Juggling Tomatoes and Singing Waitor/tresses

We have been doing so much! The teaching continues to be so much fun.

Last Elliot's Dad, James, and I took everyone out to a restaurant where all the waitors sang. It was fantastic. They were great singers and performers. One of them was absolutely hilarious. He did a song where one side of his body was dressed up as a man and the other was a female, and he would turn back and forth singing in a falsetto and then in a baritone. We were the most enthusiastic people in the restaurant so they started to focus on our table. Then this performer decided he needed to dance with the tall Americans---Asa and Zeus. At another point one of the performers started juggling tomatoes so we had to join in.

Asa and I have been using every opportunity to get peoples' attention. If they have to stare at the tall Americans, we have decided to give them full reason to stare. So we start juggling as we walk down the street. They audiences here are wonderful. The place where Mary Joyce lives has lots of people who know us, and today we gave them a performance and bowed for them. Ha ha. Then we received enthusiastic applause, and since they were standing, it was standing applause. Asa is complaining that no money is following the applause. ha ha

In addition to teaching math, science, and English, we have been doing juggling games with the kids. Four adults have already learned to juggle!! The kids here really have great hand eye coordination.

Well, our English instruction is including lots of writing and here is one of today's stories. We have been having the kids write in Tagalog and English. Ha ha. They are teaching us as we go.

My name is Princess Anne L. Dacles.
Ang pangalan ko ay Princess Anne L. Dacles.
I am nine years old.
Ako ay siyam na taong gulang.
I live in Banaba Street in Payatas A. Q. C. (this means in Quezon City)
Ako ay nakatira sa Banaba Street Payatas A.Q.C.
I have a brother, father, mother.
Ako ay may kuya, tatay, nanay.
My house is two rooms.
Ang bahay namin ay may dalawarng kwarta.
I like to play badminton with Mariel.
Gusto kong makipaglaro mg badminton kay Mariel.
I have no boyfriend.
Wala akong boyfriend.

-Zeus

News from Asa!

After arriving in Manila late at night and taking a family car to the hotel where we spent the night we had many immediate ideas about Manila. We noticed right away that it was much less developed than Korea.

The next day we took the same family car into Payatas. In the car we were given a long talk about how here in Payatas the children have a much poorer education and we would be a college equivalant to their schools. We heard how people here don't have clean water and how we shouldn't eat much of anything that they give us. If we had gone by what he had said Payatas would have been a huge mound of garbage with various people living around it.

As we started to drive around coming to the school I noticed that it was very different from how it was described to us. Instead of just garbage dumps Payatas was a colorful place with many street vendors and cars. We were riding in a car owned by the family that we were staying with, it was a little bit bigger than a jeep in size but it was set up a lot like a jeepney. Payatas however had very different methods of transportation. People travel in Jeepneys which are smaller than buses and instead of seats they have two benches on each side. Other people travel in tricycles, tricycles are motorcycles with carriages attached to the side and are a little more expensive than jeepneys. Than for Zeus who can't fit into either of those without hurting his head they use cabs. When we got out of the car and saw all the high school students that Zeus was teaching, we realized how tall we were compared to them. Most adults in the Philippines are only around 5 foot 3 inches making Zeus a giant and me and Elliot tall for adults. When we met Flor and went to her house for lunch of fish, rice, and filtered water we realized that sometimes things aren't as bad as you originally think.

-Asa

Payatas

The last two days of teaching were fantastic. The kids here are great, and my co-teachers, Ellliot, Asa, and Sterling, are doing wonderful jobs. Yesterday we taught at two different sites. One was in Payatas and the other was in a site in the provinces. We have been helping students with their school work, but there textbooks are really abstract, and I am not sure how much the kids get out of them so we end up teaching them concepts related to what they are studying. In addition, they are teaching us Tagalog and we are giving them juggling lessons.

Yesterday several of the girls starting writing a description in Tagalog and English so here is one of them:

My name is Vivian Rose Abanto. I live in the province of Montalban. I am 15 years old and I like to study hard in everything. I want to become a nurse, and I want to live in a big, big house. I want to live here because it is peaceful. I will have an electric fan but no aircon. I like to drive in a jeepney. My brother has a chicken in his house, but I don't want to have a chicken in my house. I like chicken adobo, spaghetti, and salad. The names of my two friends are Jenny L. Verona and Hung Jolly Cora (Zeus's note: I am not sure if I am reading this correctly).

In Tagalog this reads:

Ang pangalan ko ay Vivian Rose Abanto. Nakatira ako malapit sa probinsya. Gusto kong maging nars. Gusto kong tumira sa malaking balaking balay. Meron akong electric fan pero nalang aircon. Gusto kong namalay sa jeepney.

