Steven: Wednesday July 25

Only two days left here at the school. I know I’ve already mentioned this but I’m definitely going to miss a lot of the people here. Both the kids and the staff have taught me so much about their culture, especially how easy it is to make good friends despite the huge differences. Not to mention all the sign language and Visayan I’ve learned, even though I'm not sure how I’m going to keep practicing that when I get home.

I spent some time today teaching the scheduled performance songs to Joseph and Jade. I think they’ve just about got them down, and I bet they will stun the crowd with their performance. We’re working on getting the kids involved by singing the choruses, so that will be the main task over the next day or so. I was hoping to teach them a dance but I think that it would take more time than I have. I definitely want to have another ‘dance party night’ with everyone to give them some tips on how to dance to other styles of music. Filipinos definitely love music, which is great except for one hideous institution that drives me crazy, karaoke. Everywhere I go people are doing karaoke, and 99.9999999% of the time it’s very bad and very annoying. Do they really need to turn the volume way up on those things? Anyway I digress. Apparently a puppet show is scheduled for this Friday as well, so I’m curious to see how that turns out.

It’s been really hot up here in the mountains lately, yet as usual Jade doesn’t seem to mind it and can pass out in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile I sit there in a sweat just waiting for morning to come. It seems like the animals have gotten wind of my imminent departure, as we’ve been having an unusual amount of visitors lately. Last night the rats and gekkos were causing quite a ruckus. A big spider also crawled into my bag, I guess he wanted to go check out my crib.

Before I sign off I wanted to address something I said in an earlier entry. I had voiced concern over why Tom and Diane did not admit kids under 9 to the school. I feel I should clarify that the school here is intended as a second chance school for dropouts. It’s not meant to compete with regular public schools, Tom and Diane have no problem if kids want to go to their barangay’s school. Basically Mapa addresses the need for an educational institution for kids passed up by the government school system.

Tomorrow I think we'll get a final round of basketball versus the local MAPA pro team. Hopefully we can pull it together so the teachers don't end up losing money again.