Playing catch- up: Monday March 15

Yes yes yes - I know. This post is a week and a half late. But I tell you truly - it's quite difficult to keep up with posting and also get sleep. I'll try to make up for that a little bit.

At the moment, I'm sitting at the Galley Grill, home of the Rotary Club of Paranaque Southeast (my apologies to all Spanish speakers out there - that "n" should have a tilde - but I can't figure out how to do that on the iPhone). In a little while, their weekly club meeting will start. However, tonight is special - it's the District Governor's annual visit. So all around me, the club members are engaged in a flurry of activity in preparation. This is actually my second RC meeting of the day - this afternoon, we were hosted at a lunch meeting of the Muntinlupa Club. We also had the opportunity to visit their City Hall and talk about some of initiatives the mayor has undertaken over the past 3 years (including the "relocation" of 8000 "informal settlers" into a government-constructed housing development...I'll leave it to you to decode the euphemisms in operation here). As a gift, we each received a rather large ship in a bottle constructed as part of the craft vocation program inside the city's medium security prison. No, I am not kidding.

That covers today - let's now backtrack.

Monday the 15th was my first day at Elsie's house. It was an easy 4 block walk from there to the Makati City Hall complex where we would start our vocational day. No sooner was I inside the main lobby than I was promptly surrounded by my hosts for the morning -the officers of the Interact Club of General Pio del Pilar National High School, located just around the corner from city hall. I spent the next four hours with them touring the school, viewing video presentations about their various activities, talking with teachers and, of course, students, then finishing off with lunch at a popular noodle restaurant just off campus.

I'll hit the most memorable highlights. GPDPHS is renowned for its dance program. Each year the area high schools and colleges compete in a performance showcase very reminiscent of the Mummers' fancy brigades. I saw the video of this year's performance - and it was absolutely stunning. I'm hoping to get a copy.

Interact is responsible for a huge project toward the end of the year - an assembly for the graduating "batch" (yes, batch) featuring prominent area professionals speaking about their careers.

The PDPHS kids also have an extraordinary opportunity - their model UN program is truly international. Rep students from across Asia went to China this year (one of my guides in fact was chosen to represent the Phils!)

When I stopped in to a 9th grade class, I suddenly realized: the students don't switch classrooms all day - the teachers do! They were all rather surprised that we did things the other way around. When I had finished speaking to the class, three boys rushed up to me as I was leaving. Breathless, they asked, had I said I was part of Scouting? I replied yes - and no lie, the three of them dropped back and snapped a proper Scout salute! Of course I returned it in kind. They were thrilled!

I visited with the journalism teacher. Imagine - getting out one edition of a school paper is challenging enough - how about TWO versions at the same time, one in English, one in Tagalog? She lamented, however, that as a result of budget cuts they had only been able to produce a single issue this year. We had an excellent conversation on a wide range of school-related subjects, none of which I am at liberty to reprint here.

Moving up to the top floors, I visited with two senior classes. In the first, a brash girl saw me enter the room with my entourage and ran to the teacher, requesting the opportunity to speak with me; the teacher rolled her eyes and told her to sit down. Naturally, being a senior, she pitched a fit about how unfair it was. Of course I see this sort of thing all the time - so I did what I always do: called her bluff. I looked her in the eye and waved her over; of course she folded like a bad poker hand, saying "I was just kidding!" The class had a good laugh at that. Then of course we had some dancing (in a desperate attempt to keep the class from returning to normal) but even then the mouths were bigger than the actions. I do so love seniors!!

I went to the very top floor, the home of the elite top-flight senior class. They were a lot of fun as well. Perhaps the most distressing thing is that no matter how good the school is, no matter how bright the kids are, far too many of them will not go on to college because their families do not have enough money, and so few scholarship and financial aid programs exist.

Passing by the music room, I asked what programs they had; my guides replied choral - the school had no money to provide instruments, but voices come free.

On my way back down I couldn't help noticing two groups of students doing some carpentry work in the central yard. I immediately thought it was a trade project - however I was informed that the students in question were responsible for breaking the furniture, and were therefore made responsible for its repair - as appropriate a punishment as ever I've heard!

We left campus for lunch, passing through a crowd of boys at the gate held at bay by security guards. They weren't being kept IN - they were being kept OUT! Evidently, something special happens on Mondays (darned if I can remember what it is now!) but these boys were late, and were not allowed to come in...but boy did they want to....

We spent lunch chatting about this and that - they all watch the same movies and listen to the same music as the kids back home, and of course they're all on Facebook. Unlike most of my students, anime is the big obsession on TV.

As 1pm drew close, it was time to move on to the second half of my tour - I was handed off to Rotaract for a visit to the Makati Urban Planning Office (not exactly my field, but I did get to talk with the Rotaracters for a couple of hours!)

Well, true to form, this has been a long post - and I'm only halfway home. I'll cut you all a break and start a new post, since it's getting close to the meeting start time.

Lew