Philippines Adventure, pt. 5
Morning reflections
Good morning! I am writing this in the morning, so regardless of when you’re reading this, it is always nice to be wished a good morning ☺ At least I like the feeling. I like it better than good evening because in the morning, you have the whole day in front of you to live abundantly and to take each opportunity to breathe a full breath and exhale the contents of your lungs; in short, you have the whole day to be alive. Good evening signals the end of the day, the close to whatever you just witnessed or experienced. Sometimes, I suppose we wish the “good evening” would come sooner, maybe after a hard day or a stressful day; you know the days when you can’t seem to get “a leg up.” You might feel beaten and forlorn. On those days, a “good evening” could really make the end of your day, which in turn would make your sleep plentiful, which would in t
urn make the next morning a “good morning.” Well, I am preempting all of that, and I am wishing you a good morning that the spirit of the morning, of guileless abandon might be with you whenever you are reading this.
I woke up late this Thursday morning, at ten minutes to six, although I did not rise from my bed until 6 am. (You can tell that I started my blog late this week. I was waiting for inspiration. Sometimes it takes longer than others, so this morning, I caught the lovely writing bug, far different from the cockroaches I have been seeing: one last night in the dishes cupboard, which they students promptly cleaned and rewashed all the dishes inside. Yuck! Also, I saw another one scuttling across the floor this morning. I felt like running after it with my shoe but decided there would be others, so why attempt to kill that one. It wasn’t in my room, so I let it be.
However, those that come into my dominion, my plot of space, I have no mercy. Once there was this gross orange and black thing on my ceiling, and I really wanted to kill it because I thought, “What if it loses it grip and lands in my mouth while I am sleeping?” Well, by morning it was gone, and I chalked up it disappearance to having crawled out of the open window. My windows remain open all the time. In fact, I do not pull back my curtains because my windows are huge and look directly upon the main artery of the “campus,” so I maintain my privacy by keeping the curtains drawn.) Wow, my parenthetical comments took up the rest of the paragraph! I must say, though, that my word is a lot stronger than my actions. I could not bring myself to kill the huge spider that was in my room the other night. I just let it roam about, hoping that it would not make its way onto my bed. I kept glancing at it until it disappeared behind the wardrobe. I wonder where it went!
Mornings are glorious in the Philippines. The sun consistently rises at 5:45 am; the bright rays of sun easily conquer the darkness hearkening a new day. The sun will faithfully shine for 12 hours, unless overtaken by rain clouds, as it had been the past couple of days. That is why we rise so early to profit from the sunlight. This morning after breakfast I washed my clothes in the little orange bucket as I have been doing since I got here. (I discovered maybe a week and a half back that the students also wash their clothes by hand, but they do it in the laundry area in big round plastic tubs. I guess I could do that, but for some reason, I like the little shower and spigot I use and the orange bucket is good enough for me. At least I know there are other options. I once asked one of the female students if there is a washing schedule, and she laughed and said that if you want to wash, you wash, and if not, you don’t. They hang their clothes on hangars in many places, including the water pipes that are attached to the bottom of the overhang porch. In order to reach the high pipe, they use a bamboo pole with a notch carved into the top like those contraptions the retail clerks use to grab those clothes that hang impossibly high on the walls. I laughed when I saw how they managed that. What creativity to use even that space for drying the clothes!) I noticed dewdrops on the wire line where I hung my clothes, and I smiled. There is something about the simplicity of dew that makes me joyful, like the work of God during the night lasts until the morning to demonstrate that even when we were asleep, he was not. His hand is always at work.
Pancakes
I felt a little guilty for being in bed when the students were downstairs doing their devotion, but not guilty enough to rise earlier. I decided to indulge myself this morning, which is pancake morning! I do not think I have talked about pancakes yet. This is quite amusing; let me tell you! So, once or twice a week the students make pancakes. I am convinced that this is some sort of militaristic means of whipping the students into shape. (This school not only teaches the Bible but also it tries to instill within each student a sense of responsibility for his or her own life, including the ability to go without and to be thankful in all situations. I think these are really important lessons to learn considering they live in a country that is known for its hardships and its extremes, as I was reminded by Daniel McCarty, who is the husband of the husband and wife team who started this school and whose ministry continues to support its mission.) So, why are pancakes such an example of teaching students to be thankful in all situations? They are, after all, just fluffy breakfast items, right? Well, I am learning that nothing is quite as it seems on the surface here in the Philippines, and maybe not anywhere really. We just take for granted that we understand our own culture. I think, though, there are tacit implications that hover below the surface of even our own culture that we never quite comprehend or even notice. Anyway, the students have to wake up at 3:30 am to begin the process of making the pancakes! Can you imagine? I told them that I would rather eat plain rice than wake up that early just to cook banana or pineapple pancakes. (They flavor them with these fruits. The funny thing is that I have never actually seen the pineapple, yet it appears sometimes in the pancakes. I wonder where they hide it.)
