Last week I talked about my schedule and gave you basically what I do. This week I'm going to get a little deeper into what goes on more within it, and some of what it's like being here and what I'm going through.
Boracay is a small island that resolves entirely around tourism. The island runs to provide things for the tourists to do and places for them to stay. The population of Boracay is all estimations because the last census was in 2000. It is estimated that there are around 30,000 people who live on Boracay. There is an average of 65,000 tourists arriving in Boracay every month, which fluctuates between high season and off season. The huge majority of people on Boracay work in some way to provide for tourists, whether they are vendors, waiters, work at resorts, give massages, trike or motorbike drivers, work in stores, or run tourist attractions. It is a very interesting situation living on a tourist island. There are a lot of pros and cons. It is nice to have a lot of things that are western and keep things more close to home than if it was somewhere that didn't need to provide for tourists. At the same time it is hard to live somewhere that is a perfect vacation destination and not be on vacation. It can be hard to see everyone around you on vacation while you work everyday and are on a budget. It is awesome to live somewhere so beautiful and be right on the beach and have a lot of fun things to do every once on a while, but can be hard when people are kitesurfing and parasailing and scubadiving right in front of your house and you dont get to do any of it because you are on a budget.
The hardest thing is that because I'm white (and American) everyone assumes I'm a tourist. Most people don't have a whole lot of respect for tourists, especially Americans. Walking down the street you get people that just give you bad looks and there's nothing you can do but smile back and just try to change their view of Americans. Everyone assumes that I have a ton of money because I'm American. People don't find anything wrong with overcharging Americans because we have so much money that it wont affect us anyways. It doesn't matter if you know what you're doing or where you are going, you have to pretend like you do or you will get incredibly overcharged. Things here have Filipino prices and tourist prices. If you look like a tourist you will get charged more than it cost. It can be hard because you can get into situations where you don't know what things should cost but you just have to pretend like you know to try to get charged the right price. So whatever price they tell you you say no to and tell them that you live here and then hope they lower it to somewhere close to where it should be.
There are two ways to get to the majority of places on the island. The main road runs parallel to the beach and goes down the length of the island for the most part. Most things are either along the main road, along the strip of the beach or in between the two. I live on the side of the island that is the least touristy. The majority of the resorts and attractions and restaurants are on the other side of the island. So we do a lot of walking down the strip to get to where we want to eat or shop or whatever. Along the way we are constantly saying no thank you to vendors selling food, drinks, souvenirs, toys etc. as well as the people working out in front of restaurants trying to get you to come in and finally the massage ladies. It is a constant "no thank you" "no thank you" the entire way down the strip. It gets even worse after dark, especially if I'm by myself, because of the ladies working the strip at night. It becomes hard to be able to constantly be nice and smile and be polite to all of the people even though we know we have to. It can get tiring sometimes, but I always try to politely say no thank you, smile and keep going. As much as people think we are tourists, a lot of people know we are missionaries. Word gets around very quick here and so everything we do is under surveillance, it is so crucial that we do everything out of love, because the last thing we want is for people to see us as representatives of a religion, and act in a way that would turn them away from it.
The other week when my box came in I was going to carry it to my apartment because I didn't want to pay to have somebody take it there by vehicle. It was probably close to 50 pounds and just really big and awkward. I was walking down the street just barely after I left the school and a Muslim man asked me if I needed help. As much as I appreciated his offer I figured the box would be a lot harder to carry with 2 people so I said "no thank you I can get it". He asked me where I was going so I told him and by that time we were walking by his vehicle. He told me to hop on and put my box on and he would take me. Well nothing is free here, especially for Americans, so at first I was still resistant a little bit but I asked him how much he wanted. He told me not to worry about it, which doesn't always mean free, just not to worry about how much you'll be paying. So I asked him again if 20 pesos was ok and he said no, he didn't want any money. So I hopped on and he took me the couple minute drive to my apartment. I told him thank you and offered him 50 pesos, but he refused and said that he saw me walking with the huge box and wanted to help. He then told me to use the money to buy something for the kids. To me this was pretty shocking because he saw me coming out of a Christian school that is in the middle of a lot of the Muslim community on the island, and was so nice to me and so respectful of what I was doing. I told him thank you again and how much I appreciated his help. As he drove off I was completely blown away by what had happened. All I could think about is that if I didn't know a whole lot about religion I would know that he was a Muslim because of his clothes, and based on his actions I would be very attracted to his religion. I would have seen virtues that I would respect and admire and think would be worth pursuing. It made me think about how people were seeing me. Do people see me and become attracted to my religion? Do people see the fruit, the virtues that I live by that show what I believe and want to know more? Do people even know I'm christian? I have thought so much about it and how extremely important it is to be on top of my game all the time, to always be putting myself second, and to be always looking for ways to help people.
