August 22, 2010,
We have spent all weekend on our presentations for tomorrow. It will be such a relief to have them over with tomorrow! I think Loy will even be happy… he’s looking forward to drinking gin tomorrow. I think we are, too. And we plan to pick up a cake for the staff after our day of presentations. We did take a break to run to the mall to search for a shirt for Lauren. We so aren’t Filipina size! But we found her a shirt and me new sunglasses. My beloved orange aviators broke recently. So sad. But they might be fixable… so I’m not crying yet. We also tried on shoes… haha! I was told when mine were too small, “No more big sizes.” Haha! But we have noticed that for being such small people, Filipinos have some big feet. Random, I know…
So, we went to Edna’s Cakeland to pick up our order for the nurses/midwives tomorrow. They provided us with snacks for the past 2 months, so we decided to bring snacks for them during the presentation tomorrow. We also picked up some drinks, think Capri-Sun style drinks in the pouches. So we loaded down a tricycle with 3 bags (7 boxes) of drinks and 2 bags (6 boxes) of cake snacks… pretty funny. I think we’ll cart them to the city health office tomorrow in my duffel bag. Lauren and I are funny… oh, yeah we are. I’m sure the nurses will laugh at us. But we wanted to do something for them… fancy little cake snacks. Then in the afternoon we have a presentation for the 89 barangay captains. Oh, goodness. This will be an interesting audience. The captains we have worked with have been nice, but they are definitely different than the nurses… when we thought of what to take for the captains, we laughed at the fleeting thought of cases of Red Horse, cartons of cigarettes and bottles of Tanduay. So the different snack ideas should show the difference between these two audiences. It will all be fine… ugh, but presenting. Ugh. I already feel nauseous.
Winnie is totally teaching me new words everyday… I wish we would have started 2 months ago! Today I learned, “I don’t know” and “my stomach hurts” – both of which will come in handy for me. Tagalog… it is a funny language and we’ve talked how we feel it represents the people and culture well… one person described it to me before I left the States as “Tagalog! It is the most fucked up language ever to exist!” Now that was a little harsh… but to each his own. It is quite the mix of languages… but after getting to know the country a little better, I can see where it comes from. Regardless, I’m glad Winnie is teaching me new words… I’m a dork and was excited when I heard “rain” mentioned a few different conversations and knew at least the topic!
Oh! And yesterday Lauren and I walked to several of the neighborhood sari-saris asking for Fudgee Bars… we greeted store owners and asked for Fudgee Bars in Tagalog. We figured we spoke somewhat correctly when they answered in Tagalog… then we were stumped because we didn’t always understand the response! Or know what to say next! After about 5 sari-saris we found Fudgee Bars, but not in the flavor we wanted, which is either buko or macadamia nut. We forget the flavor, but we know it is the green package. So we settled on Vanilla Jolt – pretty much like a Twinkie back home.
Oh, time to meet again about these presentations… ugh. And there goes my stomach again… masakit ang tiyan. Meron timba?
