All Saints Day

November 1st in the Philippines is All Saints Day, a day to honor and commemorate the dead. From an American perspective of death and the dead, All Saints Day represents a completely polar perspective. Take first the physical layout of the cemetery. Around the perimeter are crypts the size of small (and sometimes large) houses, each holding the tombs of a single family’s dead. It felt like I was in a barangay until I saw the graves (and then there was nothing normal about the place). Inside the gate of each house is a main room with large and often ornately decorated stone tombs. Many houses have two floors, complete with balconies, bathrooms, and some even kitchens. Each house looks strikingly different, with pillars, iron gates, and giving the streets (yes, they are even divided into streets) an odd, out-of-place feeling. It reminded me of a book I read as a child about a man named Mr. Plumbean, who remodeled his house and put alligators in the front yard because all the houses on his street looked the same. Eventually all the neighbors changed their houses too, so there were hot air balloon houses, temple houses, museum houses, boat houses, etc.



Any who, so the wealthier families can afford to build these elaborate structures (or maybe they actually can’t afford them but still do it). The bigger the house, generally the richer the family, so this is also a way to show you’ve got money. The more modest have plots of land similar to those of American cemeteries, located inside the perimeter. Some of the coffins/bodies are buried in tombs above ground, while others have plaques or stones for dedication. It somewhat represented a carnival on Sunday, as families set up umbrellas, canopies, and chairs. They brought lunch and dinner, and candles to light. It was festive and lively, and despite the graves and tombs in the background, it really did feel like a fiesta. And that is exactly the point. In the U.S. people mourn, in the Philippines people celebrate. These are broad generalizations, but still this highlights a huge difference between our cultures. In the U.S. cemeteries are somber places to grieve, bury, and move on. But here, the simple fact that there is a day dedicated to visiting the dead shows how different the focus is.

On a more casual note, we were miraculously able to celebrate Halloween here in Daang Bago, as last minute thrown-together mish mosh which our Language Teachers organized. Amazingly, all 10 of us were able to pull together costumes last minute! I was Darna, but you probably have no clue who that is. Google it. She's the Philippines Superhero. Pretty awesome. I wore my friend's underwear outside of my clothes. The town will probably talk about that scandal forever. And they don't call me Jessica anymore. Just Darna.



Other news, finished our Community Project at the RSCC and we also conducted our staff trainings on Conflict Management and Activities for Children with Special Needs. It was great to get experience facilitating trainings, considering we will be doing many of them in the future. We cleaned, painted, organized, and bought shelves for the Day Care room at the RSCC for our final project. For only 4000 pesos it was remarkable what we could do.

Future news: We have our Language Proficiency Interviews Friday... to test how proficient in Tagalog we are... Wish luck! Sunday, it's goodbye to Daang Bago and onward to our Counterpart's Conference, Swearing In, Conference on Child Sexual Exploitation in beautiful Mindoro, and then on to Magalang.

Random tidbits: Realized that I have not talked at all about some of the really important things here. So I will list them below.
1. Ube ice cream with cheese in it. It's purple, and it has CHEESE in it.
2. Chicharon. Pork rinds. Hated them at first but now I crave them.
3. Psssst. That and making a kissing sound are how people get your attention here. It's still a bit creepy when someone kisses at me.
4. Pointing lips. Filipinos don't point with their fingers, they point with their lips.
5. MSG chips. It's in every packaged good, and, well, all goods are packaged. Addicting.
6. Red Horse beer. Super strong.
7. Poker Face, Akon, and Nobody but You (Please YouTube it now). They play on repeat everywhere. Even buses without windows play them. And we thought we would never hear American music again.
8. Cockaroaches. Period.
9. Rats the size of cats.
10. Dogs that have given birth so many times it looks like they have udders.
11. The eating of dogs.
12. The fish heart I found in my meal.

That's all for now.