Okay I forgot to update for like 4 weeks again. Whoops! Instead of cramming 4 weeks of updates in one post, I'm going to subdivide these by each week. Here is what we did the last week of May!
In Foshan, May continued to be really rainy. Just inches and inches of rain every day. Luckily, the end of May was also significantly hotter than the beginning of the month!
If you like being too hot and ALSO too wet, I really recommend Foshan Springs (TM).
School is beginning to wind down. We still have a month left, sure, but at the same time we only have a month left! Remember what elementary school was like during the last month? Well it's like that here in China too. The teachers and kids are all sort of "done", and there are even more side activities and even fewer structured classes. It's making work a lot more fun, and everyone is excited for the summer.
One example of less-than-serious activities is that the children have been making dumplings in the courtyard. It has been a lot of fun watching the students learn how to make traditional Chinese foods, and it was even more fun getting in on the action.
Sure, it was kind of gross watching how none of the 1000 kids washed their hands, how they dropped food on the ground and put it back on the pan, and how sweaty they all were. It was 100 degrees and they were all outside in the sun with their rather-too-heavy school uniforms on.
Oh well, what the heck. It's China. If I'm not eating someone else's dirty sweat and hairs, then I'm not eating at all. The dumplings were pretty tasty too as long as I didn't think about them too much.
On Friday, there was a big celebration for "National Children's Day". They turned the entire school into a carnival with bouncy castles and games. Each of the foreign teachers were assigned to a station to help out.
I was given the "softball" station, which worked like the classic carnie game where you have to knock over milk bottles. It was the hottest day of the year so far (and also it didn't rain for once!), and we were all dying in the heat and the sun.
But it was still a lot of fun watching the little kids having a blast. They all got stamps on a page for winning the various games, and they were able to exchange the stamps for seriously big prizes at the end of the day (Legos!).
There aren't too many days here where I am able to feel like I 100% made the right decision to come to China. Even on days that are pretty good, I am confronted with doubt. Where would I be if I had stayed in the US and gotten a "real job"?
Children's Day was definitely a day where I had no regrets. I am so glad I'm here and so lucky I get to experience thousands of joyous children throwing beanbags at bottles of water in exchange for knockoff Legos.
With the end of the workweek came the end of June. All of the children in China got June 1 off of school as part of the Children's day celebration, so we got the day off too. Not content to just sit around in our bug ridden, mildewy apartment, Laura and I hopped on a plane and went to the Philippines.
We were happy to be accompanied on our trip with our good buddy Leon. He's a good travel companion, and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately we only had time to go to Manila since it was just a three day weekend. Despite the truncated trip, I still think we got a good taste of the country and the culture of the Philippines, and we did manage to take a quick day trip outside of the city.
The biggest highlights of Manila, for me, was the food and the people. I still like Chinese food but I am SO sick of it! Filipino food was such a refreshing and delicious change of pace, I couldn't get enough of it.
Some of my favorite dishes that we got to try included chicharons (deep fried pig or chicken skin), lechon (crispy fried pork belly), sisig (deep fried pork face and potatoes), and buko pie (apple pie-style dish but with coconut instead). I probably gained five pounds over the weekend, and I still think about a lot of these dishes almost 3 weeks later. Sure, there was plenty of western food available too, but the Filipino food was where it was at.
Manila also had a ton of fast food chains. One of the major "gifts" that the US has left on the Philippines is a huge love of cheap and corporate fast food. In addition to all of the McDonalds and Pizza Huts, the Philippines have tons of their own chains. Jolly Bee is probably the biggest. There was a Jolly Bee on almost every corner of the city.
The people, too, were great. I'm not sure if it was just because of the fact that English is the official language of the company, and therefore much easier to communicate, but the Filipinos were really nice to be around. We had lots of conversations with locals at 7-11s or riding in Jeepneys, and everyone was much more smiley and polite than anything I have experienced in China.
Outside of the food and the people, Manila did not have a ton to offer. There was a pretty nice "oldtown" area that is full of Spanish colonial buildings and churches. This is where we spent most of the first afternoon. It is a big, dirty city with a lot of terrifyingly drastic poverty. Manila has definitely usurped Phnom Penh as the poorest place I have ever been. The poverty here was a lot more desperate and, frankly, a little bit scary. Nothing bad happened, but there were a few close calls this past weekend.
The worst area was definitely Binondo. Binondo is famous for being "the world's first Chinatown", so we kind of wanted to check it out. Big mistake. There was nothing there but slums and nearly naked children running in the streets. There was a lot of begging going on in Manila too.
Another shocking thing, for me, was the pollution. Manila wasn't as smoggy as China, but it was much more polluted. The river that runs through the city doesn't even run at all. It was almost completely solid and completely black. It was so sad and gross to see. The Philippines are some of the most beautiful islands on the planet, and here in the middle of the biggest island is some of the worst active polluting I have ever seen.
Despite these sad parts, it was still a very enjoyable weekend. The hostel that we stayed at was in the suburbs and was absolutely gorgeous. We had a built-in pool and some really friendly staff. The beds were comfortable, even though sleeping ended up being a challenge due to the insane heat. The Philippines are, somehow, way hotter than China or even the mainland of Southeast Asia. I couldn't believe it. So many times this year I have said to myself "surely this is the hottest and most sweaty place on Earth". I have been wrong every single time. I can't imagine what the middle east and west Africa are like....
Our first evening in the city we went to a famous restaurant called "The Aristocrat", and it was very enjoyable. After a delicious lechon and barbecue chicken dinner, we mosied down the street toward a bar area. While we enjoyed some of the local brew (San Miguel! Yummmm), the craziest rain storm of my life started. We ended up stranded in the bar for several hours as the entire city started to flood. We could see outside the windows that the water was very quickly rushing up to meet us. The rain eventually stopped, but Leon and Laura and I started worrying that the bar would flood. If it had rained for even a few more minutes, I think it would have. We banded together with the rest of the Filipino bar patrons, though, and spent the night eating Chicharones and singing Karaoke.
The second day we hopped a bus and left the city for the Batangas region. We trekked to the world's smallest active volcano, and enjoyed the "wilderness" a little bit. The countryside of Luzon island is really beautiful and, heat or no, was a great way to spend a day. True to expectations, the countryside was quieter, cleaner, and even more friendly. We had a delicious lunch at a mom and pop style place that overlooked the volcano before hiring a guy and a motorcycle to take us to the top of the nearest mountain.
Batangas is also where I discovered Buko pie, my newest dessert-related obsession. I'm definitely going to have to make this for myself when I get back to the US and have access to a full kitchen.
Our final day in Manila was spent wandering around the downtown and business districts. Unlike Bonondo, this is the rich area. It was extremely nice, modern, and crazily expensive. We found a cheap little Mexican restaurant to hang out in for a while before our flight, though, and enjoyed some nachos and margaritas.
My final thought on Manila is that, just like a lot of the rest of Asia, the astounding poverty and the shocking riches live very closely side by side. Manila took it to a whole new level though. It is interesting to note that the Philippines was the first democracy in Asia, and is also the only Catholic nation. I don't want to get overly political here, because I'm not even sure what my point is. These are all pretty complex concepts, and it would be way too easy and simple (and wrong) to draw the conclusion that one just causes the other. Either way, it is something that was on my mind all weekend. The poverty was just so bad, and it was right next to some over the top malls and gigantic bank skyscrapers. Are these the things democracy and Catholicism stand for?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I'll ever know. They say "Travel broadens the mind", but really it's not that simple. I don't feel like my year abroad has made me smarter or wiser, but it has certainly made me much more unsure of everything I thought I knew.
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