Greetings from beautiful Tarlac!

I realize it's been a while since I've posted a blog entry, but I haven't been able to access a computer that often...or I've been tired...or I haven't wanted to cross the street that I'm pretty sure has me bargaining with death on a daily basis.

So, yeah. I've been at my training site since last Friday and living with my host family. I'm located in the province of Tarlac. The smaller unit of government is called the baranguy, but I won't go too much more into the details of my location. This blog is public and all you'd have to do to find me is look for the awkward looking American stumbling down the street. I believe that I will be training here for three months and then, if I don't wash out, I will be sworn in at the beginning of August.

My host family is very nice and I have my own room in a house (with no air conditioning), two girls aged 8 and 10, and an older couple. There are also six dog and four duck at this place. Now, when you think about dogs you may envision lots of cuddles and companionship...but, in this case, you would be very...very....wrong.

The dogs at the house were one of the first things I noticed. It works as follows: One mother dog runs in between the front porch area and the back yard while functioning as a garbage disposal for most meals...oh, there's about 4-6 full meals a day here, so she does pretty good. As for the puppies...the best I can liken them to are Jim Henson characters from The Dark Crystal. There are five puppies, some white with floppy ears, a couple are brown with black muzzles...they are cute, in theory. But, the catch is that they are the secondary garbage disposal after their mother. They hide out underneath various objects in the yard until they sense you approaching the back door. When they know their going to be fed, they all run up and bark in unison for the food...after you give them the food, there is a very quick flurry of action until they again scatter to their respective hiding places. I tried to pet one once...but it yelped and ran away. SO, that's the dog story.

I'm slowly learning Tagalog...very slowly. My host family really wants me to be fluent quickly, so they have been helpful in the process. I have no complaints so far...except for that I'd like to eat my breakfast without being told to repeat word in Tagalog...I'm just not in the mood for it when I first wake up. The Peace Corps has kept us very busy and yesterday was the first serious "cross-cultural" experience that I can say I've had so far. The story is as follows:

A couple days ago I was informed in passing that the community leaders would like it if us PC trainees would take part in a local fiesta celebrating some saint for some saintly or otherwise religious reason. We weren't really told in detail what we would be doing....as I've just come to accept is how EVERYTHING works here...so, of course, I just agreed and went ahead with what everybody else was doing.

Wait. Hold on a second...did you ever have that dream where you were walking down the street while children and elderly people paraded around you carrying Molotov cocktails...and then you look down and you're wearing a ballgown and carrying a small crucifix? Everywhere you turned, people were pointing and smiling and speaking some language that you were trying really hard to understand...but just couldn't?

Oh....no, what was I thinking? That wasn't a dream! That is what happened, in reality, LAST NIGHT!!

Yeah. So, I'll have to agree...it was definitely cross-cultural and I enjoyed it, despite how awkward I felt. There may be picture of this in order to add some more details to the story.

One last bit before I have to run. In order to get this ballgown, we had to drive to the next town to find ones that could be fitted to our larger American frames. Besides the shame of being too fat to fit into a dress in the town I live in, I had to go home an explain where I went to my host mother. When I started to tell her that I had to take a short trip for the dress because I was "too big" to fit into the dresses in this town, she promptly took my water bottle and refilled it with the ice water in the fridge. Apparently, she thought that I had finally mastered a usable phrase in Tagalog;see....tubig (too big!) is the Tagalog word for water.

There are lots of things happening here, almost too much for me to report on regularly, but, so far, I believe I am hanging in there despite missing lots of you guys back home! Take care and until next time...