Now your pictures that you left behind are just memories of a different life...

Pretty much every post title from now on is going to be from Always, because that song is just too epic. For the most part, this is just going to be a picture post.

So as I type this I'm in the Catliclan Airport, waiting for my delayed flight back to Manila and recovering from an epic weekend in Boracay (which could've been more epic if I didn't get sick and my Blackberry didn't get fucked up by the waves, but I'm overall satisfied). Since I'm going to have to wait for my Blackberry to be repaired and for pictures from my cousin, I'll take this time to blog about some random shit that y'all missed out on because I wasn't really sure where to put it.

So on July 21, the day after I returned from the farm, I was invited to GK Builder's Night, a GK celebration held at Wack Wack Country Club in Mandaluyong (yes, that is the best name for a country club ever). Raymund and his friend gatecrashed it with me (it was kind of a last minute decision, as many decisions made in the Philippines are), and we didn't realize how SEVERELY underdressed we were.

This was the venue. Can you say “bougie?” I knew you could.

Here, in spite of the shittiness of this picture thanks to some camera-illiterate waiters, I was reunited with kids from the farm, who were also severely underdressed (I think Jacob said he was wearing his pajama pants or something). Apparently this is because they were informed of this event five minutes before the porter left.

Tony Meloto, the founder of GK, speaking. Apparently he's a friend of my cousin. Tito Tony gives the most inspirational speeches, and it's funny because they all just seem like they're all pulled out of his ass (as in, they seem completely unplanned. Like “Oh, you need to be inspired? *inspires you*”). By the way, sorry this picture is horrible. We were seated really far away from the stage.

One of the many performing groups singing songs about Mandaluyong. By the way, Mandaluyong needs to fire their official songwriter and get a new one. The official Mandaluyong song that this guy sang at the end of the program was corny as fuck.

The mayor of Mandaluyong speaking, and us (me, Raymund, and his friend Joanne) posing with him. His speech was about the death of his eldest daughter from a fever when she was in college, and how it motivated his philanthropy because her dream was to build schools in impoverished areas.

Some of the beneficiaries of the GK villages in Mandaluyong. Don't they all look cuuuuuute.

On July 24, my uncle took us to see the smallest volcano in the world, in Tagaytay. The view was in-FUCKING-CREDIBLE!

I told you the countryside is unbelievable ;D The place where we went was actually supposed to be Ferdinand Marcos' palace, but he was ousted before the palace's completion. Doesn't it have such an inappropriately-commercialized temple ruins feel to it? :D

Also, I finally got to ride a Ghetto Bus, and take self-objectifying pics of myself atop the pimpingest one.

Me inside the Ghetto Bus, plus the driver. Riding in one kinda felt like riding in a limo, without a door of course. It's funny, when I first got to the Philippines I was immediately shocked when I saw the Jeepneys and tricycles, thinking there must be something seriously fucked up with this country if shit that dangerous can pass off as public transportation. Now, my views have thankfully gotten less Eurocentric lol. I was even thinking of ways to redesign the city to be friendlier to Jeepneys/tricycles...for instance, I think they should have their own roads to prevent fatal accidents. Besides, they are hella fun to ride in.

SO PIMPIN'. I should probably submit these pictures to Import Tuner: Developing Country edition. Zing!

One of the signs at the sightseeing place. The Japanese handwriting is so atrocious I had no idea what it was supposed to say, until I finally figured out it says “公園をきれいに.” At first it looked like “公園（some weird kanji)きれムも.” I have absolutely no idea what the Chinese is supposed to say.

On July 28, the last day before I went to Boracay, and generally after my project was finished (for now) I returned to Sibol. One thing I noticed is that this school is definitely not underresourced, lol. They have a closet full of algebra textbooks and shit...why algebra textbooks, I do not know. I was shocked to find, however, that the Sibol teachers are volunteers. You'd think they'd get a salary cuz of how arduous and important the job is to the community...their stipend actually comes from donations from the Filipino community at Michigan State.

