In case you are an American citizen registered to vote (or residing in a state that allows Election Day registration, like Wisconsin and Iowa) and forgot that the time has come, get your large behinds out of your La-Z-Boy, and get on over to your polling station.
My younger sister Nicole, who is older than my other younger sister, Rebecca Lee (Reelee), scolded me for posting on October 18th without wishing Reelee happy Sweet Sixteen. What Nicole doesn’t know is that Reelee and I had a nice long conversation instead. Reelee was probably perfectly happy not having her b-day announced to what Bush #2 refers to as “internets.” But since whatever Nicole deems important is automatically important, happy belated Rebecca Lee. Sorry you ain’t old enough to vote. When I told some high school kids here that you (presumably) started to learn how to drive, they looked at me incredulously. Around here, it’s nothing special to see a ten-year-old driving a motorcycle (with a whole bunch of friends piled on.)
Before I leave you thinking Nicole is just another meddler, I’ll tell you about the special gift she sent me the other day. It’s a red maple leaf, inscribed, “You’re missing a great autumn. Ithaca, October, 2004.”
OK, now, last I left off, I’d neglected my Japan entry, and barely mentioned my life as a garbage man. I was headed to Tagbilaran for the college graduation of Riza Ramos, my Tagbilaran host sister. She graduated with an Education Degree specializing in English, and had to leave her own party early to catch a night boat to Cebu, where she was starting a job as an English teacher at a private school for Koreans (probably mostly businessmen) to take crash courses in English. They come here to cram because tuition is cheap. Riza makes P40 (P56=$1) an hour.
Then I headed up to Manila for a doctor’s appointment . I had to get a shot, and fainted, two minutes after the injection. The band-aid was on already. It was quite bizarre. I felt like an eggplant seed, shot into space.)
Next on the agenda was four days at Manila FAME, a huge trade fair for wholesale buyers. Now I know where Pier 1 gets all their stuff, and how much they pay for it (or rather, how little.) I was there to represent a few small producer groups who had their gorgeous loom-woven and coconut shell products showcased in the main foyer. (The producers themselves had no money for a flight or boat ride, but Peace Corps footed the bill for mine, because I was headed to IST.)
IST is In-Service Training, held at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños campus. It’s where all the batchmates get together and discuss what life has been like for the past six months. There are thirty-nine of us, out of the original forty-one in Batch 263. Apparently, such a low defection rate is unheard of. I guess it’s due to good site placements and tight-knit friendships (made durable by virtue of text-messaging.) In fact, my friend Dan Nover, who has a whole slew of awesome friends back home, has decided to marry a delightful Batch 262 girl called Cindy, and has pegged me as a front-runner in his best man search.
Before I forget, let me explain the voting situation here. Most of us registered long ago for absentee ballots. Most of our ballots had not arrived by mid-October, which made us eligible to fill out the FWAB (Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot.) To do so, you had to call the US embassy and request one. Each person had to call to request their own FWAB. This was a fairly easy process, but an extra hassle nonetheless. One of my batchmates, Marla, decided to actually go to the embassy and fill out her ballot there. Miraculously, she convinced the ACS (American Citizen Services) window personnel to give her a whole stack of FWABs to bring to IST. On October 25, nearly all the yet-to-vote 263ers filled out FWABs and the Peace Corps SUV (you would think that would be an oxymoron) whisked them to the embassy, where they were thrown in the diplomatic pouch and rocket-launched to our respective precincts. The day after I voted, my real absentee ballot arrived. I filled that out too. (I followed the directions on the FWAB.) Without saying who I voted for, if John Kerry loses New York, it sure as the cock will crow at dawn ain’t my fault.
Our language teachers also joined. There’s nothing better than a good language lesson, and Ibeth is top-notch. I needed tons of help with Cebuano and enjoyed the lessons so much that I stayed in a couple nights for overtime while most of the others hit the bars and billiard halls. I now know the stories of the Tortoise and the Hare and the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar, in Cebuano.
We had a few field trips at IST. There was the small mushroom farm, where they use banana leaves ingeniously to cultivate nutritious fungi. Then there was a museum of natural history, the centerpiece being a map of the Philippines made entirely of cockroaches and the rice-paper making factory, where, sadly, burning plastic seems normal to the workers. (Actually, plastic melts.) We visited the International Rice Reseach Institute, featuring a display of rice-farmer hats from around the world. Nobody could answer this question: When pesticides ruin all the arable soil here on Earth, I wonder what kind of hats lunar rice-farmers will wear?
Finally, we visited the botanical garden and raptor sanctuary, where some say I almost killed a sea eagle. I’d like to argue it was the sea eagle who almost clawed me to death in the pouring rain.
IST was a nice break, but by the end of the week, everybody seemed pretty antsy to get back to site. My trip back to site (accompanied by Justin and Pete) consisted of a bus ride, two cab rides, a twenty-two hour boat ride, two more taxis, another two-hour boat ride, a walk down the Tubigon pier, and a super-crowded bus ride, that dropped me off at my front door, just in time to surprise Sonny for his birthday.
I will wake early tomorrow (Wednesday morning in the Philippines, Tuesday night in America) to catch a bus to Tagbilaran where I’ll sit in front of the TV all day. My viewing options are CNN, BBC, and FOX. At dinnertime, I hope to celebrate with an ice-cold spiked mango shake.
Next time I log in I’ll explain why my Peace Corps projects ain’t what they used to be, and probably let you know what the Filipinos wonder about President #44.
Posted by dbs at November 2, 2004 11:45 PM