Ha ha there may be mistakes in my typing here

After we finished teaching in Montalban we had a tour led by a great young lady--Binibini is the word--named Queenie. She asked Elliot to teach her Korean, and she helped us out on our Tagalog. She wants to be a doctor so she can help people in the Philippines who have no doctors. There are some really great kids here, and Queenie is one of them!!

I will write more later about the organizations that are doing the work here. Next Saturday Elliot and I will provide some money so that about one hundred kids in Montalban can have lunch. Yesterday Asa and Elliot helped serve food for the kids that came. I hope to send pictures soon.

We finished off the day by going to the mall. I think Filipinos like the malll because it has aircon. Elliot and Asa took Kaye to see the Simpson movie so she could see the best that America has to offer. And Flor and Sterling took me to see a horror movie that was in Tagalog so I could see more about Filipinos live. The fact that much of the movie took place on a yacht and then on empty streets with a car that looked like a BMW gave me a picture of the Philippines that I myself have not seen here. ha ha

-Zeus

Arriving in the Philippines

Yesterday, Asa and I arrived in the Phillippines at around 10:30 pm. After about a two hour waiit through customs, we finally reallized how crude and inefficient the system was. We saw everything from people who didn't speak English being yelled at by custom officials, to a group from Africa being sent back because a friend said that they could get in easily. After a full two hours of waiting, we got picked up and dropped off by a friend of James in a car that looked like a half truck, half bus thing. We rode in the back. As we were bouncing around in the back, the crazy traffic gave me a funny and good reminder that we were truly back in the Philippines.

After that we got to the building, we went to the local Seven Eleven to get some water. That was another reminder to me that the water wasn't safe in the Phillippines like it was in Korea. We went to bed pretty quickly. When we woke up we were happy to learn that it was 8:30, probably the latest we had gotten up so far. We were especially happy because we were oriiginally supposed tto get up at around six to come to the Payatas with Zeus. After a quick breakfast of small pancakes with syrup and fried eggs, we got ready and left for the Payatas.

So far I have liked Korea better contrary to everyone els's opinion. Mabye it's because I have some connection there that I can't find here. But it's probably the food and the culture. (not to mention the subway!!) Korea also has this certain beautiful and carefree joy to it like everything there, the different technology, people, and culture all coexist perfectly with Harmony. I hope to have more fun in the Phillippines and learn a lot about teaching and myself

-Elliot

Manila

July 26th.

I woke up at 4 a.m. to make it to the airport in Seoul for a 9 a.m. departure. I really liked the visit to Seoul. The city is beautful and clean. Everyone seems very serious here, but when we have talked with people they are friendly, and they really like hearing about how Elliot and Asa are doing. The flight to Manila is about four hours and since the plane is keeping at about 550 miles an hour, it must be close to 2200 miles. That is about as far apart as Chicago and Los Angeles, but the difference between Seoul and Manila is incredible. Both cities may be the same approximate size at 12 million people, but there the similarity ends. Manila may be big and at times dirty, but I love it and its incredible life. The twenty or so miles from the airport to the place I am staying in Quezon City includes a terrible trafffic jam and with lunch it ends up taking as much time as the plane ride itself. When we entered the restaurant, I was immediately met with a "Welcome Sir" from one of the waiters and two minutes later another member of the staff exlaims, "How are you, sir?" Flor Encomio and the driver who I only know as Santos have come to give me a ride, and they are really fun to be around. Flor is organizing my teaching activities here, and she admits that she forgot all the math that she ever took after arithmetic, but I am not fooled. I know that she can speak in eight different languages, and when I ask her how much English the students know, I am a little alarmed to hear her say, "Walang." That means NONE. So she insists that we speak nothing but Visayan and Tagalog the rest of the way. Ha ha. LONG SILENCE. We finally revert to Taglish.

The place where I am staying, SEND, has raised its rates. With internet service it is now $13 a night. I don't know whether I can manage these kind of expenses, and when I have dinner, a huge plate of pancit and the most wonderful mango juice I have had since last August I am distressed to realize I have spent $2 for supper. Gone are the days when living in Manila was cheap. ha ha

At SEND we are met by Sterling Calope. She is a graduate student in math education, and she is starting her thesis writing. I go over her proposal which she is to give to a committee tomorrow. I suggested that she contact Dr. Penelope Flores, and Penelope has convinced her to do her research on ethnomathematics. I used to teach right next to Penelope, and she went on to work on the UCSMP math project at the University of Chicago and is now a professor at San Francisco State. The approach that Sterling is going to take is one I am going to practice on with the students I see tomorrow in Payatas. I look forward to meeting them. Hopefully they will learn as much English as I do Tagalog.

