I just wanted everyone to know that I will be a father, a father of five. I know some of you will be shocked by this news but I thought the best way to let everyone know is by broadcasting it on my bog. Indeed, I am adopting five volunteers to serve as a mentor (gotcha mom!) for them for a little less than a week to aid them in their training. I'm headed to Tacloban tomorrow morning to stay with a cluster as the new batch 268 volunteers proceed through their own Pre-Service Training (PST). I don't have too much to say about this experience as it has yet to take place, but I am pretty excited to be a mentor of sorts, a resource to ease their anxieties and an assistant to the technical and cultural facilitator, introducing them to Bloom's Taxonomy, a bit of education theory.
Peace Corps has really given me some great opportunities for expanding my outreach beyond that of my own site. The PC office in general is super supportive of this kind of work and it's often a real pleasure to work with them.
In other news, September 15th marked my town's 149th annual foundation day. The day was celebrated with a parade and other programs out in the park, as well as me sleeping until 11:30pm and missing many of them. I guess I should refrain from letting my subconscious know I have the next day off from school as it tends to take advantage of the situation. Fortunately I did not miss the cultural program, including both native and modern dancing and singing programs. Each governmental organization (local government unit (LGU), elementary, high school, the court, etc) was expected to contribute one of each: a song number and dance number. Below are some pictures an videos I took while observing the program.
The following is a traditional Sinulog style dance performed by the LGU complete with live band and fire dancers.
The following is a traditional dance called the Tinikling in which two sets of bamboo poles are used in an elaborate dance. The elementary school's rendition is spirited and all in good fun!
Below are some picture. More pictures are available at my Picasa web albums page.
One group gave a rousing rendition of Michael Jackson's "Heal the World", complete with candles!
There were some pretty cool costumes
Indeed, these are men
Yeah to the tinikling! We saw a performance of it during IO, but my malaria med kicked in for the first time and I was delirious so it wasn't too much fun. Looks great!
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