I wear a bracelet that says "I am second" as a reminder of the fact that God is first in my life, He is my everything, but I need a bracelet that says "I am third" as a reminder that I need to be constantly putting everyone around me before myself. Sometimes it makes you look crazy, but it also stands out and people can see what you are doing. There have been a few times when I've done some things that people have probably looked at like me like I was crazy, but they also saw the kindness and generosity that I was offering and that there was something more to it. Walking along the road up the hill on the way home from school I heard something fall on the top of the hill. A box of laundry had fallen off of a trike and was sliding down the hill. Nothing stops traffic here, people just drive if there are tings, animals, or people in the road they get hit because they shouldn't be there. Everyone just keeps going like there's nothing there. As I saw the box sliding down the hill and realizing it was going to keep going for a long ways and continue to lose clothes along the way, I ran out and grabbed it and some of the clothes close to it while trying to avoid the trikes driving by me. I took it up the hill to the person who lost it and helped them pick up the rest of the clothes that had fallen out, while everyone around just stood around watching us. People were looking at me like I was crazy and I was glad because I was glad I was able to show people that I care and that I am wiling to put myself in an uncomfortable situation and spend my time helping someone instead of just continuing on my way. They might have thought I was crazy, but it was a good crazy.
I continue to look for opportunities to be able to step out and to be able to show people why I'm here. Everything I do is seen by people and I want the things I do to back up the tings I believe. I want it to be visible. I might not wear clothes that show what religion I belong to like the Muslim community does, but I want to clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience (Col. 3:12) so that people can tell what I believe by my actions. In the sermon on Sunday Pastor Rolando said "As in sports, a player must know his position, and know how to position himself to make the plays." I thought that was an amazing way to think about it. It is so important to know what our strengths are and know what God has given us for the ability to help others. Once we know those strengths we need to put ourselves in the position to use them. Our strengths don't do any good unless we use them. God has given us abilities for a reason and he wants us to use them. Sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zones to be able to get in the best position to be able to use them to serve others.
As much as I look to impact people around the island, I spend most of my time and focus in the school. I get up in the morning and get myself ready to be the teacher to my kids that I would want to have. It is very challenging sometimes and is definitely frustrating at times. My second graders are so far apart in their abilities that it makes it very hard to teach all of them at the same time. I am trying to teach them about pronouns and how to write sentences when I have a kid who can't spell his name right, and his name is three letters long. Some of my students get everything that I'm saying and even more, and others aren't taking any of it in. It has been hard to feel so confident in how well I taught them something and how well I felt they understood it in class only to see half the class completely fail it on the quiz. Being a believer in the fact that student's success reflects their teacher's teaching makes it very hard sometimes to deal with the fact that my students do poorly. It is hard knowing that I came all the way over here, and felt God really wanted me to do this and yet having feelings of not being good enough. It is also hard to be in two different classes, working with the 2nd graders and 5th graders, and being really successful with one class and not very successful with the other. I continue to strive to be able to find ways for all of my students to be successful and be able to learn the tings they need to learn to be able to keep growing in their education and move along onto higher grades. School is not something that is always done here all the way through. If you aren't able to be successful in school, you might choose not to go to school anymore, and no one is really going to stop you in most cases. I try to be fun but I also try to be encouraging and find ways for kids to succeed and be proud of themselves because the worst thing that can happen is that the kids feel dumb or feel like they aren't good enough for school so they decide they don't want to go anymore. There isn't always much reinforcement from parents and so that makes it really tough to keep kids in school.
