Hue, Vietnam

Tricycles of Hue

Siesta time at the market

Clementines

Fruits of Hue

Beans

Common site around Hue

After checking in to our pension, we went out to explore Hue.  It was a lot quieter than Hanoi, less foreigners, less traffic.  We went to the local market, and were harassed by vendors aggressively trying to get us to buy things from their stands.  After we all got angry we decided to go get some Vietnamese coffee.....mmmmm!  Nothing like condensed milk, ice and coffee to make things better.

Vietnamese iced coffee

Beautiful gate

Incense on the sidewalk

Museum day in Hanoi

Bike vendor

Women soldiers

Our last full day in Hanoi before getting on the night train south to Hue (middle Vietnam) was spent touring some of the best museums of Hanoi.  It was awesome to see the Women's Museum, a four story building dedicated to telling the history of Vietnamese women.  Most impressing was the role of female guerilla fighters during the Vietnam war.  Many women took up arms, leading groups of men soldiers in the fight.  Political prisoners were kept for years, tortured and sometimes killed.  The strength of Vietnamese women leaves me in awe. 

Propaganda posters 

After a yummy dinner and real ice cream, we hopped on an eleven hour night train to a town in the  middle of Vietnam named Hue.  We didn't know what to expect on our sleeper train, and it ended up being an adventure!  We shared a room with five other people.  There were three levels of beds and I had to carefully maneuver into the middle bunk trying to not bump my head. 

Hanna and Stacey after a night on the train.

 Halong Bay
Famous for its limestone cliffs jutting out of the water, this is a World heritage UNESCO site. 
We took a two day/one night cruise where we got to see monkeys, kayak beautiful limestone cliffs, walk through a cave, eat more delicious food and wake up to some amazing scenery.  Vietnam rocks! 

Floating Store

                                                           

Floating village

Caving

   

Good Morning Vietnam!

Hanoi Vietnam-

We made it to Hanoi last night around 12:30am woke up late afternoon to explore Hanoi.  Hanoi has a lot on Manila, clean streets, yummy food smells, a lot lot less pollution, and delicious food at cheap prices.  We saw the world famous water puppet show which would have been excellent if the seats were just a tad bigger.  We got to eat yummy authentic Pho for three dollars and are staying in a nice hotel for 7 dollars a night.  Life is good!  Tomorrow we head out for Halong bay for two days!

                                           The most motorcycles I have ever seen are here!

                                                                   Yummy Pho

 

Augusto dayon sa Septyembre

School started again and the months have flown by since summer. I handle four classes along with my counterparts. This school year I have three different teachers (counterparts) that I co-teach with. There is Maam Bacang, who I worked with last school year and whose been my main advocate at school.

Maam Ann Bacang and her son Haniel.

Maam Panesa and I co-teach one class and the girls basketball team.

Maam Panesa

Lastly there is Maam Lasola (picture to follow later). Her and I teach the Homogeneous class in our second year curriculum. The Homo class (yes that is what its called for short, no implications of anything gay are meant) are amazing to teach because they all listen to lessons and do their homework.

I am lucky to get to learn from three different teachers with three different styles. I work morning from 7:30am -12pm and then have afternoons to work on secondary projects. I am trying to get funding to start an after-school club for at-risk students where we will do different activities like painting a wall mural, taking an environmental tour of Mangroves.

Besides teaching I now coach the girls b-ball team twice a week and we are getting ready to do our Provincial wide meet which if we win we will go to Bohol (a neighboring island) for Regional competition. So wish us luck, we have come a long way from practices filled with double dribbling, fouls and traveling to practices now filled with drills and offensive plays.
Fellow volunteers David and John helping out with coaching basketball

My team with David (whom they all like because he looks like a Korean actor)

Glorie, our star point guard.


Latest Adventure's:

1. Mount Talinis is the second highest mountain on this island, at 1890 feet. This dosen't sound like much, but when you go from sea level it can be a nice hike. My German friend and adventure buddy Loana and I did a two-day trek up the mountain, camped overnight on a crater lake and slid down the other side of the range the next day. We were guided by this amazing mountain man named Adong who grew up and worked in the mountains all of his life. This man was in his sixties and was kicking our behinds the whole hike. He would walk barefoot at a pace that made him look like he was floating on air. We would stop every once in a while where he would show us some plant that was harvested for something or a spot where Japanese soldiers hid out from American Soldiers during the war. As we approached our camp the first night Adong runs into the woods cuts down four logs, skins a palm tree and throws a tarp over the top to form his tent. He always had water boiling for us and at one point when I was trying to dry out my tennis shoes from the morning dew he went again into the woods to get four more branches and he sets us this shoe rack to put my shoes over the fire on.
This mountain was a huge challenge to me, as we were literally grabbing roots and pulling ourselves up for hours the first day and then sliding down on our butts the other side of the mountain in the rain the next day. At one point I started crying like a baby but when nobody came to carry me I had to get up and keep going. I now have fond memories of our trip but at the time of finishing it, I would tell you that I would never do the hike again. The bruises and cuts have healed and I am left with a great sense on accomplishment. In fact Loana and I are thinking of doing another one in a few months. We both forgot our cameras and so unfortunately we have no proof that we really were on the mountain so here is us posing with what is kind of the mountain we climbed in the background.

