Heart Rate

Since I got here at sea level my heart rate has dropped so low it's a wonder I'm even alive?! I have this fancy Fitbit that tracks my heart rate, and while I'm asleep I've been anywhere from 45-43 beats per minute. Here's the picture of March's tracking. 

Teaching School

Well, I've been learning about how to be a teacher for quite some time now, and here in the Philippines I was THE teacher.  The only one.  The head woman.  I messed up a lot, I did a lot of things well, and I learned a TON!  

We started school every morning (Monday-Friday) at 8:00 am.  The first few weeks start time was rough.  We were never starting on time and I was getting kind of frustrated about it when I remembered a promptness incentive that one of my high school teachers, Mr. Wilson, used.  If everyone was present and on time we would earn a letter to spell "Popcorn Party."  When we spelled the word out we got to have a party day.  So, I decided to tweek it a bit to fit our situation and I decided that if everyone was on time and had begun writing in their journals at 8:00 sharp we would earn a letter to write out Late Start.  

Once we earned all of the letters they got to start school at 9:00 the next morning.  They bought into it and promptness improved dramatically!  They earned 2 late starts in the last 5 weeks of school, and I was pretty proud of them.  

We held school down in the kitchen/dining/living room.  It worked out pretty well.  Here are "the guys" working hard in the other part of the room.  

So, the curriculum was basically just reading, writing, and math.  Rix and Lillian, the 8th and 7th graders, were signed up through BYU's Independent Study program for English and Math courses.  They were able to basically self run those.  I would make sure they were on track and tell them what they needed to accomplish each day.  I helped with concepts they didn't quite understand and quite a bit with their writing sections which was fun for me.  They have large vocabularies and write with great voice which makes it fun to read their work.  The finals for their courses have to be taken once we get home, so I will go down to Provo to help them get set up with that and get those classes finished up!

Reed and Faith, the 3rd and 4th graders, took more of my time, and it was so fun to be able to work one-on-one with them.  They had some morning work that they had to do together that worked on general Language Arts things like the difference between "it's" and "its," pronouns, adverbs, etc.  Then one of them would stay and do math with me while the other one went and did their individual reading.  Then they'd switch.  Math started out as coming straight from the book.  It was fairly boring, but they were doing pretty good at it, so I didn't worry too much about it.  Then I taught one lesson to Faith using the concept from the book, but I just put it in different, more real life context, and she did so much better with it!  So, I decided to do more of that the last few weeks and it made math much more fun!  

Their reading improved a lot just from reading to themselves for a good 30 minutes every day and then a mixture of them reading out loud to me and me reading out loud to them for about 10 minutes each day.  It was fun for me to see their improvement just from spending time reading.  It's so important.

  

After the first couple of days with the younger kids I knew that I was going to need some kind of incentive to get the younger two students to cooperate and stay focused.  Luckily, I had been taught about these awesome positive/negative charts by my CFA at the last elementary I did my practicum at.  Each morning during journals I would hand them their positive negative chart.  

They would write their goal and then they would get awarded positive or negative points based on their behavior and the work they got done.  It worked marvelously!  If they met their goal they got to do whatever our afternoon activities were, but if they didn't quite meet it, they didn't get to go.  Luckily we only had one or two days where they had to stay home.  

One of my favorite parts about school was science with Faith.  At the start we had to do the water cycle and measuring weather units to cover the standards, but after that we got to learn about whatever she wanted.  It was fun and we learned about many things from whale sharks to how rice is planted and harvested.  

Finally the two younger kids would end each day doing multiplication facts on Oswego.  At the start this was maybe the most dreaded part of their day, but as they got better at them they LOVED Oswego!  Most of the time they would do it more than their required number of times.  They are super good at their multiplication facts and have both passed of mixed multiple times.  I was so proud of them!  