It also makes a lot of other things difficult as well. Typically if a student doesn't do their homework or is bad in class you would talk to their parents about it and they would discipline the kid in some way and the kid would change their behavior. The problem here is that parents don't really discipline their children. Something that I have noticed in my time here as that parents let kids do pretty much whatever they want. Kids make their own decisions because their parents aren't forcing them to make the decisions that parents would usually make their children choose. So many of the young kids in our school have such a hard time in class because they have never been disciplined before. Getting in trouble for misbehaving is a new concept for them. Trying to control a class full of second graders that have never had to behave before is very tough, and it is even tougher for the kindergarten and 1st grade teachers. A lot of young kids smoke and drink here and it happens in the US too, but in the US kids typically try to do it in secret. Here it's just not a big deal because most parents just don't discipline them for it. They give kids the free will to do whatever they want. So we have trouble sometimes in the school and in the community trying to be able to implement discipline and teaching about making smart decisions when we just don't get a lot of support from the adults that are following culture. One of my first days here I sent a kid to the office for punching another kid in the head. The Filipinos were shocked that I sent someone to the office and weren't sure why. What I have found out is that a kid punching a kid in the head is a pretty big deal in the US, here it is something that happens all the time. It's just what kids do. So we are trying to make this into the big deal that it is and introduce the idea that punching kids are not ok. It is challenging to try to make changes while realizing changes aren't going to occur over night.
After I finish 2nd grade the Filipino teachers take lunch and the volunteer teachers do club time or MAPEH (music, art, physical education, and health). I have an art station for now but will probably change to health after a couple of rotations so that health is getting taught. I love doing the art though and it's so fun being an art teacher and seeing how creative some of these kids can be. I give them examples and ideas and they completely blow me away with the things they come up with and do. It is also a lot of fun to be drawing an example on the board and when I finish the whole class lets out a collective "wooooah" and then applaud. That is a pretty cool feeling haha.
After club time I go downstairs to the 5th grade class and supervise them as they take their lunch. It is a fun time to be able to talk with them and teach them card tricks or whatever else is going on during lunch. We have a geography book in class that has all the countries and there flags and all sorts of facts about the countries. They started to ask me what countries the flags were, and so I would tell them what they were. What I didn't realize is that they didn't realize that the flags had the name of the country right above them at the start of the section. They were amazed that I knew all of the flags. So we went for a couple minutes and I tried to make it look like I honestly knew them. Finally, one of my students realized that it said the names of the countries in the title, so they began to cover the titles up so I couldn't read them. What they failed to notice is that the paragraphs of information under the flags also started with the name of the country, just in much smaller writing. So I was still able to name the flags and they were truly amazed with how incredibly smart I am.
The fifth grade class has been very successful and has improved a lot since the beginning of the year before they had me. That gives me a lot of encouragement that I need to be able to deal with not feeling good about 2nd grade. It has been awesome to see my 5th graders do so well and be able to grasp the concepts we've been learning. They help me keep going and keep having confidence in my abilities. The pictures below are some of the posters that my 5th graders made. We were studying vertebrates so they were required to make a poster of either birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, or mammals.
These next pictures are from the volleyball clinic that we have on Saturdays for the Filipino kids and the missionary kids and really whoever wants to be in it.
Volleyball becomes really interesting when there is a huge amount of wind. Not the straightest net in the world.
Due to time constraints and the fact that you've probably been reading for a really long time now I'm going to finish up with some more positive points and then finish talking about a lot of what it's like for me here next week.
