weekend workshop

Spent 2 days in Batangas with Joel and other speakers at a journalism/creative writing workshop for high school kids of the Oblates of Saint Joseph schools. I ended up sleeping for two nights ALONE in a room with FOURTEEN beds arranged headboard to headboard. Well, ok, I wasn't quite alone---3 cockroaches, a beetle, several mosquitoes and a few bedbugs kept me company. (At least there wasn't a dead maya ON the ceiling fan, as there was in Joel and Alvin's room.) Two free-roaming cows were sleeping outside the window. When I woke up, I could smell cow dung.

We ate breakfast and dinner with the nuns and Lolo---an old, senile, French priest who could speak Filipino. He would bang his spoon against his cup and mutter something under his breath. We thought it was murder, murder. Then we heard it as mother, mother. He'd look at Alvin and say Aba aba aba, ang yabang naman nito. He tried to hand me his red pill---Gusto mo?---offering it like a piece of candy.

I suppose when you're senile, it doesn't matter what country you're physically in, you feel like you will always be a foreigner, newborn.

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I can't teach high school. Yesterday I raised my voice a few times and huffed impatiently at slow or inattentive students who seemed like they didn't want to be there. Tough luck. They got Miss Sungit and Mr. Comedy to critique their poems.

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This is a haiku written by a young boy named Tonton:

Since my house burned down,
I now own a better view
of the rising moon.

Ang ganda, ano? The 2nd and 3rd lines are surprising, given the premise of the 1st. And the word "own"! Nakakatuwa. When we asked, out of curiosity, what led him to write the poem, he stood up and said, "Kasi po dati nasunog yung tindahan namin sa palengke, tapos..." His eyes welled up. "Na-realize ko po na kailangan maging optimistic pa rin, lagi pong may pag-asa..." He laughed while crying, which made us all laugh. First time I've "made" someone unintentionally cry during a workshop...

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I have high hopes this year. Something grand is bound to happen. I'm willing luck into my life.