Half way through our home school experience I had each of them write down things they liked and things they would like to see change.  One of the main things they liked was that they got to do school in their pajamas :)  I don't blame them one bit!  One of the things they didn't like was doing work with their sibling.  We talked about families and how sibling relationships are so important.  The partner work improved drastically afterwards, and I learned about how important it is to see how your students feel about how school is going. 

I will most likely never have another teaching experience like this.   I lived with my students.  I lived with my boss.  I lived with my student's parents.  It was interesting.  Some parts were hard, some parts were nice. I learned a lot about a lot, but I still have so much to learn!  Overall, it was a very good experience and I'm so glad I have it to look back on and learn from.  

Siquijor Island

Friday morning we woke up early, grabbed our bags and headed to catch the 7:00am boat ride to Siquijor island.  The boat ride was only about an hour and a half long.  

As soon as we got there, we rented 3 scooters.  Maddie and Faith hopped on with me, Reed and Lillian with Yet-yet, and Rix and the Ryskamp luggage with Angie.  We were heading to a beach resort, Salagdoong, on the other side of the island.  The ride there was beautiful and we had fun laughing and telling stories.  When we got there, I was speechless!  The sand was so white, and the water was so blue!  Well, I guess the water was so clear--it just looked so blue!

One of my favorite moments was Faith telling me all about how it was going to be jumping off of the cliff!  I was cracking up!  She was so animated about it!  She was going to show me how it was done, and then decided to let me go first, and then she ended up not even jumping off?!  Haha!

We spent the day jumping off the cliffs, snorkeling, eating, and I even enjoyed some time reading my book on the beach :)

That night Yet-yet and I grilled some pork chops, and they turned out delicious thanks to Yet-yet's marinade.

We stayed in a hotel room right there off the beach.  I didn't take any pictures of it.  It was nothing fancy, but the location was perfect!    

The next morning we just enjoyed being a little lazy and then we ran into the nearest town, Maria to try and find some breakfast.  Some people ate at a cantin (little food stop), and I grabbed some fruit and bread from the public market.  

After breakfast we headed back and Angie and the kids swam for a little bit longer while I read and Yet-yet listened to music.  We checked out around 11:00, and then we were off to the next stop, Cambugahay Falls.  

This place was unlike any place I'd ever been before!  It was SO beautiful and SO much fun!  The rope swing was a blast!  The guys would push us up higher off the ground so that we could gain more momentum, and then we'd fly out over the natural pool and drop into the water.  It was great!  Everyone tried the rope swing, and I lost count of how many times I went.  Then you could jump off of the waterfall, and that was fun too!  The waterfall was just the right height--not too high to freak me out (like the one at Salagdoong, haha), and the water was so nice!  We spent quite a bit of time there and enjoyed every second of it!  

I also got to enjoy a fresh, young coconut.  First I drank out the juice, then I went back and he cut it in half for me and I ate the meat out of it.  So yummy!  I am loving all the coconut here and will be so bummed to not be able to have fresh coconut whenever I want :( 

We left there and headed to our last stop, the Mystic Tree and Fish Spa.  It was a pretty neat tree, and the fish spa was nice.  

When we left there we were all starving!  So, we drove and drove until we found a nice little outdoor restaurant.  I had this yummy fish!  It was just what I needed after a long, fun day.  

After lunch/dinner we raced back to the port to catch the 6:00pm boat back to Dumaguete.  We got there right on time and ended our wonderful visit to Siquijor.  It was probably my favorite trip we've had here in the Philippines.  The kids all got along, the sun was warm, the water was so beautiful, the places we went were fun--everything just seemed so surreal.  I am so blessed to be here and experience some of the more beautiful places in this world.  

Oh, and here's the video :)

Our Neighborhood

Over the past 2 months of living here, I've acquired quite a few pictures of the neighborhood and I thought I'd share :)

I've found it very interesting the variety of homes that people live in here.  In our little neighborhood (I literally live less than a 3 minute walk from all of these homes) we have board houses, cement houses, and everything in between.  Here's a look:

 This is just one of the rooster lots that we have near 

Here's the main street in the neighborhood.  Two tricycles can squeeze by each other, but it's a pretty tight fit!  