This last week has been really awesome for me. I was asked to help lead a youth group for the Jr high and high school missionary kids here on the island, because they knew I had experience with high school and Jr high youth groups. I was hoping to be able to do something like this so I was thrilled about it. The only problem was that it was on Friday afternoons, which is when I go to the Ati village for a feeding. I love that site and those kids and I don't want to miss out on being able to go over there but I decided to try it for a week and see what I wanted to do. We had 10 kids and me and another missionary led the group. It is an awesome group and I absolutely loved doing it. It is something that I think God has given me the ability to do well and I think that I can't pass up on this chance. I am hoping that we can move it to another time so that I can still go to the Ati feeding but I just have to wait and see how it works out. I am so excited for this chance to be able to work with soe older kids and really have a small group that can grow and build great relationships with one another. It is hard for these kids being some of the only North American kids around, it isn't easy to leave your high school or jr high and all your friends to come to an island and be with a few other kids your age. I think it is also awesome for them to get some time to share their thoughts and get their voices heard which can be hard when you're family is on a mission trip. I really think I have an awesome opportunity and I'm really excited to see where it goes.
We had the group at the principal's house and we got typhooned in. So we stayed over for dinner and for a while afterwards and got to talk to their family a lot and learn more about them which was a lot of fun.
On Saturday we had a breakfast for the non-family missionaries, all the missionaries here by ourselves. We had an awesome breakfast and then spent most of the day playing cards and games and just hanging out. We had the volleyball clinic at 4 and then afterwards some of us decided to go for a run down the beach, which ended up being a run all the way to the end of the beach. We went for a swim and then worked our way back home. It was an amazing time of just getting closer to people and becoming better friends.There are three missionary families here with a lot of kids, and then there are six missionaries here by ourselves, 5 girls and me. Most peoples reaction to hearing I'm the only guy with a lot of girls is that it must be awesome. But it can be hard sometime being the only guy here. The girls do a lot of things on there own and I'm usually the odd one out. It hasn't been bad at all so far, they do an awesome job of including everyone in most of the things they do. But it can still be hard when you just want someone to talk to or have that close friend and I just don't really have it yet. I have friends from home that are girls that I can talk to as much as any of my friends that are boys, but when you are first getting to know people it can be a little bit harder. I am so glad that we are starting to do more things together and that they include me in so much because it can get lonely here by myself. I miss my family and I miss my friends. It can be hard not having people to talk to or hang out with or going to dinner by yourself all the time, but things are working out well and I have made a lot of friends.
One of the things that happens when you are the only guy on the island is you end up doing things like pilates, which I did today. They suckered me into coming by saying the kids would probably be playing basketball. So I went and the kids weren't there playing basketball. So I was stuck doing pilates. It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was basically just core strength exercises with some legs and triceps in there also. But it wasn't really much flexibility stuff at all, so it was pretty easy for me. So it wasn't bad at all it was actually pretty relaxing, and if you had the view from the top deck of their house over the ocean and the island it would be worth it for anybody. So it definitely didn't turn out as bad as I thought at all.
I have been here for just over 2 months now and I have learned a lot. I have been through a lot of challenges and a lot of frustrations, a lot of joy and a lot of fear, but the one thing I know is that this is where I am supposed to be and God is using me to do amazing things for Him and for these people. There are a lot of times I miss home and i wish I could see some of the people or have some of the things but there is no place I'd rather be than right here, because I know this is where I am needed. Pastor Rolando said in his sermon last week "players succeed when they follow the gameplan". That is true, players follow the gameplan and they have a better chance of being successful than just doing whatever they wanted. However the difference between the sports in this analogy and us is that coaches aren't perfect. They usually have a good gameplan, and it's best to follow their plan because they are good at what they do, but they still make mistakes sometimes. Our coach however is perfect, and He doesn't make mistakes. His gameplan is perfect and he has the perfect gameplan for us, our job is just to follow the plan and put ourselves in the right position to execute it. The problem is we usually don't stick to the gameplan and we go off and do our own thing. We try our own plan, and our plans are always going to have flaws at some point. I feel like being here is the gameplan that God has for me, I am trying to follow it and keep myself in positions to be able to make the plays. I don't know the outcome, and I don't even know the whole plan, but I take each day one step at a time and focus on following His lead in everything I do to be able to be the best that I can be at whatever He places in front of me.
