Having Fun

I must be having fun because time is flying by. It seems like the weeks are flying by. Even the months are starting to go by fast. It seems like November just started and it's already almost December. This month has definitely been one of the best months I've had in a long time. Things just seem to be going right. Everything just seems to be working out and it seems like that never happens for me. It used to feel like I'd have days where every thing that could possibly go wrong, would go wrong, and it would drag me down so much. But everything seems to be starting to go well and even when things do go wrong (which they do) they don't have much effect on me. They don't bring me down because I just have so many things going well. I really love it here and there might be a lot of things that are hard and frustrating about being here but I have found what truly gives me joy. I have always had that feeling that this is what gives me joy. When I work with kids, when I serve people, when I went to Guatemala, I could feel it. I thought that I had it figured out, but there was the thought in the back of my head that said what if that was just short term. What if Guatemala gave me joy for a week or two but then it would go away. What if doing it every day made it have less effect. Well those thoughts were wrong. The joy hasn't gone away, it has grown. Growing relationships with these kids and these people keep that joy growing and I honestly can't even describe it in words.
It was hard coming here with only the beliefs that I could do this because the reality was I didn't really know. I had faith that I could, but I didn't really know what to expect. I had people who knew I could do it and people who doubted that I could. I didn't want to let people down and I had to trust that I was doing what God had called me to do and that He would help me do it. I had to make a decision if I wanted really commit to 2 years and the first thought that came into my head was that one year would be too short. I spent a week in Guatemala and I knew that was way too short. I spent a year teaching at Escalon High and I knew I was going to miss those kids. I had a gut feeling that I was going to fall in love with these kids and not want to leave after a year. I made a 2 year commitment and my sister joked that I knew one week was too short so I jumped straight to 2 years. It was a big jump, but the longer I've been here the more I think I made the right decision. This year is going by so fast and it seems like it's going to be over before I know it. I am falling in love with these kids and they give me so much joy. I am exactly where I am supposed to be and that is such an amazing feeling to have. With that said, Christmas is coming up, which is going to be tough, as well as the 6 month wall which apparently all missionaries hit and apparently it's hard and stuff. So we'll see how that goes I guess, but for now things are going so great.
So this week is Thanksgiving in the US, not so much in the Philippines. I'll still be teaching on Thursday while all of you are enjoying your food and football. So what better to teach about on Thursday than Thanksgiving, so that will be interesting. I also have my feeding site on Thursday so that will be really cool as well. I will definitely be missing my favorite meal of the year, but I am glad I get to have the feeding that day and my mom also just sent me some pumpkin pie pop tarts so I will definitely be having some of those.
On Saturday we will be going over to the other island to Carla Village to watch the Ati School do a performance and then afterwards we will be going to the missionaries' house, who are over there working with the Ati school, for a Thanksgiving meal. I'm not really sure exactly what we're having, but it will definitely be nice, even if it's not as good as home.
On the subject of holidays, I don't know if I've mentioned this before but in the Philippines Christmas starts in October. As soon as October comes along the trees and lights and decorations go up. The jungle barn had their tree up by the end of September. November 1st seems to be the official start to Christmas season. All the Halloween decorations go down and the Christmas ones are in full force. Christmas music has been playing everywhere he entire month, decoration are up in all the stores, restaurants, and some houses. The school and all the classrooms are decked out in Christmas decorations, we even have trees up.
I got my box with my new camera yesterday and I took some pictures of the decorations and the trees in our rooms, but unfortunately I didn't realize it was going to take 4 hours to load the software for my camera on my computer. So that's a bummer. I won't be able to get pictures onto my blog tonight, but next week I should have plenty of pictures for you.
