I'm Back!

I'm back! It's good to be back and get into the swing of things. There were a lot of things I missed, but also some things I definitely didn't miss too much. It only took me 5 days to get sick, so that hasn't been too much fun trying to deal with while catching up and getting everything going with school again. It has been a much better welcome back to the island than my first time coming and being sick for a week and a half, but it still hasn't been great. Because of everything going on before I left I wasn't able to adjust my sleep schedule at all so I was welcomed back with a heavy dose of jet lag. I started school the day after I got in so I didn't do much other than go to school then go back to bed. As soon as I started getting rid of the jet lag I picked up a cold so I've been doing nothing but going to school and sleeping really since I've been back.
It was awesome to be able to go home over break to see my grandma and be with my family and I have a lot of great memories from my time there, but I was really ready to come back to Boracay. It's nice to see family and eat awesome foods I hadn't had for awhile, but I missed everything that is going on here. It was interesting going home and seeing peoples responses to me and it was a lot different than I thought. There were a lot of luxuries at home but it was a lot different than I was expecting.
I posted this to facebook when I got back here and I figured I'd share it here.
You know you're in the Philippines when:
1. Within 5 minutes of arriving at the airport there's a band singing "heeeeyyy sessy lady".
2. Within 5 minutes of putting on a new shirt its completely soaked (and it's not raining).
3. Within 5 seconds of poking my head inside my classroom there are 16 screaming kids climbing on me.
The last one kind of makes it all worth it.
That does a decent job of summing it up. Gangnam style is by far the most popular songs here and it gets played over and over wherever you go. I was hoping it would be gone by the time I got back but as I was in the airport in Manila a band was playing and the second song I heard was gangnam style. They played it about every fourth song they played. The gangnam style phase definitely isn't over yet. It was around 40 degrees most of the time when I was home and I came back to weather that has actually been really nice for here but it's still 80 degrees and extremely humid. You sweat without even moving and there's nothing you can really do except just live with it. When I got into Boracay I took my bags home and went over to the school to surprise my class. I peeked my head inside the door and they erupted. It was one of those moments I wish I had been recording because they just went crazy. They immediately all came running and screaming at me and I wasn't even able to get inside the classroom for five minutes until they finally all let go. The best reaction was from one of my boys who is normally very quiet. He sits on the far side of the class and when I looked into the room everyone was runing and screaming, but John Lester was jumping up and down screaming at the top of his lungs and was almost at tears. He looked like a 15 year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. It was pretty amazing. One of my girls said Mr. Schmidt we were worried about you. I guess I'm not allowed to miss a day of school without it being something tragic. It was really cool to see how excited they were to see me again though and it definitely makes it a lot easier to deal with the little things. 
I showed my students a slideshow of pictures and videos I took from home of Escalon, Yosemite, and the snow. They loved seeing the pictures and definitely the pictures of the snow and the videos of me sledding and tackling the snowman we made. It was a lot of fun being able to show them my home and let them see things that haven't seen before. Other than that we've been just reviewing for our third quarter exams coming up in a couple days.  I am also temporarily teaching the 6th grade class for English until their teacher gets back. It's also been rough this week because so many of us have been sick so everyone is trying to cover for everybody. If you could please pray for our staff and our health right now. There's a lot going around and so many of us are dealing with things. 
Other than that I don't have a lot of news. I have been sleeping most of the time I've been back trying to deal with my jet lag and my cold. I wish I had more for you but I really haven't been out and about much. I do have a funny story from class though. The other day after answering a question correctly one of my second graders stands up and says 'I did that with my brain' and then pretends to telepathically read my mind for the answers. It was definitely one of the funnier things I've seen in class, and so very random. 
I haven't had the chance to take any pictures since I've been back, but here are a couple of Manila. I was able to spend some time in Manila while I was waiting for my flight back home and it was amazing to see how huge it was and how many people were there. It made LA look small. These pictures were taken from pretty high up and I'm not sure exactly what part of the city geographically we were but the city just goes on for ever there's no stop to it. It was also the craziest driving I've ever seen. I thought Guatemala City was crazy but it was nothing compared to Manila.