waiting for the rain to die down at the MRT station

letchon, a common party food

I went to the Birthday party of an SIL missionary in Manila, Jody Wilson. She threw a huge, Filipino style Birthday party. It was complete with a live band, tons of food, enough people to make a good dent in the food, and the letchon.

This is at a church event at Union Church of Manila. They put many flags into the pineapples because of the numerous countries represented by that church.

This is my apartment. My room is the one with the door open.

I finally bought a keyboard to practice on.

My washing machine is in the corner. I have to put the water in, and then transfer the clothes to the spinner before hanging them to dry. They do sell fully automatic washers here, but their very expensive. They don't usually sell heat dryers that I know of.

I've been playing badminton with some SIL people recently. Usually, I play with a Philippino couple who work for SIL, a missionary couple from America, a Canadian missionary, and sometimes other people. Badminton is very popular in the Philippines.

This is a street near my school.

This is the library at Alliance Graduate School. It's fairly large, and most of the books are in English.

This is my school cafeteria. You can eat breakfast or lunch there for around 50 to 80 cents.

Last Class

These are pictures from my last class(Yea!)for this semester, Being a Servant Leader. The professor is Dr. Pieter Theron from S. Africa. The other white guy is one of the American students, Jeff, who also happens to be from Spokane. His wife Jamie is from California. The girl in front of me in the green shirt is my roommate, Heidi, from S. Korea. The second picture is of my small group in this class, Stephen (in the yellow shirt), Ray, and Daphne. The third picture here is just the girls in this class, but that's obvious.

Toro-Toro Restaurant

This is a toro-toro (point-point) restaurant. They have pots of food lined up, and you just point to what you want. You can eat at one of these restaurants for around 60cents.

I Like This Chair

Yacoon and Rattan Fruit

A Japanese man who lived in one of the Kalanguya villages hired people to plant these "yacoon." The people didn't know what they were planting, but eventually followed the Japanese man after he dug some of them up, and discovered that he eats them. They look like sweet potatoes, but you eat them raw, and they are very sweet. The Kalanguya believe that they probably have medicinal properties.
The fruit in these pictures is Rattan Fruit.

The Feast at Parent's Appreciation at CFM in Bambang

When the Spanish came, they made people eat with spoons, but many still like to eat with their fingers. It's actually much easier sometimes, especially when the rice is fairly sticky.

The Boiled Pig

They like to eat the pig skin, and served a whole pig, or Letchon, in chuncks that included the skin.

At CFM Parent's Night

The guy in the white shirt has a first grade education. One of the two guys in the center is the mayor.

Nezza Helping With My Tagalog Homework at CFM in Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya

Nezza is a Kalanguya girl I met on one of my earlier trips to the province. She's a senior in High School.

Nezza Reading a Poem

Editing the New Kalanguya Newsletter

My friend Margie, a recent graduate of the M.A. in Applied Linguistics at AGS, put together this 6page, 10pt font (if I remember correctly) newsletter, and asked me to correct the grammar when I visited them in the province recently. While I was working, a woman came along and gave me some Rattan fruit. It's very sour, but sweet.

With Ellen at an SIL Center in Manila

Ellen Errington was one of my applied linguistics professors at CanIL(the Canadian Institute of Linguistics in Langley, B.C.). I also helped in her kindergarten Sunday school class last year. She was a missionary before in the South part of the Philippines.