May 1st, Tuesday: Reunion and Skyline!
May 2nd, Wednesday: UNP (University of Northern Philippines) Inquiry
May 3rd, Thursday: San Esteban Beach
May 4th, Friday: To Baguio City
May 5th, Saturday: Back To Labayug
May 6th, Sunday: Another Church Day
May 7th, Monday: Day Before The Wedding
Thank you for tuning in again. Hopefully I'll be able to get my wifi situated by the end of the day but until then enjoy pictures that I try to post when I have that glimpse of wifi. I have so many photos that I want to share with you all! I'm getting to know my family and I'm having to socialize on a level that it's exactly comfortable but what can I do when I want to live with these people? Lol.
Right now we're in Baguio City! In a hotel! Every time we come to Baguio and rent a room there's always at least one person who hasn't stayed in a hotel before and that amuses me. Like when you travel where do you stay at night? The answer is that they usually get to their destination (like a family's house) so they don't have to stay at a hotel.
Baguio is the place to be in order to keep my skin from being effected by the humid heat. Out of all my stays my rash appears but it doesn't itch so my skin gets better each time I come to the Philippines. The point of coming here was to go to school. Now, it's starting to look like I'm going to be waiting a semester or two to make 100% sure that I'll be okay skin wise.
Moving here changes my diet and that's one major change that helps out my skin. There is a lot of walking here. Not as much as I've had to deal with in the past but we've gone to a beach twice now and each time I spend at least 2-3 hours in the water. I found out that I'm a better swimmer than I thought I was. I'm hoping to improve on my swimming skills as I stay here because I love to swim! But I can't swim unless we're in the ocean because my skin can't handle chlorine or bleach which is a main cleaning agent for most pools.
Right now I'm fighting to stay awake so I can make a phone call back home. I need to stay up for another 2 hours or so. Or have an alarm go off in 2 hours but there are others sleeping around me so I find that rude. I could always put the earphones in and the alarm should only go off for me so I might try that.
For a long time I wanted to live here in Baguio because it's good for my skin but the Philippines has grown in population and advanced in many ways since the last time I was here in 2015. There's a chance my college might be free if a bill passes and I hope it does! Even if it doesn't I'll be able to afford school anyway because it is way cheaper here than it is back in the US.
I miss my friends and family but mainly my puppy. I know she's fine. But she's my home screen on my cellphone and every time I open up my phone I see her cute little face and I want to hug it and hold her. She's my baby. Lol. Anyways. Gaming wise I haven't done much of that. This is the first time I've gotten on my laptop since I've been here to be honest. The wifi crapped out on me and I haven't bothered to fix it lol.
At one point my phone deleted all my photos but thankfully my family takes tons of pictures so I can go through theirs for memory sake. I joked on Facebook that everyone will know that I'm okay because my family tags me in all the photos I'm in (or I was there but I may not be in the picture). If you're connected to my facebook you know that it's true. Filipinos takes a lot of pictures and that's why I don't care to take too many photos. I've gotten used to selfies but I still don't take as many as them.
We traveled on bus to get to Baguio and we're going to take another bus to get to Labayug. Here, the average bus is called a Jeepney while the air conditioned buses are called buses but they're actually charters which is nice. What you do is take your seat, a person will come up to you and ask where you are heading, you tell them then pay based off of that. They'll hole punch a ticket and hand it to you to tell you how much you're going to pay and then the bus will stop based off of where you want to get off. It's neat.
It's weird how manners work here. I'm not a very polite person based on American standards. Here, I have to stop myself from saying 'Thank you' or 'Please' or 'You're welcome' because if I say it, the gesture is rude. How is it rude? Here in the Philippines your family and your friends are more of an extension of yourself. You don't say 'please' and 'thank you' to yourself and that's why it's taken rude. If you tell you family 'thank you' they'll take it as you acting professional and they don't want you to treat them as if they are someone you work for or are working with.
Instead of saying 'Sir' or 'Ma'am' you say 'po' or you can substitute it by adding what they look like. Say that you're trying to get someone's attention. That person is a female, she seems older than you but not by too much, you would then say, "Manang?" and continue on with your question or what you would need to say.
I feel that I'll be able to learn better once my mother leaves. Me and her have never been able to break our culture barrier and even as I'm around the culture she grew up with I still don't understand her. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. But I don't feel that she helps me much learning wise.
For now, this is all I have based off a First Grade level workbook that I bought. The following is Tagalog (Tuh-gah-loog)
"Ako si Shinar. Biente dos taon aking edad. Abirl 15th, 1996 ang aking kaarawan. Nakatira sa Paltoc, San Emilio, Ilocos Sur, Philippines. Nag-aaral ako sa (UNP) University of Northern Philippines."
Translation: I am Shinar. I am 22 years old. My birthday is April 15th, 1996. I live in Paltoc, San emilio, Ilocos Sur, Philippines. I go to University of Northern Philippines."
I don't attend UNP yet but I hope I get to. As I said, we're waiting to see how my skin reacts. The beach helps. I use sulfur soap that helps. There is also a hot spring that I plan to go to hoping that it'll help my skin. The diet here is healthier and I have to walk more. In fact, the day I went swimming in San Esteban we swam to that rock, then played volleyball (attempted to lol), then swam to the rock again, and then went rock climbing to take pictures!
Another thing that I've learned is that in the Tagalog (and probably other languages lol) they don't translate word for word. Instead, they translate based off the sentence.
In order to talk to my family I have to learn Ilocano and Itneg. But in order for me to attend the school I have to learn Tagalog so I'm focusing on Tagalog. I also have more resources on Tagalog since it's the national language here. I get a variety of answers on how to spell words in Ilocano so I'm not sure which is correct but that's alright because I need to know how to speak it more than read or write in it.
More people have complimented my tattoos this time around. My family got used to them being part of culture since my brother in law, sister, and I all have more than one. They find the price insane but that's to be expected because of the exchange rate.
The app won't let me queue anything so I have to physically post and my phone is set to the Philippines time while my computer is set to Central time. If you're ever wondering what time it is here switch the the AM to PM or PM to AM and then add an hour.
Ex:
4PM Central time = 3AM in the Philippines.
My phone is doing me a real big sad. It will connect to a wifi once but after a while it'll stop connecting to the wifi. I hope if I buy a mobile wifi I won't have that problem because I wanted the phone so I could post pictures and blog my experience in the first place. It takes HD photos which I'm happy about but the connect craps out. My laptop back home had the same issue. It must be me. I don't know.
I'm just glad that I'm able to schedule this post so that'll buy me some time to get my wifi situation fixed. I want to thank you guys for tuning in again this week. I'll hopefully post again next week on the 14th. I made it through another week guys. Would you look at that. :)
My phone is doing me a real big sad. It will connect to a wifi once but after a while it'll stop connecting to the wifi. I hope if I buy a mobile wifi I won't have that problem because I wanted the phone so I could post pictures and blog my experience in the first place. It takes HD photos which I'm happy about but the connect craps out. My laptop back home had the same issue. It must be me. I don't know.
I'm just glad that I'm able to schedule this post so that'll buy me some time to get my wifi situation fixed. I want to thank you guys for tuning in again this week. I'll hopefully post again next week on the 14th. I made it through another week guys. Would you look at that. :)
Love you all.
Shinar
Email: Lusterdragon72@gmail.com (Title your email:Forward Flight)
No comments:
Post a Comment