There are these little streets/alley ways that jut off everywhere, and they're actually dead-ends, so I never really walk down them.  

And here's the crazy american girl who walks around these streets.  People are constantly stopping me and asking me what I'm doing cause they see me around so much?!  Haha.  I've become friends with quite a few of them :)

Here's the street we live on.  I kind of love that it's dirt.  

And here's the house I live in.  It doesn't feel as big as it looks with 8 of us living inside and 4 extra men coming to work here everyday, but I feel pretty darn blessed nonetheless! 

Even though we don't have much of a yard, I love all of the plants that are around.  

And our front door, accessorized by the motorcycles.

If any of my pictures and experiences have made you decide you want to move to the Philippines, you're in luck!  There's a house for sale just down the road :)  

I sure have grown to love this neighborhood.  The warm smiles, the friendly waves, the kids running around, the roosters' crowing, and our home here on LaSola Drive.  

Saturday in Oslob :)

Saturday morning we packed up and headed out on our motorbikes.  We drove them to a neighboring town, Sibulan and hopped on a barge that took us across a section of ocean to Cebu Island.  Our destination was Oslob where we were going to go swimming with the butanding, Cebuano for whale shark.  

I was warned of this outing before I even got to the Philippines, and I was pretty sure I was going to opt out of it.  There was NO way in heck I was going to get in the water with sharks.  They tried to reassure me that they wouldn't harm me, they could care less about humans, etc...  Well, I still wasn't convinced.  Then on Wednesday, Faith and I decided to research them for science.  So, we looked them up, and found out that whale sharks are actually a type of whale, not a type of shark.  Large whale sharks are about 40 feet long--the size of a bus.  While they are the largest fish, they only feed on fish eggs and shrimp.  (You'll notice in the video the fish swimming around--they know they are completely safe.)  Learning this about butanding helped ease my fears, and I decided to do it! 

I was still a little nervous to get in the water once we got there.  I accidentally left my GoPro on, but you can see me getting a little nervous as I put my goggles on and took the plunge!  Once I got in there, I was in heaven!  It was so cool!  My adrenaline was pumping and the whale sharks were so big and SO CLOSE!   I couldn't believe it!  We were instructed before to stay 4 meters away, but that didn't really happen.... One time I was trying to back away from it, and ran into the bottom of a boat.  It's tail fin grazed my leg--it felt a lot like wet fabric.  We had so much fun, and I was bummed when we had to get back in the boat.  It was hard to keep track, but I figure I saw 5 or 6 different whale sharks, and the largest 2 were definitely as long as a school bus!  

 Our time with the sharks was a little over 30 minutes, and I couldn't believe I had swam that long without a break?!  I'm not a swimmer, but give me some adrenaline and I guess I can last in the water for a while :)  

After our fun time with the whale sharks, we ate lunch and went to these cool ruins in a nearby town.  They were from when the Spanish first came to the Philippines. The structures, the ocean near, and the blue skies made for a beautiful setting.  

Me with the Ryskamps :)

After we had explored the ruins, we headed up to some water falls called Tumalog Falls.  

Sidenote: Thank heavens for the motor bikes!  We can go wherever we want, whenever we want, and it's just so convenient!  Leo, Angie, and I were the drivers and each of us had two passengers.  It just works great!  

The falls were unlike anything I'd ever seen!  I felt like I was in a scene from Lord of the Rings.  I truly thought that falls like these were probably animated when I saw them in movies.  There were just so many little trickles of water coming down!  

They also had a natural fish spa there that we enjoyed :)

After that we headed to the barge and made our way back home where Angie made us some delicious shrimp for dinner (I'm gonna miss that fresh shrimp!).  

The Ryskamps + Saturdays + The Philippines = a dang good time!