The cooks for the day—they alternate the days on which they cook—wake up like little boo
t camp soldiers to make everyone the pancakes. They must do it with as little noise as possible considering everyone else (the female staff members and the female students) is still rightfully sleeping. I can only imagine what type of hand signals they have invented to make these pancakes seamlessly. And they are perfect pancakes, believe it or not. They are so golden brown and almost perfectly round and completely cooked. Today it was quite humorous: the students who made the pancakes forgot to put in the baking powder, so the pancakes were flat, like unleavened bread. All the other students were poking fun at the cooks, and the director and I were even laughing about how we were celebrating Passover. (In the Bible you can read of how the final plague that God wrought against the Egyptians was the death of the first born, and those that put blood on their doorposts were saved from this plague. After this the pharaoh of Egypt told them to leave immediately, so strong was his distress. Because the Israelites left in such haste, they were only able to take dough without leaven and cook it in the desert once they had left; so, it remains a tradition to commemorate this event that one should have unleavened bread for the Passover meal—Exodus 12.)
For all that work, the students only get to eat one full pancake and a quarter or a half depending on who is making them and how big they make the one pancake. The four o f us staff members (the other two have kids and get their own plate of four) get five pancakes to split among ourselves, which equals one and a quarter pancake per person. The good thing about pancake morning is that everyone is an equal in theory. Most mealtimes, the staff is given much more to eat than the students. Again, this is part of their training; however, on pancake morning, everyone is given one and a quarter or half of a pancake. I am blessed, though, to have one staff member who does not eat pancakes (another one for me) and two staff members who can barely finish their one pancake. That means, I am left with two extra pancakes that I have to eat ☺ Even here in the Philippines, I am the garbage can. I was laughing about this with the cook the other day, how I am the fridge monitor just like I was at my home in Naperville. I am always making sure that the leftovers get eaten ☺ So, that is the story of the pancakes. It is such a joy to eat them, even when they are commemorating the Passover, because I know how much love and attention went into making them. The downside is that by the time these cooks get to my class at 10:30, after two hours of classes, they are wiped out. I always know who were the cooks by their nodding off heads!
Teaching tales
I am very fortunate to be here as a teacher. I am enjoying it immensely, especially the grammar. I know that might sound corny, but I love grammar and it has been years since I have been able to spend any time on it. I think I am even learning too how to construct properly the verb tenses in my sentences ☺ On Thursday morning, I was telling the director of the school at breakfast how much I enjoyed teaching these students because they really seemed to care about their assignments and really seemed to want to do well. I attribute this to the fact that they are all making a sacrifice being here. No one is forcing them to be here and in fact, many of the parents and churches sponsoring them have a difficult time coming up with the 30 or so dollars monthly tuition fee. There is always a list of utang, which means “debt” that the students still owe. I had been thinking how truly fortunate I was to be teaching students who wanted to learn. I have always been an eager learner and really appreciate education; so much so, I do not think that I could teach at normal schools where education is obligatory. I do not think I could handle the students who do not care to be there. I give a lot of credit to all the educators who have the patience and the drive to continue day after day for the few who actually care.
Thursday, however, was a low point for sure. I was really discouraged, but I know that it will not happen again. This is what transpired. On Wednesday, I had assigned chapters 25 and 26 in the book of Acts for a reading and reflection assignment. I asked them to tell me one surprising or interesting thing that happened in those two chapters, in which many interesting and surprising things had happened. I got to class at 10:30, doing my grammar lesson on future progressive, future perfect, and future perfect progressive, then proceeded to ask the students if two people would volunteer to tell me what they learned. No one volunteered, which is not uncommon. (The first week I taught, I said that everyone had to speak at least once. I abandoned that because only the same five people continued to volunteer, not unlike American classrooms. I commiserated with the five who wanted to participate. That was always me.)