Me being a teacher! The book was called “The Seven Idiots” and was really funny. Another thing...that entire day there was no lesson. The kids just played while the teacher (and some volunteer mamas) helped make a banner to be used for the rest of the month. Kinda weird that she didn't prepare first, but considering the setup of the school, I'm not surprised. Another thing that I realized was that attention isn't given to children who don't want to learn, and that's super hard to fix unless I'm the one giving the lesson (when kids usually pay a lot of attention), but I'm poor at Tagalog...

So August 28 (the day I saw Harry Potter with my uncle! :D) was Raymund's last day, and he wanted to take me to go see the Philippine National Police headquarters. Some random highlights:

Early Igorot police uniform. Note the loincloth.

Us at the firing range! Crazy.

Some badass dioramas.

Some badass guy's shoes. Read the description to get a sense of how badass he was!

The best part of that day was basically getting to ride a motorcycle, which was sooooooo epic (motorcycles are a widely used form of transportation in the Philippines, because they're so much cheaper than cars).

So this blog (and trip) is basically over, and I'm probably going to do one more post on Boracay and a wrap-up post. This (if you couldn't tell) has been one of the most amazing and fulfilling experiences of my life, and I want to express my gratitude to everyone who's stuck around for this long, hopefully being able to share the experience with me. If the novelty of me having a travel blog hasn't long worn off by now, thanks everybody for reading, and stay tuned for the last (epic) post!

It's been raining since you left me, and now I'm drowning in the flood...

Post title because of the epic rainstorm (I had to build houses in the rain!), and because I still kinda miss the farm.

So since (and even before) going to the Enchanted Farm, my health census project has been kind of stalled for a variety of reasons. As a result, I've finally been able to do the oh-so-important task of manual labor, which is actually awesome because I wanted to have that kind of experience here. As I may have mentioned before, in my village, only 39 out of the 99 families have houses, most of which are still unfinished, so it was nice to be able to contribute.

The week before I went to the farm, my supervisor didn't come so I helped paint the rooftop of the school/community center being built. There are three planned floors, with two already made and one already in use. The first floor is Sibol. The second floor will be a computer center with computers donated from the sponsor. Telus is providing computer training so that the villagers can actually get jobs with the Telus company. I'm interested in how Canadian and American corporations approach foreign investment. This seems a lot less exploitative than how Americans seem to do it.

Construction in low-income areas, as I've mentioned before, is EXTREMELY dangerous. The workers don't have any protective gear, just jeans and a T-shirt. There are no nets or scaffolding, so you just have to be extra careful. It kinda looks like they're playing around on a jungle gym when they work, except if they fall, they die. I get really freaking nervous every time I watch them.

Dangerous!

So when I first went up there I thought I was just going to paint the lower beams, but it turned out they wanted me to paint the roof the roof. I'm not a fan of heights, but I got even more nervous when they brought out a rack thing that you could climb on, then hoisted four thin beams on it and tied them together. Then they told me that was my ladder.

WTF SO GHETTO.

As you can see from the pictures though, I eventually got over it, even though they kept making fun of me T_T Also, despite the “signature GK look” being all pretty and multicolored, the color they gave me was literally shit brown. Like, not even distinguished Brown University brown or whatever. Like, the color of eating something poorly cooked and then taking a dump afterwards. So now I have these shit brown stains on my Converse that I dunno if I can get out...fail.

Seeing how good of a manual laborer I am (and how much entertainment I provide the construction workers by being inept), Tita Sita and Tito Leno got me to aid with the actual construction of a house. Woot! Notably, although GK is based off of Habitat for Humanity,

the villagers are more involved in house construction than volunteers are. This is part of the whole GK “values training” psychology—by literally building your neighbor's house, you help contribute to a culture of interdependency and trust. They said volunteers don't really do this often, and I could completely see why. I was pretty much a liability. The work they gave me wasn't even hard and I kept fucking up anyway, and of course the language barrier when Pricky (the foreman, yes his name is Pricky) kept trying to teach me didn't help one bit.