Before I go running we all go over to the squatter's section where Mary Joyce Palana lives. The Palanas have become great friends. Mary Joyce has epilepsy and her right hand is paralyzed, but since I gave money for medicine for her she is able to go back to school. Her older sister Kaye is Elliot and Asa's age, and we are going to take her to the Manila Hotel to see Diane Sison sing next Wednesday. We decide to buy her a new dress so she will be ready for the occasion. The six members of the Palanas household, their father, their mother Eva, the two girls, Kaye and Mary Joyce, and the two boys Moy Moy and De Dong live in a room that is about ten feet by four feet with a roof that is five feet tall. Mary Joyce has drawn a picture of me and Moy Moy has written a very nice letter to me, Uncle Zeus. Tomorrow we will take them all out to dinner and buy them books. I give them a big box of chocolates after saying the Tagalog phrase, "Pasulobong ko." which I hope means My present. For everyone here I have given a box of chocolates except for Sterling who got eight math books.
The streets here are so alive with people. Kids ask me where I am from and another voice yells out, "Amerikano." Crossing the busy road near SEND is like playing the game Chicken that teenagers used to do in the 1950's. It is a negotiation with cars to see who will give in first. ha ha. I love it. I will have to see whether I love it after tomorrow's two classes. Elliot and Asa have followed me on a later flight with James. I can't wait to see what Asa thinks of Manila. Yesterday he said he thought Seoul was a lot like New York.

-Zeus

Subways

SubWays by Elliot

If you have never expearenced Korean subways, you will be surprised. The subways in Seoul are the second most extensve in the world (second to Tokyo Japan) and you can definitely see it once you get a good look at a map. Other than being very fun to navigate, which was my job, It is good to get to know all of the different line stops and numbers along the way.

Practically anywhere you go in Seoul, you will find a subway stop, which is filled with ticket venders, ticket machines, numerous exits to various places above ground, and best of all, vending machines!! The systom was that once you paid for your ticket you would find your line (if you were at a transfer between two lines) then find the side of the station you were suposed to be on. There were no ticket collectors on board, so depending on how much you paid (which also depends on where your final destination was) you could go just about anywhere. There were about 9 or ten lines also labeled by color. Line 1 was dark blue, 2 was green 3 was orange, four was light blue, five was brown, and so on. A transfer was when two or more lines intersected. If you got off there you could either transfer to anotherline, or get off at one of the many exits from the starton that led back to the surface. The ticket prices ranged anywhere from I think 1000 to 1500 Won, a dollar being about 1000 Won.

Overall it was fun telling the ticket vender our destination, paying and recving our ticket, putting it through the various mechines, and navigating the quickest and most efficant rout with the least amout of transfers!! I was happy to see the subways of Seoul again and look forward to ride them again many times in the future!!

-Elliot

Zeus' addition: Elliot forgot to note his observation that intersections of lines were signalled by selections of classical music.

Seoul

Beyond Getting Our Bearings

Today we had a tour of the city which Elliot organized. Seoul has an amazingly clean and fast subway system, and Elliot was directing us everywhere. We saw the emperor's palace and the changing of the guards then proceeded to eat and eat and eat. When you order something here, you end up with a minimum of eight side dishes, and since getting stuffed.

There is also a wonderful river restoration project through the city, and Elliot's dad and I have been running on the path by this river every morning. Because of jet lag, we feel like it is the middle of the day at 5:30 every morning so it is easy to get out on the streets by 6 a.m.. I will have to tell the mayor that the Chicago River could look like this too. ha ha.

Two groups of girls yelled, "Hi" to us this morning, but Elliot and Asa did not pursue them. I think they are saving themselves for the girls in the Philippines. We did, however, talk with the proprietor of the tiny restaurant we went to for breakfast. Since we have seen her there everytime we've passed, we asked her how long she works every day. Well, her hours were from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. Since she looks so much like my friend Ester Hana, I asked her to pose for a picture with Elliot. If Elliot and Asa can only teach me how to put our pictures on the computer, you will get to see what a giant Elliot is next to some of the people here.

-Zeus

Arriving in Korea

Asa, Elliot and I left Chicago late Saturday night, July 21st for Seoul. It was our first stop on a trip that will take us to Payatas, an area of Manila that serves as the garbage dump for that city of 12 million. We are beginning by sightseeing in Korea though, and in our first two days we have eaten wonderful Korean food and uttered our attempts at Korean. Apparently my American accent makes most of my full phrases indecipherable so I am stuck with "Anyong Aseyo," the general greeting, "Kamsahamnida," which means thanks, and "mashesayo," which means delicious. And the last applies to all the food we have eaten thusfar. Today we took a tour of the DMZ and got a few shots of North Korea. The tension surrounding the demilitarized zone is depressing. We made some good friends and had a spectacular dinner where there was live music and traditional dancers.

Now, I have to go to sleep and try to make up for jet lag.

-Zeus