I chose one girl who could use some speaking practice, and she rustled around in her two Bibles and her notebook to find the paper. I waited a while, then called on another girl who had partially cheated on one of her assignments—two girls did part of their assignment together, which is not allowed according to Kelsey Rules. She gave me a general synopsis that could have applied to any of the chapters we had read. By that time, I was suspecting that people had not done the assignment. I asked her directly if she had done the assignment and she squeaked out a no. I proceeded to ask who had done the assignment, requesting that those who had read the chapters to raise their hand. Four girls raised their hand. Oh, I was so sad. My students who had such great track records marred their reliability. I had to lecture them. Now, I did not want justification. I did not care why they had not completed the assignment; I just wanted to have the assignment. I told them all that they had until the end of the day, even if it was at 9 or 10 pm, to give me the assignment. I think everyone understood my desires and were sorry for having disappointed. I told them that in the future, they should approach me if they need to put priority on other assignments. I am more than willing to give them an extension.
There are neither grades for these assignments nor a specific syllabus I am required to follow. I simply want them to respect my assignments and use them to learn. I think they unde
rstand now the method I prefer they employ. It is hard to confront errant behavior, but I think that I dealt with it well. I know they did not mean to hurt me or injure me or even disrespect me. They simply refused to prioritize this assignment. Hopefully they have learned. It was also a good opportunity for me to employ the lessons I am learning from this book I am reading called “How to Stop the Pain,” which talks about avoiding judgment in dealing with situations in one’s life. That is why I neither cared about their justification for their behavior nor was personally affronted by their negligence. It is their problem, not mine that they failed to do the assignment. If I had chosen to judge them in reference to my person, I may have been severely hurt, thinking they had not done the assignment because they disliked me or thought my class was unimportant. How easy it is to cast judgment and how hard it is to deal with the results; yet, how strange is it to let things lie as facts and events and how wonderfully absent of suffering the result is.
I am clumsy or maybe it’s the steps!
I had two falls this week on the same day if you can believe it (I suppose it is not all that difficult to believe something like that as it is not out of the ordinary that people trip over themselves). Well, I injured my knee and my face. First, I was running back from Wright Park where I run regularly, and I tripped over some uneven ground or something and landed right on my left knee and my hands. Thankfully, my hands caught the majority of the pressure, leaving my knee scraped but really unharmed. I am okay with superficial wounds. Then, after dinner, I made myself some tea in a nice big mug. The tea smelled like grass like all good and natural teas do ☺ I was walking up the stairs and suddenly I tripped and dropped my mug, which was surprisingly unharmed, and I hit my face right above my mouth. Ouch! I was so disgusted with myself that I stomped down the steps and put my mug in the kitchen, refusing to even drink the remaining tea in t he mug. I hate falling!
Round the World Pass
This is a good story. Have you ever heard of the Round the World Pass (RWP for short)? It is available through the Skyteam, which is one of the biggest airline networks that cover the globe. Partners include Delta, NW, KLM, Air France, Korean Airlines, China Southern, Aitalia, Continental, and AeroMexico, along with a few others. Basically, these are the biggest airlines in the world. Well, they have this great deal that allows a traveler to buy one ticket and on that ticket can go a total of 16 segments. As most promotions have, there is a lot of fine print that they do not really explain. Only what looks and sounds good is on the web.
So, let me tell you how to go about getting a RWP. We contacted Delta because it is one of the bigger domestic airlines. You have to ask for the RWP desk. This is the only place where they know what you are talking about. You have to go through reservations and international reservations; then you will finally get the RWP desk. No one else that you talk to will know that you want, so do not try to explain to the other “representatives.” Be patient and wait for the RWP desk. This will save you a lot of frustration in the end. Once you get the RWP desk, please be prepared to give the “representative” the following things: your exact itinerary, which you should plan ahead by going to the Skyteam website where they have the “find flights” function, the dates you want to leave the US and the dates you plan to come back to the US. (Again, if you follow all these steps, the process is really easy. Unfortunately, none of this is explained to you on the website! It’s as if they do not want people to take advantage of the deal or they want to make sure that the faint of heart is not planning to use this travel assistance!)
So, you go to the Skyteam’s website and you look for the “find flights” function, which should appear on the home screen. Why should you do this and why don’t they tell you to do this on the brochure? Well, first, you need to do this to make sure that your particular trajectory is available; then, you must do this to find how many layovers you must make, which each count as a stop and a segment. It would be easy enough to recommend this to travelers, but I think they want to make the advertisement all glittery and not practical. So is the state of advertisement in the world today. On Coke ads, they don’t say that if you drink a lot of this soda, you will get cavities and are at risk for diabetes. At McDonald’s they don’t advise you to ration your visits to the restaurant because extensive intake will put you at risk for heart disease and obesity. Or, take the general junk food industry that advertises to kids: there are no warnings to the kids that what they are eating in excess will stunt proper development and health. That is why there is so much corruption in the world today! There is no honesty, and people are happy enough to be deceived as long as it tastes and looks good. All that glitters is not gold, right? Well, this RWP brochure that originally enticed me was mostly correct, but the process in which to obtain this great pass was more than a little arduous. If you are planning a Round the World trip like me, however, you can benefit from my experience and perform efficiently and painlessly!
