Trevor: Monday, June 11, 2007

Macau cold spring

We spent the weekend at Tom and Diane's. They had some other visitors as well, so it was pretty crowded, although it gave me some inkling of how crazy things could be if they were to have foster babies in the house like they normally do. The house is obviously designed to have visitors, and it seems as if there are always people coming and going. Whether these people are patients, volunteers from the US, or family friends, Tom and Diane are always welcoming.

This weekend, in addition to Steve and I, there were four other guests. A British couple named Jill and David, who have lived on the island for many years, have now sold their house and are leaving Camiguin. Also Sonia, who is a teacher for the deaf in Illigan, a city about 3 hours away from here. She brought with her a high school student from St. Louis named Cole.

Steve and I mostly just relaxed on Saturday, I guess we were recuperating from our first week of 5 am wake ups. On Sunday, Sonia, Cole, Steve and I went to the Macau cold spring. The water there was a turquoise color, and there were little fish in it. It was freezing cold. The spring was full of people, as the spring serves basically as a community swimming pool.

Then Steve had the idea of finding the path from the spring to the school. It didn't sound too bad, as it was supposedly only a 1 km walk, albeit uphill. It turns out that Sonia, who taught at Mapa many years ago, didn't quite remember the way, and the path wasn't well maintained. It was a difficult hike, and the cooling effect that the spring had was definitely negated.

We're now back at the school, and Steve and I have found a definite need for development of the curriculum in both math and English. We're going to look at the public school curriculum and develop a modified one for the Mapa School.