closely you can see her heels as she walks by the water. Weird.

And here are some beautiful sunset pictures that I actually wasn’t there for. While Anita and Kara enjoyed this beautiful sunset, Suzanne and I were off at the Mandaly resort getting pampered. Suzanne got a facial and I had a hot stone massage. It was absolutely amazing! But so are these pictures, so here you go.





Oh, and to end this installment, here is a picture of one of many dogs we saw lying in the sand… this one was on the beach, others were just on the road. Made me a little homesick for San Pedro, actually!

Well, I think I’ll end this section here… man do I have a lot of pictures! More to come…

17. The Philippines: Part 2

Okay, so part 2…

We actually only spent 2 days on Puerto Galera. Our original plan had been to spend the entire week there, because we had heard it was less touristy than other more well known destinations.

This was the restaurant where we ate literally every meal we had while in Puerto Galera. Kind of ridiculous, really… It is also, I think, the location of practically every photo I have from this portion of our stay. Weird. The weather wasn’t great, and they had a roof and a view of the sea.

Here’s one of the many group shots from Peter’s. Left to right, it’s Kara, Suzanne, myself and Anita.


Here’s another group shot, this one including an awesome girl we met when we went out dancing in Sabang. She came out the next day and spent the day (and night, actually) with us. Had a great time with her, I’m really hoping we can find a way to keep in touch. Anyway, left to right we’ve got Suzanne, myself, Anita, Cherry, Kara.

Here’s a great picture of Cherry, doing something with a beer that I don’t understand. I realize I’m not a drinker, but this seems really counterintuitive to me. Apparently it had something to do with reducing the amount of head the beer had, but it really didn’t seem to work.

And here is me, Cherry and Anita at around 2 or 3 in the morning, after we’d stayed up just gabbing for hours.

And for good measure, here’s me and Cherry… on our hotel padio (a picture that wasn’t taken at Peter’s! amazing!)

Oh, I almost forgot, one other thing we managed to do while in Puerto Galera was have name bracelets made for our students… here’s our little sweat shop working away.

Like I said at the beginning, we didn’t spend much time in Puerto Galera. The problem was that the weather was against us. We went knowing it was monsoon season, but hoping for some sun anyway, but while we were there, we didn’t really get any. And because it’s not really a touristy place, there wasn’t much to do in the rain, so despite our original plan to stay away from tourist central, we headed over to Boracay. After debating various travel options, we settled on hiring a van to drive us to a port city (I forget the name) where we could catch a ferry to Boracay.

Left to right, outside of our own private van: me, Cherry, Anita, Suzanne.

And in the van: Cherry, Kara, Anita, me. Cherry didn’t come with us, obviously, although that would have been awesome. We dropped her off at a Jeepney station and said goodbye. It was quite sad.

The van ride turned out to be just perfect. We got to see a lot of the country side that we would have missed otherwise. It was hard to get pictures, because we were moving so fast much of the time, but I’ve got a few to share.


I missed taking pictures of a lot of spectacular views of cliffsides and mountains because I was too busy looking at them in awe. Really, a beautiful country!

Our driver actually did stop at one point to let us check out some waterfalls.
Anita, Suzanne, me, Kara

Oh, and there was this shot…Do any of you watch The Amazing Race? Do you remember the episode in the Philippines with the ‘broken ox’? (Colin shouting “My ox is broken!” Genius!) That was awesome! I had a quiet laugh when I saw this.

We passed by a bunch of schools. Most of them had this brilliant sign that said “This school is a zone of peace.” I loved that (but couldn’t capture it on film, frustratingly enough). Can any of you guess what sort of thoughts went through my head passing by all of those schools? 3 guesses, and the first two don’t count.


And here’s a bunch of school kids loaded on one of those tricycle things. It blew my mind how many people those things could carry.
Kara in the van

Suzanne and Anita asleep… the van ride took about 4 or 5 hours… can’t really remember offhand.

Anyway, I think I’ll end part 2 here, and begin Part 3 in Boracay. Hope you’re all doing well, and much love, as always!

16. The Philippines: Part 1

Well, here it is, the much awaited post about my vacation in the Philippines. I’m actually going to do this post in parts because there are so many pictures (4 digital cameras worth!) and it would overwhelm blogger to do them all at once.

Let me first say that I totally fell in love with the Philippines. The people were amazing, so friendly, and it is absolutely beautiful there.

But let’s begin. We left directly from school, at 6:00 pm, to make our 8:00pm flight. We were beyond excited! This is myself, Anita and Suzanne in the cab on the way to the airport. We were absolutely giddy with anticipation. When we got to the airport, things got even better.

We got upgraded to Business Class! It was an absolutely perfect start to an amazing vacation.

I haven’t flown Business Class since before I was 12 (got bumped up on a flight to Bermuda as an Unaccompanied Minor once). I didn’t really appreciate it then. It really is much better than coach! First off, there was the menu. Of course, this was a flight from Korea, so the menu included one of my favourite (note the sarcasm) foods. Kimchi.

The meal, of course, was fantastic. This was just the appetizer.

We spend the first night in Manilla, and then moved on to Batangas, and from there caught the ferry to Puerto Galera. This is on the ferry ride over.

Anita, Kara and Suzanne on one side of the boat (the dry side, apparently)

And here’s me on the other side (the wet side).

This is Sabang, where we originally intended to get off. We didn’t stay here, because it apparently is the ‘red light district’, but we did go there one night to go dancing. Had an awesome time, and met a really cool girl named Cherry.

This is where we did get off and stay: White Beach, Puerto Galera (not to be confused with White Beach in Boracay, which we also went to).

One of the more common forms of transportation in the Philippines is called a Tricycle. It’s a moped with a side car attached. Here’s me in my first ride in one.

Here’s a couple of pictures of White Beach, Puerto Galera.


I think I’ll end here for now. I’ve got a whole bunch more pictures (and videos, for that matter) that I will post, but it takes time to put it all together, and today is my day off so…

To be continued…