So, take your ideas to the Skyteam’s website and plug in your desired route. This is the
stage where it is easy to view whether the route you have selected is feasible. If it is not, you can easily change your plans and create a new itinerary. Once you have established your itinerary, you take that to the “representative” at Delta, and they input it all and give you the resulting mileage and payment needed. At this point, you can decide to do one of two things. You can choose to give them all the dates for your entire trip, thereby receiving all e-tickets for your journey and paying all the taxes upfront (from this point, if you choose to change any of your plans, you must pay $100 for each change). Or, you could choose to give them only the itinerary without the dates, allowing you to be a little more flexible with the lengths of stay you plan at each destination. This is the option I chose because I am yet unsure of when I will go to the places on my itinerary. I have paper tickets for these destinations, and I will pay taxes on the flights once I have the dates set in stone. So, this is nice that I still have time to decide, and should you buy a ticket like this, it allows you to make your itinerary and plan later for how long you will remain in each given place. You can even decide as close as seven days before you leave a place when you would like to proceed to the next destination.
Wow! So, as smooth as it could be for you is as rocky as it was for me. I knew nothing about the Skyteam’s website feature, so I planned my itinerary without regard to the number of layovers I must make. (I have to make three layovers in Guanzhou, so I decided I might as well visit the city since I will be seeing the airport so much!) Secondly, I did not know that you had to have the complete itinerary for the agent and that you could not change your destinations after the ticket was ordered. Nor did I realize that the fixed cost for US travelers was different for Korean travelers. (If you are a Korean traveler or an expatriate in Korea, your ticket will cost you $1000 less than your American counterparts! I wonder what is the reason for this. I think it may have to do with taxes. It’s always about taxes!) Thirdly, I did not realize that you are not allowed to pass the city at which you began the trip. For example, I will start in Chicago, so I am not allowed to go to California on the way from Europe since that would be crossing the start line. I could have gone to California on my way to Seoul Korea, but not on my way back from Europe.
So, that was my experience. The process can really be fun if you know all the ins and outs, but man can it be frustrating when you are a newbie trying your hand at Round the World travel. Here is my final itinerary: I will go from Chicago to Seoul, South Korea. From Seoul, I will return to Manila, where I will remain for three and a half months. From Manila, I will travel—through the Guangzhou airport—to Bangkok, Thailand, where I will remain for about one month. Then, I will take a plane from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, where I will stay for about one week. From Ho Chi Minh (formerly called Saigon during its colonial days and still called Saigon according by the airline industry), I will go—once again through Guangzhou—to Hong Kong, where I will remain about one week. Then, I will leave Hong Kong and fly directly to Tokyo. I will take a train to Osaka, which is still considered one segment, even though I am not flying! After Osaka, I will fly to Guangzhou, China, where I plan to stay for a few days. I want to know that the city actually looks like since I have to spend so much time flying through. Then, I will fly to New Delhi, India, where I plan to remain for a week and a half or so. New Delhi will be my final Asian destination. From there, I will fly to Amsterdam, which is a direct flight. I have never been to Amsterdam, even though I have flown through its airport on many occasions. It will be fun to actually visit the city! Then, I will go from Amsterdam to Berlin, where I will remain for a week or more. From Berlin, I will go to Paris and visit friends, from which I will return to the US via New York City, where I will stay for a week or so. Finally, I will return to Chicago on July 30 after about 3.5 months of continuous travel! How exciting! This amounts to more than 28,000 miles!
The Chicken by my window!
Finally, I will leave you this week with a humorous account of the chicken that has laid its eggs near my window. Can you believe it? One of the chickens that I despise so greatly has dec
ided to take up residence for 21 days as it incubates its eggs! That means that in about a week, for it has been there now two weeks or so, we will have little baby chicks waddling around! Thankfully, one of the staff members is going to bring the chicks back to his parents’ home in the provinces. Good riddance! It continues to get spooked by I don’t know what, abruptly leaving its little haven and scaring the dickens out of me. Remember, it is almost as if it is living right on top of me considering my windows do not close. I think it could even wriggle inside my room if it were smart enough. Thankfully, chickens are dumb and would never be able to devise a plan like that. I rest secure in my mental superiority!