People building houses from afar (this is actually the view from the top of the school). 

I also never got to see this side of the village and I don't think I interviewed the people who lived here for my survey. 

One of the families cooking pancit. They live in a temporary shelter (meaning her house has not yet been built), and this is their kitchen, which is outside the house.

I almost screamed when I saw these because I thought they were rats, but they're actually  really tiny cats.

The girl who lives here, plus the really tiny cats.

This is the construction area, where two new houses are being built. The above are pictures of the interior of a very unfinished house.

Pricky teaching me what to do. Basically the houses are made out of hollow concrete blocks that are really, really bumpy and hard to the touch, so I had to smooth over the exterior with concrete.

DAMN LOOK HOW PRO I AM.

Unlike on TV when they build houses philanthropically, this isn't the typical hoisting up pre-made walls and then just getting someone to nail them together. This was heavy duty concrete lifting >_o and concrete cementing, and other things that they made fun of me for not being able to do.

I swear to God I did not do this. Although I wish I did.

On Saturday we went to Telus II (the second Telus-sponsored village across town) with volunteers from Telus company to build houses. THIS WAS AWESOME. It was cool getting to see the other village, which looks totally different from mine. For some reason it looks happier—probably because of the open space and sunlight. It doesn't jump out and scream at you “OMG THIS IS A SLUM” like my village does, even though my village has nice buildings.

The pretty houses! The detail above the window is part of Gawad Kalinga's logo.

Half this street is still slummy. Interesting contrast.

Kids playing in the construction materials o_<

So first I assisted in the human chain, which was a fun workout. But then I wanted to paint. So we painted the exterior of these houses white.

Here's the interior of one of the houses which is unfinished, but finished enough so a person could start living there. Kinda reminds me of a loft cuz of the high ceiling, but that's because the second floor isn't built yet.

After lunch when it dried, they gave us multicolored paint with which to paint the houses.

Here's some Telus volunteers painting.

It was funny, because when I was painting the houses I suddenly got all fired up and emotional. Halfway into this trip, I still hadn't had that experience of “homecoming,” whatever that is. Part of this trip for me was to be able to come home, reconnect with my roots, but it occurred to me that I had no idea what that actually means and was now starting to think it's one of those things people just say to make their vacations sound less superficial.

I was ruminating upon what another Filipino friend who did something similar to GK last summer told me once, that since his trip was also kind of a homecoming, so he was constantly reminded of how he had a special obligation to share the story of the villagers and come back to rebuild his home country. Of course, I never got anything like that. I get a lot of comments about how beautiful I am, which is nice, until I realize it's because I don't look Filipino (oh colonial mentality). I also get a lot of people asking me if I'm from Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. I also remember continuously talking in IAS 105 about how important my practice experience was to me because it's a homeland trip, and foolishly not expecting people here would not feel the same. And of course I kept just trying to dismiss my disappointment, because it's just indulgent to wake up in the morning and be like “Hmm, what can these villagers do today to make me feel more Filipino?”

But anyway, when I was painting the house it dawned on me that I was LITERALLY building the homeland, and I couldn't fuck this up or half-ass the job because it was something I'd wanted for so long, and it might not make me a revolutionary hero but even now I've done more for the Philippines than the spoiled-ass Filipino Americans my parents wanted me to grow up to be like. It was like one big fuck you to anyone who ever told me I didn't belong, or asked me if I really thought my Tagalog was good or where I was able to learn Tagalog in Korea or whatever foreigner bullshit. And I think everyone thought I was fucking crazy for not wanting to leave until I had finished but they had no idea how gung ho I was getting and why LOL. The woman whose house I was building kept giving me treats though. I don't remember her name but I know I'm never gonna forget her.

Me painting.

How much I had painted by the end.

The doorway I painted.

I'm actually going to wrap this up now because I have to go build more houses, but expect more posts with pictures of the Philippine countryside (which I finally got pictures of!) and BORA (if I make it there. Stupid fucking typhoon.)