The holidays here were more or less something over which to ponder. The Christmas season officially starts in September, the season lasting throughout all of the months that end in "er." Come to think of it, I still get the occasional "Maayong Pasko" (Merry Christmas) and it's January yet. Again, after four months of build-up, school closing a week earlier than break actually started to celebrate the fact that we will be celebrating in a week and a culinary hedonism I have only experienced here in the Philippines on Christmas eve, I was certain that Christmas day was going to be just unreal. Christmas eve we ate, ate, ate and ate some more. For dinner we had lobsters and for second dinner (after the 4 hour mass ending at midnight) we had a ham. We finally all went to bed at about 2am, waking late on Christmas Day. And this was going to be it -- the mother of all celebrations! After a rotisserie pig was laid out on the table with a bowl of pork-blood stew with pork fat, pork intestines and other UFOs (unidentifiable floating objects) that were probably pork related for our Christmas brunch, people just went to bed. Yes, The anticipation for possibly the biggest celebration I would ever have witnessed turned out to be a nap-day. Bahala-na, so that's life.
The day after Christmas, I left for Tacloban, the provincial capitol of Leyte, with the two other PCV's in my province. Going to Tacloban was our big wekend in the city. The three of us are all pretty rural and being able to eat Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch and pizza for dinner was pretty much stellar. It was actually the first time I have gone to a McDonald's abroad and not felt absolute guilt for not trying the ethnic foods of the country I was visiting. Not so; I had pork intestines in it's own blood the day before. I deserved this. We also visited the Santo Nino Shrine, a receptacle for the collected things..things tis the only word I can think of to describe them, of Imelda Marcos during the Marcos years. This is the woman who still has the Guiness book of World Records for having 40,000 pairs of shoes.
Next came New Years wher in the same two vounteers met up at a site about 2 hours from my own to bring in the new year. I ate myself stupid (seriously, I can't remember a single time I have been hungry since landing in Manila) and we sang videoke (kareoke but with random videos in the background) into the wee hours of the morning. I had woken up and was feeling the aftereffects of the night before (the food hangover!) just as midnight was sweeping east to west across the U.S.
The three of us then set of to meet seven other volunters in a little resort town about 30 minutes from the house we were stayting at. We were going to snorkel, swim and possibly se whal sharks but the weather was terrible (up to that point it had rained for about 2 weeks straight!) and we stayed at the resort, just hanging out. We still had a good time. Four of us in the group, all members of batch 266 (I am batch 267), are dive certified. The day before the three of us got there, they had already gone SCUBA diving with the whale sharks. One, who has ben diving for probably 20-30 years, said it was the most terifying thing she's ever done. Anyway, it was really fun.
But anyway, here I am, at site, having been here now for a day or two over two months. I am sitting in the school's computer lab, taking a break from working on a pretty intensive project. The lab here has roughly 50 potentially functioning computers. When I arrived, roughly four were operational and the rest were all muddled and beleaguered with viruses. Having a completely donated lab (courtesy of the Intel Corp.) that can't even turn on is about as worthwhile as donating 50 over-sized paperweights to the students. I have done some research and have found a free piece of software that essentially lets us "freeze" the computers into whatever state we leave them as. For instance, my counterpart and I have been reinstalling Windows, installing all free and open source programs (removing all of the pirated software they had accumulated) and "freezing" the computers. This way, every time a student turns on a computer, they have an experience much like when one firsts takes a computer out of the box. They can do whatever they want, even install 1000000 viruses. As soon as they log out, any change they made, no matter how minute, is disregarded and the computer returns to the fresh out-of-the-box state. This is the first project I have begun that feels like it's in line with the "spirit" of the Peace Corps. It is sustainable and promotes computer literacy for all, every time the user logs in. It's a time consuming process. It takes about fours hours per machine. But it's totally worth it. So far, my counterpart and I have finished 15 computers. It has been fun watching the students reap the immediate benefits of functional computers.
I know my emails have been slow. I hope this blog will eventually have everyone caught up to speed. I have uploaded more photos for every one's enjoyment.
http://picasaweb.google.com/SStanhill
Soon I hope to give everyone a day in the life of a PCV teacher here.
But anyway, here I am, at site, having been here now for a day or two over two months. I am sitting in the school's computer lab, taking a break from working on a pretty intensive project. The lab here has roughly 50 potentially functioning computers. When I arrived, roughly four were operational and the rest were all muddled and beleaguered with viruses. Having a completely donated lab (courtesy of the Intel Corp.) that can't even turn on is about as worthwhile as donating 50 over-sized paperweights to the students. I have done some research and have found a free piece of software that essentially lets us "freeze" the computers into whatever state we leave them as. For instance, my counterpart and I have been reinstalling Windows, installing all free and open source programs (removing all of the pirated software they had accumulated) and "freezing" the computers. This way, every time a student turns on a computer, they have an experience much like when one firsts takes a computer out of the box. They can do whatever they want, even install 1000000 viruses. As soon as they log out, any change they made, no matter how minute, is disregarded and the computer returns to the fresh out-of-the-box state. This is the first project I have begun that feels like it's in line with the "spirit" of the Peace Corps. It is sustainable and promotes computer literacy for all, every time the user logs in. It's a time consuming process. It takes about fours hours per machine. But it's totally worth it. So far, my counterpart and I have finished 15 computers. It has been fun watching the students reap the immediate benefits of functional computers.
I know my emails have been slow. I hope this blog will eventually have everyone caught up to speed. I have uploaded more photos for every one's enjoyment.
http://picasaweb.google.com/SStanhill
Soon I hope to give everyone a day in the life of a PCV teacher here.
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