Good morning! I am writing this in the morning, so regardless of when you’re reading this, it is always nice to be wished a good morning ☺ At least I like the feeling. I like it better than good evening because in the morning, you have the whole day in front of you to live abundantly and to take each opportunity to breathe a full breath and exhale the contents of your lungs; in short, you have the whole day to be alive. Good evening signals the end of the day, the close to whatever you just witnessed or experienced. Sometimes, I suppose we wish the “good evening” would come sooner, maybe after a hard day or a stressful day; you know the days when you can’t seem to get “a leg up.” You might feel beaten and forlorn. On those days, a “good evening” could really make the end of your day, which in turn would make your sleep plentiful, which would in t
urn make the next morning a “good morning.” Well, I am preempting all of that, and I am wishing you a good morning that the spirit of the morning, of guileless abandon might be with you whenever you are reading this.I woke up late this Thursday morning, at ten minutes to six, although I did not rise from my bed until 6 am. (You can tell that I started my blog late this week. I was waiting for inspiration. Sometimes it takes longer than others, so this morning, I caught the lovely writing bug, far different from the cockroaches I have been seeing: one last night in the dishes cupboard, which they students promptly cleaned and rewashed all the dishes inside. Yuck! Also, I saw another one scuttling across the floor this morning. I felt like running after it with my shoe but decided there would be others, so why attempt to kill that one. It wasn’t in my room, so I let it be.
However, those that come into my dominion, my plot of space, I have no mercy. Once there was this gross orange and black thing on my ceiling, and I really wanted to kill it because I thought, “What if it loses it grip and lands in my mouth while I am sleeping?” Well, by morning it was gone, and I chalked up it disappearance to having crawled out of the open window. My windows remain open all the time. In fact, I do not pull back my curtains because my windows are huge and look directly upon the main artery of the “campus,” so I maintain my privacy by keeping the curtains drawn.) Wow, my parenthetical comments took up the rest of the paragraph! I must say, though, that my word is a lot stronger than my actions. I could not bring myself to kill the huge spider that was in my room the other night. I just let it roam about, hoping that it would not make its way onto my bed. I kept glancing at it until it disappeared behind the wardrobe. I wonder where it went!
Mornings are glorious in the Philippines. The sun consistently rises at 5:45 am; the bright rays of sun easily conquer the darkness hearkening a new day. The sun will faithfully shine for 12 hours, unless overtaken by rain clouds, as it had been the past couple of days. That is why we rise so early to profit from the sunlight. This morning after breakfast I washed my clothes in the little orange bucket as I have been doing since I got here. (I discovered maybe a week and a half back that the students also wash their clothes by hand, but they do it in the laundry area in big round plastic tubs. I guess I could do that, but for some reason, I like the little shower and spigot I use and the orange bucket is good enough for me. At least I know there are other options. I once asked one of the female students if there is a washing schedule, and she laughed and said that if you want to wash, you wash, and if not, you don’t. They hang their clothes on hangars in many places, including the water pipes that are attached to the bottom of the overhang porch. In order to reach the high pipe, they use a bamboo pole with a notch carved into the top like those contraptions the retail clerks use to grab those clothes that hang impossibly high on the walls. I laughed when I saw how they managed that. What creativity to use even that space for drying the clothes!) I noticed dewdrops on the wire line where I hung my clothes, and I smiled. There is something about the simplicity of dew that makes me joyful, like the work of God during the night lasts until the morning to demonstrate that even when we were asleep, he was not. His hand is always at work.
Pancakes
I felt a little guilty for being in bed when the students were downstairs doing their devotion, but not guilty enough to rise earlier. I decided to indulge myself this morning, which is pancake morning! I do not think I have talked about pancakes yet. This is quite amusing; let me tell you! So, once or twice a week the students make pancakes. I am convinced that this is some sort of militaristic means of whipping the students into shape. (This school not only teaches the Bible but also it tries to instill within each student a sense of responsibility for his or her own life, including the ability to go without and to be thankful in all situations. I think these are really important lessons to learn considering they live in a country that is known for its hardships and its extremes, as I was reminded by Daniel McCarty, who is the husband of the husband and wife team who started this school and whose ministry continues to support its mission.) So, why are pancakes such an example of teaching students to be thankful in all situations? They are, after all, just fluffy breakfast items, right? Well, I am learning that nothing is quite as it seems on the surface here in the Philippines, and maybe not anywhere really. We just take for granted that we understand our own culture. I think, though, there are tacit implications that hover below the surface of even our own culture that we never quite comprehend or even notice. Anyway, the students have to wake up at 3:30 am to begin the process of making the pancakes! Can you imagine? I told them that I would rather eat plain rice than wake up that early just to cook banana or pineapple pancakes. (They flavor them with these fruits. The funny thing is that I have never actually seen the pineapple, yet it appears sometimes in the pancakes. I wonder where they hide it.)