2. Apo Island adventure with Peace Corps volunteers from neighboring island and cities. Four amazing women converged upon my little city for a holiday weekend of eating at the best restaurants, laughing and two snorkeling trips to world famous Apo Island and Dauin. Apo is world reknown for its reefs and we got to ride on my friend Harold's new boat! Here's some photos of the adventure.
Amari (Iloilo City), Mindi (Dao, Panay), Stacie (Bacolod, Negros) and Hanna (Iloilo)

The girls with PCV Rachael (Bacolod), Loana (originally Germany) and Zelda (local)
Our destination, Apo Island, a marine protected area known for its amazng diving.

3. MoalBoal is a town known for its reefs on neighboring Cebu island. Loana and I decided to check it out. I am not ceritified to dive yet, so we stuck to snorkeling the reef, but there were beautiful corals and an amazing drop in the ocean floor that we got to free dive a bit, or at least tried to. A German woman who is in the same program as Loana joined us for the night. We stayed on one beach but the next day went to White beach which was supposed to have.....white sand. That it did, giving us a nice relaxing Sunday on the beach.
White beach

4. Cousin Michael on his way home from working a year in Laos stopped by the Philippines for a visit. We got some great beach time and headed to "The healing island" Siquior for a night. It was great to get some time to catch up on our lives, as the last time we met was Nuni and Josh's wedding in 2007.The beach outside our front door.

5. My good friend Sarah from Panay, came to visit for a few days randomly after a failed beach weekend in a town on the other side of the island. Turns out there was a Typhoon coming through while they were staying at this beach resort. She decided to extend her vacation and come visit me in Dumaguete. We mostly hung ou around town, but what a special treat it was to have her here.

If you want sugar its extra.

Checking out the Chinese temple

May through July.....

After one month of R&R a hectic May schedule began. A close friend Larissa, who is also an archaeologist studying the Indigenous group here on the island, held a one week long Archaeological excavation. I was able to go assist her and we ended up finding lithics from hunter-gatherer days which I think was 1500's. It was a treat for me as an Anthro major to be able to actually do Archaeological fieldwork because I never got the chance to go on any digs while in Hawaii.

Larissa and Nida (Philippines National Museum representative) looking for stratigraphic evidence of history.

Evelyn, me and Larissa surveying fields.

Next stop was the other side of Negros to the capital Bacolod, for a Peace Corps training on how to design projects. I met up there with my main counterpart, Mrs. Ann Bacang, where we had a wonderful time planning a project for our high school, eating, taking hot showers and sleeping in comfortable beds.Maam Bacang and I posing with our tarpaulin tree of questions.

After a week in Bacolod, myself, Sarah, Jessica and Mindi headed to Hamtic, Antique, Panay (Neighborhood, Province, Island) to facilitate a week long summer camp for elementary students at Sarah's elementary school where she volunteers. There were nine of us who stayed in two bedrooms for a week. As you can imagine, we became really close and hosted a pretty successful camp. About 100 students attended, where we taught them subjects and skills such as self-esteem, environmental awareness, community building, art, sports, photography, public speaking and dance. I got to teach dance for three hours a day which was fantastic! "Firework" crew above and "Boom, boom, pow crew"

Camp facilitators, L to R: Jessica, Hanna, Stacey, Sarah, Mindi, Lysette.

I also got the assistance of a local art high School dance student. It was an overall good experience but started off a bit shaky. She came in to teach hip-hop dance to the kids, put her music in and got them lined up to start learning the moves when "Girl take your Mothe@% F&%cking shirt off" started playing through the speakers. I didn't think to screen the music and panicked running over to my friend Sarah, the camp organizer and apologizing profusely for my lack of screening. She just looked at me laughed and said that kids in her neighborhood blasted this song all the time and that no one even listened to the lyrics. So "take your shirt off" became a number for the final program along with Katy Perry's "Firework", which had better lyrics and was chosen and choreographed by the girls themselves. The boys rocked Black Eyed Peas "Boom boom pow".

All too soon the camp ended and a few of us headed back to Bacolod, Negros to do a two week mobile teacher training. There were 23 other Peace Corps volunteers who joined us. Sarah and I co-taught Listening activities and Differentiation or Multiple Intelligences. We trained 1000 teachers in four different high schools. It was an amazing learning experience for me, and I started out a bit skeptical at what I had to offer teachers with over 15 years of experience. The Filipino teachers were open to our lessons and were so thankful for the training in the end. We were bombarded with requests for pictures after each class and at any possible moment. People here are a bit camera happy.

Our training organizer and fellow volunteer, Justin Tabor.

After being away for the whole month of May I headed home to say goodbye to Larissa who was done with her fieldwork and heading back to Chicago to write and teach. Goodbye Philippines, hello Chicago outing.

A week later school began and it had been a crazy time warp filled with sleeping, lesson planning, eating and more lesson planning. Oh, and of course I'm super excited to have another niece in my life......what a treat!Welcome Zadie, love Aunty Kesa and Uncle Michael.

Hugs to you all,
Akesa