february .....already

i can't believe it's feb already. the past few weeks have been pretty busy. Last week was our 88th foundation day at my municipal hall, which meant lots of loud, inappropriate music and dancing. this place proves the case for ignorance is bliss. they play the dirtiest music at public functions and little girls dance to it, but noone can understand the words, much less their meaning.....they just like the beat. so as i sat in horror, listening to the words, contemplating whether or not to ask WHY??!!! i realized that noone else even had an inkling to what they were saying. i had a little chuckle at their expense, and realized that ignorance truly is bliss. my office of social welfare employees also had a dance, and i swallowed my pride and did the dance to the song "lady lumps" infront of my entire municiapal hall and officials. thank God that they don't know what that means. our outfits were just as amusing. the theme was "recycled" so we wore sardine can wrappers on our legs, pom pom's made of trash and our belt made of noodle wrappers. i was horrified, until everyone else was doing it and thought it was great -- i mean, when in rome -- wear sardine wrappers as accessories. the next day erin, nicole and i spent at the beach and then went back to my house and watched movies. not such a bad weekend.

winter, well it's 75

it's january here -- which means winter time!!!!! it's amazing, at night it's about 75 degrees farenheit, which may not seem cold to you, but a 30-40 degree drop in temperature sure feels cold. i actually turned my fan off and used the sheet -- last night i had to use my sheet and a sarong. wow. the mosquito's don't like the cold, so they have gone away for a while too. this week we are schalacking my nipa -- i didn't realize when i built the hutt that bamboo molts off it's outter layer and throws dust everywhere. it's like living in a saw mill -- bamboo dust everywhere -- piles of it. so to cure the situation we are schalacking it to seal in the dust and keep the bugs out!!!! so hopefully the mold wont grow and my eyes won't swell. work is going pretty slow right now, just trying to meet with officials to get another class started. since everything is slow now, i have volunteered to be the hiv/aids awareness representative in my region. i don't have a great knowledge on the subject, but my basic info far surpasses anything anyone here knows. so i guess that qualifies me for the position -- and is something else to do.

back to life in the PI

so it's back to life as normal -- well, normal for a filippino -- or peace corp volunteer. i thought going back to the states would be a good break and it was, i just wasn't prepared for the huge emotions that come with leaving the third world and re-entering my old world. it was like waking up from a 10 month coma -- everything was still the same, but so different. or was i different??? that seems to be the big question floating around my head these days. i intended to walk back into my life as i left it, but that was exactly the problem -- i had left my life. it's definately not like going on vacation -- i actually moved all the way to the other side of the world and changed my entire way of living. that reality didn't hit me until i got back to the states and felt like i didn't belong there anymore. it was even more strange to walk back into my hutt and be all alone again, and not just by myself, but really alone. going back to the office really freaked me out aswell -- all of a sudden i am back where i can't understand anyone and everyone is staring at me all of the time. it's such a huge shock to the system -- it's exhausting. so now i have to re-figure everything out and get back into my routine. hmmm.... i'll let you know how it goes.