The cooks for the day—they alternate the days on which they cook—wake up like little boo
t camp soldiers to make everyone the pancakes. They must do it with as little noise as possible considering everyone else (the female staff members and the female students) is still rightfully sleeping. I can only imagine what type of hand signals they have invented to make these pancakes seamlessly. And they are perfect pancakes, believe it or not. They are so golden brown and almost perfectly round and completely cooked. Today it was quite humorous: the students who made the pancakes forgot to put in the baking powder, so the pancakes were flat, like unleavened bread. All the other students were poking fun at the cooks, and the director and I were even laughing about how we were celebrating Passover. (In the Bible you can read of how the final plague that God wrought against the Egyptians was the death of the first born, and those that put blood on their doorposts were saved from this plague. After this the pharaoh of Egypt told them to leave immediately, so strong was his distress. Because the Israelites left in such haste, they were only able to take dough without leaven and cook it in the desert once they had left; so, it remains a tradition to commemorate this event that one should have unleavened bread for the Passover meal—Exodus 12.)For all that work, the students only get to eat one full pancake and a quarter or a half depending on who is making them and how big they make the one pancake. The four o f us staff members (the other two have kids and get their own plate of four) get five pancakes to split among ourselves, which equals one and a quarter pancake per person. The good thing about pancake morning is that everyone is an equal in theory. Most mealtimes, the staff is given much more to eat than the students. Again, this is part of their training; however, on pancake morning, everyone is given one and a quarter or half of a pancake. I am blessed, though, to have one staff member who does not eat pancakes (another one for me) and two staff members who can barely finish their one pancake. That means, I am left with two extra pancakes that I have to eat ☺ Even here in the Philippines, I am the garbage can. I was laughing about this with the cook the other day, how I am the fridge monitor just like I was at my home in Naperville. I am always making sure that the leftovers get eaten ☺ So, that is the story of the pancakes. It is such a joy to eat them, even when they are commemorating the Passover, because I know how much love and attention went into making them. The downside is that by the time these cooks get to my class at 10:30, after two hours of classes, they are wiped out. I always know who were the cooks by their nodding off heads!
Teaching tales
I am very fortunate to be here as a teacher. I am enjoying it immensely, especially the grammar. I know that might sound corny, but I love grammar and it has been years since I have been able to spend any time on it. I think I am even learning too how to construct properly the verb tenses in my sentences ☺ On Thursday morning, I was telling the director of the school at breakfast how much I enjoyed teaching these students because they really seemed to care about their assignments and really seemed to want to do well. I attribute this to the fact that they are all making a sacrifice being here. No one is forcing them to be here and in fact, many of the parents and churches sponsoring them have a difficult time coming up with the 30 or so dollars monthly tuition fee. There is always a list of utang, which means “debt” that the students still owe. I had been thinking how truly fortunate I was to be teaching students who wanted to learn. I have always been an eager learner and really appreciate education; so much so, I do not think that I could teach at normal schools where education is obligatory. I do not think I could handle the students who do not care to be there. I give a lot of credit to all the educators who have the patience and the drive to continue day after day for the few who actually care.
Thursday, however, was a low point for sure. I was really discouraged, but I know that it will not happen again. This is what transpired. On Wednesday, I had assigned chapters 25 and 26 in the book of Acts for a reading and reflection assignment. I asked them to tell me one surprising or interesting thing that happened in those two chapters, in which many interesting and surprising things had happened. I got to class at 10:30, doing my grammar lesson on future progressive, future perfect, and future perfect progressive, then proceeded to ask the students if two people would volunteer to tell me what they learned. No one volunteered, which is not uncommon. (The first week I taught, I said that everyone had to speak at least once. I abandoned that because only the same five people continued to volunteer, not unlike American classrooms. I commiserated with the five who wanted to participate. That was always me.)
