Merry Christmas Already From A Drug-Pushing Goat

As far as I am aware, there is not a national thanksgiving holiday here in the Philippines. That means that we have been in Christmas/Navidad/Noel/Weinachts/Pasko mode here for a few weeks already. Of course I'm thinking about pecan pie and turkey and mashed potatoes and my grandmother's stuffing. I'm very disappointed that I wont be able to be with the family for Thanksgiving, it has always been one of my favorite holidays as far as things go. But it seems to be a good holiday to just spend time with your family. There isn't a lot of things that have to be done, you just get together and eat and give thanks. My "Ulrich's" always end up playing Euchre, which I'm going to miss tremendously.

The second semester here is well under way. We've been in class a few weeks now and I'm trying some different things to keep students interested and involved. The student body is preparing for the massive production that is the school Christmas program. One of the school traditions here is to produce a cantata that tours around to various churches that support the school. This is used as a promotional tool for the school and as a way to display the talents of the students as well. Since I sit in with the choir I'm very familiar with the musical aspects of this years program. (As a corollary, I find myself wondering why people who arrange choral music hate basses.) The music program here at ABS is top-notch considering the resources available and the music instructors are excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing the program in it's entirety.

I've had several Ilocano lessons lately, I've been trying to expand my vocabulary. My sentence construction is still somewhere between non-existent and horrible, but I like making people laugh with my mistakes. If your interested, some of the new words I learned recently: Apay (what?), agung (nose), mata (eye), lapayag (ear), saba (banana). I'm always trying to learn new words, and it is usually hilarious. The funniest situation is when I ask my colleagues in the office what the Ilocano equivalent of an English word or idea would be. Sometimes I get answers, sometimes we get an argument, and sometimes we get discussions about whether or not such a word exists. When it doesn't exist the answer to the question "what is the Ilocano word for "charm"? is . . . charm; "just use English." The joys of learning a language from native speakers.

The other side of the language divide is students being increasingly bold in their English usage around me. The results are hilarious and educational. Being wished a good morning at 6 PM is a rare privilege. One of my recent favorites was said in response to one of the students describing some problems that she was having. Another student responded (in an effort to convince her not to worry about it) "Don't problem your problem." Another of my favorite conversations took place last week when some students who are new for the 2nd semester were asking me why I didn't shave off all my facial hair. (Because I don't want to). One mentioned that I looked like a goat, the other said I looked like a drug pusher. The capstone was the statement was "Sir, you are already handsome but you would be more handsome if you shaved your beard." (Very laughter).

I hope everyone is well, to my American readers: Happy Thanksgiving!

Nick

New Semester, Burgeoning Vocabulary

After another brief silence due to our office moving last week I am back in the internet game. The moving was exciting. The main feature of the Aparri Bible Seminary campus has been this construction project. Previously our offices had been in what was supposed to be classrooms. As phase three of the project nears completion, the space that is supposed to be the office was finally completed and now the faculty and staff exist in a new office space. Phase three is nearly complete, and they were able to accomplish a lot while the students were on break these past few weeks. Mostly things like putting glass in windows and tiling floors. The campus here has changed a lot during the six months (!!) I've been here. I'm anxious to see how things will continue.

In the "huh" category, I found out that all saints day and all saints eve are holidays here in the Philippines, so last week I was the only one in the office on Monday and Tuesday. That worked out ok, we still didn't have internet so I managed to get some work done.
Last weekend I went to a fellowship in a place called Dugo (I think). It is an area of a city called Camalaniugan which is just down the road from Aparri towards Tuguegarao and Manila. My friend Jay randomly showed up Saturday morning and asked if I wanted to go, so we went with our friend Kit. Public transportation here is unbelievable, by the way. It cost us 20 pisos each (approximately $0.50) for a 5km ride in what was basically a small truck with benches in the bed. By way of comparison, a ticket to Manila on the nicest bus costs about $35. That's for a trip that is more than 600km/375 miles. Public transportation works pretty well over here. And honestly, it has to. Otherwise no one would ever get anywhere since most people don't have a car and a scooter is only practical up to a certain distance.

It's good to see the students back. For a while it was nice that it was quiet around here for once, but it slowly got a little quieter than I preferred towards the end of the semester break. I'm interested to see how this semester goes. I'll have the change in subjects that I mentioned previously. It also looks like we are going to re-arrange the care groups; so I'll have a new group of students to bother more often with by bad Ilocano.

Speaking of Ilocano, when we moved into the new office I asked about how to say a specifc phrase in Ilocano, 'I'm very busy.' Adu ti trabahok. (I think). That's a new pronoun series for me, the "ko" series is one of the things I'm just learning about. The ko series are possessive pronouns. Exciting stuff if you are a language nerd.

I hope you all are well, I'm missing you.

Nick