An Interesting Day

It was an interesting day, not a great title but I’m lacking inspiration, forgive me. I arrive at school today privately wondering if anyone would even be there and as I go through the gates I see that a huuuge number of students are there mingling and loitering. After a brief search for my counterpart and other teachers (the faculty room was locked up) I found em and asked what was goin on. Apparently it was clearance day, somethin nobody really thought to tell me about, and all students must get clearance slips signed by each one of their teachers sayin that they have completed their work and in their words ‘settled accounts’ with the teacher. This apparently functions to serve that if a student didn’t do their work instead of it bein reflected in their grade they simply won’t get cleared and therefore can’t receive a grade. Interesting approach certainly. Unfortunately these clearance slips don’t really need much participation by me so there wasn’t a lot to do on my part. One of my sections' however invited me to their farewell party/lunch so I agreed to go.

Originally I’d thought the party’d be in their classroom but apparently somebody or somebodies were makin that room unavailable so we went to the Panaad Stadium (where the Philippine National Soccer Team recently played) where the largest festival in my province just begun today, Panaad sa Negros. Every municipality comes and sets up a booth or area and shares what they’re all about. My students didn’t have time to cook so they just made a huge pot of rice (surprise, surprise) and we piled into a tiny little “pick up truck”…I call it that cause it has a cab and a bed but it’s about 1/4th the size of a real pick up truck. My counterpart and their advisory teacher sat in the cab and I was in the bed squeezed in with about 14 of my students and a large pot of rice. It was an entertaining ride to say the least. I think the funniest part was when a student was asking me some questions in Illongo and another girl yelled at her to speak English. At least they’re self-policing now haha.

We had lunch on the roof of a little building. The kids had rice and clams and as many of you know I don’t touch seafood. I cracked them up when they asked me why I didn’t eat them and I replied “laway” (which means ugly, negative, and not-tasting-good-at-all…it’s a versatile word). I had inasal, roasted chicken on a stick, and they were actually somewhat stunned that I ate with my fingers. It’s customary to eat inasal and rice with your hands only…customary for Filipinos. However, I’ve adapted to their approach and found it much easier anyways. Put the vinegar and soy sauce on the rice, peel off bits of chicken, compact it into a ball like mass and shove into mouth. Namit! I would’ve thought they woulda been more surprised if I didn’t behave like they naturally expected but apparently not.



Anyways, the point of this story is to explain how Filipinos use the word ‘bonding’. Any sort of out of the way trip or experience together is ‘bonding-bonding time’. They make a very big deal of doin somethin special and different to build connections and relationships between people and will consider almost anything ‘bonding-bonding’. On the way back, squeezed into the tiny bed of the truck (though the giant pot of rice was now empty), one of my students asked me “Sir, are we your first bonding-bonding time here with students?” to which the answer was yes, which made their day. Bonding-Bonding is an exceptionally important part to this culture where personal relationships are so important. The class’ advisory teacher when describing the class said they were “very nosy, but also very loving” which I think is applicable to Filipinos in general. They want to know and be all up in your business cause they want to build a relationship as opposed to American culture where we tend to be a bit more reserved, and private; the separation of knowing someone and knowing someone personally.

The second part of my day involved a long walk to get my haircut. Getting your haircut is always, always an adventure. From shoulder and head massages that you don’t expect to tryin to explain what you want cut it’s always an experience. My Illongo is very good at conversations I have frequently. It’s easy to develop vocab to explainin why you’re here, no you’re not a missionary, where you’re from, what you do, no you’re not a missionary because we have those conversations a lot here. The ‘this is how I want you to cut my hair’ conversation comes up far less frequently so the vocab’s usually just not there. Plus, street-side barbers, while they can cut hair very well and do it for cheap (60 cents), aren’t the world’s best interpreters of accented foreigners stumbling through unfamiliar vocab and constructions. Last time I was pretty pleased with my hair cut but this time after a lot of negotiation I’m not really sure I like how it came out. Oh well, cest la vie. Tomorrow at school will be an interesting day in terms of the comments I’m sure to get about my new do.