I chose one girl who could use some speaking practice, and she rustled around in her two Bibles and her notebook to find the paper. I waited a while, then called on another girl who had partially cheated on one of her assignments—two girls did part of their assignment together, which is not allowed according to Kelsey Rules. She gave me a general synopsis that could have applied to any of the chapters we had read. By that time, I was suspecting that people had not done the assignment. I asked her directly if she had done the assignment and she squeaked out a no. I proceeded to ask who had done the assignment, requesting that those who had read the chapters to raise their hand. Four girls raised their hand. Oh, I was so sad. My students who had such great track records marred their reliability. I had to lecture them. Now, I did not want justification. I did not care why they had not completed the assignment; I just wanted to have the assignment. I told them all that they had until the end of the day, even if it was at 9 or 10 pm, to give me the assignment. I think everyone understood my desires and were sorry for having disappointed. I told them that in the future, they should approach me if they need to put priority on other assignments. I am more than willing to give them an extension.
There are neither grades for these assignments nor a specific syllabus I am required to follow. I simply want them to respect my assignments and use them to learn. I think they unde
rstand now the method I prefer they employ. It is hard to confront errant behavior, but I think that I dealt with it well. I know they did not mean to hurt me or injure me or even disrespect me. They simply refused to prioritize this assignment. Hopefully they have learned. It was also a good opportunity for me to employ the lessons I am learning from this book I am reading called “How to Stop the Pain,” which talks about avoiding judgment in dealing with situations in one’s life. That is why I neither cared about their justification for their behavior nor was personally affronted by their negligence. It is their problem, not mine that they failed to do the assignment. If I had chosen to judge them in reference to my person, I may have been severely hurt, thinking they had not done the assignment because they disliked me or thought my class was unimportant. How easy it is to cast judgment and how hard it is to deal with the results; yet, how strange is it to let things lie as facts and events and how wonderfully absent of suffering the result is.I am clumsy or maybe it’s the steps!
I had two falls this week on the same day if you can believe it (I suppose it is not all that difficult to believe something like that as it is not out of the ordinary that people trip over themselves). Well, I injured my knee and my face. First, I was running back from Wright Park where I run regularly, and I tripped over some uneven ground or something and landed right on my left knee and my hands. Thankfully, my hands caught the majority of the pressure, leaving my knee scraped but really unharmed. I am okay with superficial wounds. Then, after dinner, I made myself some tea in a nice big mug. The tea smelled like grass like all good and natural teas do ☺ I was walking up the stairs and suddenly I tripped and dropped my mug, which was surprisingly unharmed, and I hit my face right above my mouth. Ouch! I was so disgusted with myself that I stomped down the steps and put my mug in the kitchen, refusing to even drink the remaining tea in t he mug. I hate falling!
Round the World Pass
This is a good story. Have you ever heard of the Round the World Pass (RWP for short)? It is available through the Skyteam, which is one of the biggest airline networks that cover the globe. Partners include Delta, NW, KLM, Air France, Korean Airlines, China Southern, Aitalia, Continental, and AeroMexico, along with a few others. Basically, these are the biggest airlines in the world. Well, they have this great deal that allows a traveler to buy one ticket and on that ticket can go a total of 16 segments. As most promotions have, there is a lot of fine print that they do not really explain. Only what looks and sounds good is on the web.
So, let me tell you how to go about getting a RWP. We contacted Delta because it is one of the bigger domestic airlines. You have to ask for the RWP desk. This is the only place where they know what you are talking about. You have to go through reservations and international reservations; then you will finally get the RWP desk. No one else that you talk to will know that you want, so do not try to explain to the other “representatives.” Be patient and wait for the RWP desk. This will save you a lot of frustration in the end. Once you get the RWP desk, please be prepared to give the “representative” the following things: your exact itinerary, which you should plan ahead by going to the Skyteam website where they have the “find flights” function, the dates you want to leave the US and the dates you plan to come back to the US. (Again, if you follow all these steps, the process is really easy. Unfortunately, none of this is explained to you on the website! It’s as if they do not want people to take advantage of the deal or they want to make sure that the faint of heart is not planning to use this travel assistance!)
So, you go to the Skyteam’s website and you look for the “find flights” function, which should appear on the home screen. Why should you do this and why don’t they tell you to do this on the brochure? Well, first, you need to do this to make sure that your particular trajectory is available; then, you must do this to find how many layovers you must make, which each count as a stop and a segment. It would be easy enough to recommend this to travelers, but I think they want to make the advertisement all glittery and not practical. So is the state of advertisement in the world today. On Coke ads, they don’t say that if you drink a lot of this soda, you will get cavities and are at risk for diabetes. At McDonald’s they don’t advise you to ration your visits to the restaurant because extensive intake will put you at risk for heart disease and obesity. Or, take the general junk food industry that advertises to kids: there are no warnings to the kids that what they are eating in excess will stunt proper development and health. That is why there is so much corruption in the world today! There is no honesty, and people are happy enough to be deceived as long as it tastes and looks good. All that glitters is not gold, right? Well, this RWP brochure that originally enticed me was mostly correct, but the process in which to obtain this great pass was more than a little arduous. If you are planning a Round the World trip like me, however, you can benefit from my experience and perform efficiently and painlessly!