So this week was a very good week and things went very well with the exception of one thing. On Thursday we had our feeding site get cancelled because the Pastora was in  Manila for a few days and she normally plans everything and buys the food and all that. So me and the other missionary that work this site decided that we would go and try to have the feeding just without the food. So I brought my frisbee and medical kit and she brought a Bible story and coloring sheets and we headed out. We showed up and the kids were excited to see us. We got the frisbee out and started to play and I thought it was awesome that we were so loved there that the kids would all come out and hang out with us. But the best part was when Liz got out the story and they all sat down and listened. Any white person can come in with a frisbee and the kids would want to play, but they don't even usually sit still when the adults are there trying to get them to listen to the story, and here they were willingly sitting down and listening to the story without anyone making them or doing it just to get food. It was such an awesome feeling. This awesomeness was going through my head when all of a sudden the kids took off running over to the middle of the village. We didn't know waht was going on so we followed them over there. We got there and there were 2 women from the village fighting. They were yelling and screaming at eachother and everyone in the village was just kind of standing around watching. I didn't know what they were saying, but they were definitely getting into it. So I started to try to get the kids to go back over and hang out because I really didn't think they needed to be there watching that. It wasn't working very well though because the kids wanted to watch. All of a sudden one of the ladies takes off running past us and goes into her house. So I started to get the kids back over to where we were and we were going to pass the coloring sheets out and get that going. We got most of them back over and all of a sudden the lady comes walking out of her house yelling and carrying a knife the size of her forearm. I was absolutely terrified. I honestly had no clue what was about to happen. There were no police or anything here there was nothing to stop anything from happening. Obviously she was mad enough to get a knife out who knew if she was mad enough to use it. I was so scared because it was a moment where I had no clue what was going to happen and I knew there was nothing that I could do to keep something from happening. Anything I could do could just as quickly escalate the situation. So of course all of the kids ran back over to watch and so i started grabbing the little ones and taking them as far away from it as possible. The last thing I wanted was for one of them to get hurt or for them to have to watch something happen. The lady started chasing the other lady with the knife and one of the guys from the village grabbed her arm and wrestled the knife away from her which was amazing because he easily could have gotten extremely injured from that. I didn't see the next part because I was taking some kids away, but apparently while the one guy was taking the knife from the one lady another lady gave the lady she was fighting with a knife and she started going towards the first lady. A guy jumped on her and got the knife away from her and when I got back to seeing things there were about 8-10 people fighting and trying to break the fight up. The 2 ladies were in the middle and there were some other ladies fighting in there too and then some guys trying to pull everybody away. There was hair everywhere being pulled out and the lady without the friends was getting pretty thrashed, her clothes were totally ripped and falling apart and she was still furiously going at it. This went on for awhile and I was over on the other side holding the lady's baby to keep him from having to see everything, he's probably one and a half years old. I'm not really a fan of naked babies and I really didn't want to get peed on but I really didn't want him over there watching it. We were doing our best to try to keep the kids we had over there busy and not focused on the fight but it was tough. The lady ran back to her house again and pulled out another thing that I don't even know what it was but it had a long metal point on the end of it and was probably even more dangerous than the knife. Luckily there was a guy that followed her over and took it from her and broke it. So that made her mad and she went and picked up a ten foot bamboo pole and started waving that around and continued to yell at the top of her lungs. It was getting really frustrating because this was about 20 or 25 minutes into the fight and this lady was still hysterical and I'm over here holding her baby and we had her 5 year old daughter with us crying and she had another daughter over there watching the whole thing and she was acting absolutely insane. She realized the pole was to heavy to do anything with so she went and got a big stick that basically looked like a club and took that over and started waving it around. By this point the men of the village had decided to just make a wall and use their size and strength advantage to basically just block the lady off and not let her do anything. After probably close to 40 minutes the lady finally realized she wasn't going to be able to do anything and furiously left.
I don't know what the fight was over but it must have been something really crazy because I have never seen anyone act that insane ever. Forty minutes and she still wasn't cooled off. The most frustrating part is that all the kids had to see that and especially her own kids. We stayed there for a little longer and did the coloring sheets and I got out the med kit but it was so hard leaving and thinking that who knows what was going to happen that night if the lady came back or if she was going to keep going at it. The hardest part was having to let her kids go home to that. What were they going to see tonight. What were they going to have to go through. I can't even imagine how awful the situation was for them. The lady that hosts the site has her kids go to Agape and she told us nothing else really happened, so that was good news to hear, but it'll definitely be weird going there this week.
That was definitely the worst thing that I have seen here and was probably the hardest thing I've had to deal with and see but things are going good when you can still say that your week went well. I got some snacks in my box and I am loving those. It's amazing how things like cereal and easy-mac are like gold here. I wish I didn't end on such a sad note, but my students really haven't been that funny this week so I don't have any funny quotes to share. But I do wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving and I hope you enjoy all of the delicious food. I will be thinking of you haha.