You're Friendly When You're Drunk

By the direct, over-confident gaze; the big slap stick grin; and the friendly, slightly glazed over look in his eye I knew exactly what was in the over-sized coffee mug he was carrying before he got half way across the patio. I always do enjoy a nice large mug of tapoy in the early afternoon. I also never knew there was a universal hand gesture for “I’ll carry you home” but I knew exactly what he was trying to say with it and Mama Lillian’s translation removed all doubt. Quite a nice gesture for an older gentleman like Manong Freddie. Made for quite the pleasant baptism party. Now if only I would have been able to understand what he was trying to talk about. Its much harder to follow when he’s mixing up to four different languages and still slurring his words. :op
I’ve mostly been using my weekends as quiet down time to get away from the constant bombardment of new experiences and foreign language. I hit overload fairly frequently and my mind starts to glaze over. That barrier is being pushed back daily as I get to know more people and feel more comfortable but its still nice to take a large chunk of time to myself away from the world and read or do whatever. There’s a balance though, while reading an entire book in a day is great, I also need to be careful not to abuse my escapism. Things like actually working on my Mayoyao dialect would be a very helpful way to spend at least part of that time.
Life is progressing well though. Various bits and pieces are still clicking into place. If all goes well I’ll be able to head down to Manila next week to take care of a bunch of errands including picking up my box of books sent over from the states to add to my already growing pile of reading material. I also hope to meet with an Ausaid (Australian Aid) Volunteer Bec mentioned who is working at Smokey Mountain. Manila’s famous, gigantic trash heap. She has also done a lot of work with refugee’s and generally sounds like a very interesting kid. On top of that I hope to find a decent digital camera so ya’ll can gaze in longing at my beautiful surroundings, track down an ethernet port for my laptop so I can directly connect, and pick up some cleats as well as a few other supplies.
Along with playing in some pickup in the capital I hope to use my cleats to help out a fledgling Ultimate community trying to get some roots going in Santiago City. I was put in touch with them by the Philippines Ultimate Association. The internet truly is a wonderful thing. They haven’t done much, but are trying to get a tourney together for the fall and have had a few clinics. Looks like the main driving force is a few high schoolers who go to boarding school in Manila. We’ll see how that pans out but it would be a nice way to get some disc in while I’m here.
Other than that, I think I’ll finally be able to go out and see the GTZ water project next week with Eng. Julius. He wrote it down on his calendar anyway, so that gives me some hope. I’m also looking forward to next weekend as I’ll be meeting Dan Ziegler in Banaue for some Go, beer and story swapping. I still have no idea exactly what I’m doing here, where I can help or how I want my particular efforts at development to work out but I suppose settling in is the first priority and that part is going along fairly well. Now I just need to find a decent native house to move into in Sept and I’m set!