So, take your ideas to the Skyteam’s website and plug in your desired route. This is the
stage where it is easy to view whether the route you have selected is feasible. If it is not, you can easily change your plans and create a new itinerary. Once you have established your itinerary, you take that to the “representative” at Delta, and they input it all and give you the resulting mileage and payment needed. At this point, you can decide to do one of two things. You can choose to give them all the dates for your entire trip, thereby receiving all e-tickets for your journey and paying all the taxes upfront (from this point, if you choose to change any of your plans, you must pay $100 for each change). Or, you could choose to give them only the itinerary without the dates, allowing you to be a little more flexible with the lengths of stay you plan at each destination. This is the option I chose because I am yet unsure of when I will go to the places on my itinerary. I have paper tickets for these destinations, and I will pay taxes on the flights once I have the dates set in stone. So, this is nice that I still have time to decide, and should you buy a ticket like this, it allows you to make your itinerary and plan later for how long you will remain in each given place. You can even decide as close as seven days before you leave a place when you would like to proceed to the next destination.Wow! So, as smooth as it could be for you is as rocky as it was for me. I knew nothing about the Skyteam’s website feature, so I planned my itinerary without regard to the number of layovers I must make. (I have to make three layovers in Guanzhou, so I decided I might as well visit the city since I will be seeing the airport so much!) Secondly, I did not know that you had to have the complete itinerary for the agent and that you could not change your destinations after the ticket was ordered. Nor did I realize that the fixed cost for US travelers was different for Korean travelers. (If you are a Korean traveler or an expatriate in Korea, your ticket will cost you $1000 less than your American counterparts! I wonder what is the reason for this. I think it may have to do with taxes. It’s always about taxes!) Thirdly, I did not realize that you are not allowed to pass the city at which you began the trip. For example, I will start in Chicago, so I am not allowed to go to California on the way from Europe since that would be crossing the start line. I could have gone to California on my way to Seoul Korea, but not on my way back from Europe.
So, that was my experience. The process can really be fun if you know all the ins and outs, but man can it be frustrating when you are a newbie trying your hand at Round the World travel. Here is my final itinerary: I will go from Chicago to Seoul, South Korea. From Seoul, I will return to Manila, where I will remain for three and a half months. From Manila, I will travel—through the Guangzhou airport—to Bangkok, Thailand, where I will remain for about one month. Then, I will take a plane from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, where I will stay for about one week. From Ho Chi Minh (formerly called Saigon during its colonial days and still called Saigon according by the airline industry), I will go—once again through Guangzhou—to Hong Kong, where I will remain about one week. Then, I will leave Hong Kong and fly directly to Tokyo. I will take a train to Osaka, which is still considered one segment, even though I am not flying! After Osaka, I will fly to Guangzhou, China, where I plan to stay for a few days. I want to know that the city actually looks like since I have to spend so much time flying through. Then, I will fly to New Delhi, India, where I plan to remain for a week and a half or so. New Delhi will be my final Asian destination. From there, I will fly to Amsterdam, which is a direct flight. I have never been to Amsterdam, even though I have flown through its airport on many occasions. It will be fun to actually visit the city! Then, I will go from Amsterdam to Berlin, where I will remain for a week or more. From Berlin, I will go to Paris and visit friends, from which I will return to the US via New York City, where I will stay for a week or so. Finally, I will return to Chicago on July 30 after about 3.5 months of continuous travel! How exciting! This amounts to more than 28,000 miles!
The Chicken by my window!
Finally, I will leave you this week with a humorous account of the chicken that has laid its eggs near my window. Can you believe it? One of the chickens that I despise so greatly has dec
ided to take up residence for 21 days as it incubates its eggs! That means that in about a week, for it has been there now two weeks or so, we will have little baby chicks waddling around! Thankfully, one of the staff members is going to bring the chicks back to his parents’ home in the provinces. Good riddance! It continues to get spooked by I don’t know what, abruptly leaving its little haven and scaring the dickens out of me. Remember, it is almost as if it is living right on top of me considering my windows do not close. I think it could even wriggle inside my room if it were smart enough. Thankfully, chickens are dumb and would never be able to devise a plan like that. I rest secure in my mental superiority!
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