Saturday, March 11, 2006

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Sir, anything?

Well, as predicted, there was a brownout today, but we had to stick around here for a send-off chapel and a special lunch with the fourth years. After lunch, though, we decided to take a trip to Urdaneta, leaving Elijah with Manang Edita. Little did we know, the brownout affected Urdaneta, too. While Tiff went to the grocery store, I went to get a massage. Unfortunately, the spa was closed due to brownout. So I walked to the bank. The bank had its own generator, so the aircon was on, but not really keeping up with the heat. After finishing my business there, I walked on to the mall. No luck there either. The only place that offers massages said their aircon was out due to the brownout and I should come back tomorrow. I still had at least half an hour before I would meet Tiff, so I decided to walk through the market.

Now, I've walked through the market before, so I wasn't too surprised at the experience, although there were some new elements added, since I was walking through alone. As always, each merchant says, "Sir, anything? T-shirt? Shoes?" and so on. But today, I was hearing things like, "Sir, anything? T-shirt? Shorts? Polo shirt? Wife?" "I love you, sir." "Ohhh, handsome!" LOL Some were quite startled to see an American there. I'm guessing not too many Americans walk deep into the market (although I'm sure the prices are better there than in the mall next door).

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

last day of class

Well, this was the last class day of the year. Tomorrow is a send-off chapel, and then I'll give my final exams Thursday morning. The year really has gone pretty rapidly. In some ways, I'm glad it's over. That's mostly just because a new school year means a clean slate and a chance to be a better teacher. This first year, I spent a lot of time just trying to get acclimated, scrambling to put together lessons and learning how to communicate more effectively. I still have a lot of work to do in all of those areas, but hopefully I'll have a little less abrupt of a start to my next school year.

We have a scheduled power outage tomorrow. Usually, we use that as an excuse to get out of town. But we have the send-off chapel, a special lunch with the fourth-year students and Tiff has a final project to collect in the afternoon. Plus, we need to get this place cleaned up; Mom and Dad arrive in the Philippines on Friday night.