Friday, August 26, 2011. Sual, Pangasinan, Philippines.
5:49 a.m. - My alarm goes off. Its muffled sound comes from under my pillow and works its way into my dream; I always manage to wedge it under my pillow sometime during the night. My subconscious letting me know how it feels about waking up at 5:49 a.m., undoubtedly.
5:54 a.m. - I get out of bed to heat water in my electric kettle. There'll be no bucket bath for me without first heating up some water. (It's rare for houses to have hot water from the tap here.) I've grown soft in my old age - when I first arrived in the Philippines I took bucket baths every morning without heated water. But now that I'm accustomed to warm water, there's no going back. Imagine my dread last week when I woke up and discovered the power was out. No power = no electric kettle = no hot water. Let's just say I went to school a little dirtier than usual that day.
5:56 a.m. - I get back into bed to wait for my electric kettle to work its magic.
6:03 a.m. - My electric kettle automatically switches off, the magic completed, the water hot.
6:10 a.m. - I consider getting up.
6:11 a.m. - I seriously consider getting up.
6:12 a.m. - I tell myself that unless I get up right now I'm going to be rushed and end up leaving late for school, which means I'll have to walk fast, which will result in me arriving at school dripping with sweat. And I'll have to reheat my water.
6:15 a.m. - I sit up......I lie down.
6:16 a.m. - I open one eye, decide that's more than enough vision to get me successfully to the bathroom, get out of bed, get my hot-ish water, and dump it into my bucket. Ahhhh...warm-ish water.
6:17 - 7:04 a.m. - Beautification time. (Which apparently is ineffective. See my 4:10 p.m. conversation, below.)
7:05 - 7:11 a.m. - I walk to school. As predicted, I leave late, so now I'm walking at a pace that causes me to break into a sweat. (Okay, you caught me - any physical activity causes me to break into a sweat: breathing, blinking, thinking too hard, etc.) By the time I get to school I'm trying to daintily wipe my lip, neck, and arm (yes, arm) sweat while still maintaining my "exotic blond American" air.
7:12 a.m. - The students gather for the flag ceremony. Everyone sings the Philippine national anthem, Lupang Hinirang, and pledges allegiance to the Philippines. I join in on singing the anthem, but don't worry, America, I haven't yet pledged allegiance to the Philippines. And yes, I know the words to the national anthem. Well, most of them. Kind of like the Star Spangled Banner, actually.
7:30 - 10:40 a.m. - I co-teach three fourth-year English classes with my counterpart teacher. My 7:30 class is the top section of fourth-year students, so they're the least likely to look at me like I have three heads when I speak. Though they do have the habit of clapping after I say something, which makes me think they have no idea what I'm saying. I've gotten used to looks of concentration mixed with confusion whenever I speak. Apparently my proper pronunciation makes me nearly unintelligible. (No, I'm not bitter.)
Normally on Friday I would be teaching a remedial reading class to first-year students during an hour of this time, but today my other co-teacher canceled it. Not sure why. She just said that she "told the students not to come today" and then winked at me. I was a little perplexed given that I'm the one who prepared the lesson and I'll be the one teaching it. Oh well. I guess the students can wait until Monday to learn the difference between short and long vowel sounds.
11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. - This is my non-teaching time, so I often use this time to correct students' work. Or I take a three-hour lunch break. Depends on how dedicated I'm feeling that day. There are approximately 60 students per class and I co-teach 5 classes, so there is a lot to correct. We give the students a paragraph dictation test, which is my co-teacher (not me, of course, given my unintelligible pronunciation) reading a paragraph to the students. They have to write the paragraph as she reads it. Every misspelling and incorrect word is counted wrong and the total number wrong is subtracted from the total number of words in the selection. This week's paragraph was on oceanographers. After correcting around 200 of these I have the paragraph memorized and never want to see the word "oceanographer" again. Or "osean hographer." Or "solar eyes cups." Can you guess that one? Yeah, it should be "polar ice caps."
2:00 - 4:00 p.m. - I teach my last two classes of the day. Students are less likely to come back to school after lunch (especially on a Friday), so these two classes generally have fewer students than my morning classes. Today my 3:00 class (which is the lowest fourth-year section) has seven students. Seven. Out of 57. Ouch. The teachers like to refer to this as "Friday sickness."
4:10 - 4:12 p.m. - A real conversation with a teacher:
Teacher: [Coming to my desk and staring at me intently.] What happened to your face?
Me: Ummm...
Teacher: [Pointing at the zit on my forehead.] Is that a mosquito bite?
Me: Oh, no, it's a zit...uh, you know, a pimple. Yeah, it's a big one... [Trailing off with nervous laughter.]
Teacher: Hm. When you came here you had nice skin. [Staring at my face even more intently.] Now you have spots...and freckles...and, hmm, acne. Why?
Me: Oh, well, uh...I don't know. I guess, well, my face sweats....sometimes...you know, because it's hot...so...I get pimples...occasionally...um... [Trailing off with nervous laughter.]
Teacher: And there, [pointing to/touching the side of my face], it looks like something happened there.
Me: Oh, really? Huh, well...maybe it's a...uh...rash? I guess I get those sometimes. Mystery rashes and all that...haha...ha... [Trailing off wondering how I could have missed the sudden appearance of acne, age spots, and leprosy in the mirror this morning.]
Teacher: Hmmm. You had such nice skin... [Walking away shaking her head.]
Me: ... [Planning an immediate trip to the mall to buy super-coverage foundation and concealer. Or maybe just a paper bag with two eye-holes cut out.]
4:30 p.m. - Time to walk home. Of course I never sweat on the walk home.
4:37 - 11:00 p.m. - My nights usually consist of fixing dinner then watching T.V., watching movies, and/or reading. I eat the same thing almost every night: spinach pasta with olive oil. Probably not great to eat pasta every night, but at least it's not rice! My fellow teachers are all amazed that I don't cook rice for myself. They offer to come over and cook it for me if I'm unable to do it myself, but I assure them that I survive just fine without it. I don't think they believe me. Tonight is a new episode of "Pretty Little Liars" on ETC, the one station that airs American TV shows. True, the shows are all aimed at 14-year-old girls, but luckily I'm easily entertained and have the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old girl. Other shows include "Gossip Girl," "America's Next Top Model," "Vampire Diaries," and "One Tree Hill." Oh, and "The Insider" and "Extra," so I'm up-to-date on my celebrity gossip. (Will and Jada Pinkett Smith separated?! I'm crushed!) I think Peace Corps should include that in its recruiting materials.
So another day is done! Because tomorrow's Saturday I'm planning to sleep until 7:30 (which is really late here), but the stray cats I've been feeding usually start demanding their breakfast by 6:30, so I'm not hopeful.
