Stairway to Heaven

Today I went hiking again with Jerry and it was a good follow up to the last trip. We were going to hike up to Nagachara (sp), the mountain where the Japanese made their last stand during WWII (& hence the previously mentioned artillery shell), but we got caught about halfway up the “stairway to heaven,” as he referred to it during one of our breaks, by the afternoon rain which came a touch early today. (Like most Filipino’s he isn’t in the greatest shape, so I appreciate these hikes all the more!) We ended up just chilling under someone’s native hut for an hour or so chatting & then went down for coffee at his house. He speaks English well, but has a hard time understanding me, which I have found to be the norm with most people. I’ve picked up the habit of speaking fairly slowly (really slowly for me) and saying everything in two different ways to cover more vocabulary. Through our chatting I got a much better idea of how things have been going & learned a lot more about how he sees the world. He is very interested to learn but there is so much new technology since he was in school and so many things have been just handed to the community with, at best, a cursory explanation of how they work. I think we will be able to work well together. Even better once I start learning his language and am not the only one struggling with that issue. I hope I can balance his desire for knowledge that I am able to teach with bringing out the knowledge he already has while still combating that entrenched idea that the foreigners have all the answers. I sincerely hope for more chances to just sit and chat like this though. It tells me a lot about how they think and how they see the world and I think we came a long way along the road to a good working relationship.