February 18th, 2019

February 19^th, 2019

  Hello everyone!

  By the time this post I will have taken my Teacher Aptitude test and I will be sure to tell you all what my results are once I get them! But! I’m so excited! I want to tell you guys about an opportunity that came up! UNP was invited to trade students for one week with a university in Thailand! If I can manage the funds then I can go and I can show you guys Thailand!

  Of course, I’ll need to take my skin into account and culture. I’ll be around a university so I’ll go in what I usually wear at school. I talked to the person who is in charge of international connections and asked him what I need to do to connect him and Angelo State University! I’ll need to call the school and hopefully this can be worked out. There are many Filipinos in San Angelo so it won’t be as difficult for Filipinos to adjust since there’s already a community built for them!

  I don’t know if I mentioned this at any point of time but while I was there in San Angelo I was part of the Asian American Association of Woman. They’re a nonprofit organization that promotes Asian culture! The organization originally allowed only women to join but now it’s possible to be a male a join! When I was a member I mainly did anything my sister asked me to.

  For those of you who want to check out their website here’s the link.

  As I mentioned in my last post, there is a culture festival going on and I’m in the middle of it. Literally. To the right of my apartment I have the carnival, to the left is the food court and concerts, and behind the building they had their version of a Rodeo. Now, sad to say I didn’t go to all the events. I didn’t spend much time there except for the trade fair, carnival, and food court. But, this apparently happens every year so I probably have another chance to go next year!

  I’ll collect some articles and share them with you all! This weekend I went to Labayug, Sison, Pangasinan. One of my friends had to attend a funeral and I told him that I would be willing to go with him to Pangasinan because I also have family there. His family is from Bayambang which is an hour and half away from my family’s place.

  Labayug: It is impossible to see ALL my family in one visit. Even if I stayed for longer than a weekend I don’t think I’d meet all my family. This time I went to drop off my Aunties’ pasalubong (gift). It takes six-seven hours to get to Sison from Vigan. I absolutely can’t stand long rides like that but at least I was on a good bus. It was a little difficult sitting with my friend because he has to have the vent turned away from him in order to not get motion sickness but I need the vent open in order for me to not get motion sickness. Luckily, we both managed.

  The next day I woke up a little late. I had issues sleeping because Labayug is near a cement factory and that effects my ability to breath. That’s one of the downfalls of being there. It’s also hotter in Labayug. Vigan City is nothing like Labayug heat and I’m thankful for that.

  The only thing I managed to do was go see my cousin/best friend and meet/remeet people at church. I went in late but that was okay. The pastor picked me out easily and welcomed me to the church as a visitor. My dad is well known in Labayug outside of the fact that most everyone is family so I was praised for being there. I have a few pictures that I took. I’m sorry that I haven’t been scheduling pictures for y’all but I’ll be sure to do that in my free time!

  It was tiring but we were able to get back to Vigan the second day before 8pm. It was nice to have someone I know go with me to Labayug. Soon, I will visit my family in San Emilio. I landed in the Philippines the first day of school so I had to go straight from Manila to Vigan and that bus trip was awful.

  Let’s see… Kanawedan (Culture festival). I got a henna tattoo! I’ll post a picture of that. The artist was really cool. He spoke more Tagalog (Filipino) than Ilocano which was a challenge for me but I know that I’ve come far in learning these two languages because I was able to communicate with him and he was able to communicate with me. I never thought I’d be able to understand someone and they would be able to understand me yet we both cannot speak the other’s language very well. So he was talking to me in Filipino while I was responding in English/Ilocano.

  I’ve been getting into the habit of not taking pictures because I want to live in the moment around me but I also want to share it with you all. I have all these photos that are sitting in my phone and my computer yet I haven’t scheduled them! I need to!

  My language progress: It’s weird but I can understand a lot more now than I did when I came here. I can respond in Ilocano more but I’m nowhere near fluent. I can write and read better in Tagalog because that’s the language that is required for my classes. I can understand Tagalog but unless a person is looking at me and making a point that they’re talking to me I tend to not hear it. Information overload you know?

  As for Ilocano… I can recognize it and speak some of it but only enough for small conversation. I can’t read it very well but that’s because most of the words are like ten characters or more. I mentally skip over it when I pass by it and I try not to but half the time I don’t realize that I’m doing it.

  I was sick this week and to my surprise I was able to respond to people in Ilocano and English but if someone speaks to me in Tagalog my brain goes, “Huh. What?” Then it completely forgets what it’s trying to do. Lol.

 

  This year I’m going to try to do my best to keep up with this so be prepared to check on my blog more often because there’ll be more content soon! Thank you guys! Don’t be afraid to message me and keep up with me.

Thanks again everyone!

DJ/Cho/Nar

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