Tucker and the Monster

First off, this is Tucker. He's pretty much the best gecko a girl could ask for. He came free with my new place, and so far he's the only gecko I've seen living here. He differs from the others I've met in that he's very young, walks around on the floor instead of the ceiling, and is just way stinking cute. I find him completely charming.

Then last night, something very strange happened. For the first time in my life, I saw a spider in my living room and felt... fear. I've never been afraid of spiders. I've always been an advocate of catch and release, fully aware about the important role spiders play in the ecosystem, and I've been grateful even for the demosquitoing they do around here. But this one was different. Now I have no idea if this spider was poisonous or not, but one look at it sent chills up my spine and pitched me into sweats. I even whimpered. This spider could have eaten little Tucker for breakfast, and I'm not yet sure that it didn't. The first time I saw a palm-sized spider here in the Philippines I was a little surprised, but they have since become commonplace. However, it seems the a spider the size of an entire hand is the threshold for me. After a lifetime of being a friend to the eight-legged, I hit a wall.

I know there's not much in the way of a reference point in either of these pictures, but I wasn't feeling up to holding a dollar bill up next to it. So you're going to have to trust me.

Chills I say, chills.

It's a jungle out there

This weekend we took a hike. I've been having some problems uploading photos, so here is a random few.

Pausing on the way up to admire the view of the island.

We mean business

The Loboc River

The perpetual bank of rain clouds that seems to hang over the Bohol interior.

Caaaaaave exploring!

Right before slipping on guano.

Ian hanging out cave-resident style.

A flash in the dark

In we go

Wild pineapple!

Have you ever spent time with a pig? Sure, some people find their large, oddly-shaped heads, bristly hair and penchant for mud off-putting, but it's remarkable how quickly you pick up on their intelligence and general good nature. This fellow was wagging his tail and giving plently of kisses and attention. Everyone was charmed.

A puppy was in serious need of some puppy love.

Back down at the river. After swimming to the falls.

End scene.

The Joys of Independent Living

It really does feel like everything has changed...again. Having my own house opens up many new experiences from being able to have people over to figuring out how to pay my utilities.

Here it is from the outside. For you G! The greenery in front is a papaya tree.

Having the girls over may be the very best thing.

Still getting settled - having all of my things piled around on top of everything the owners left is a bit chaotic, but slowly slowly I'm figuring out where to tuck things away.

And cooking, of course. Hooray veggies!

Huzzah!

Big big big news. I have officially moved into my own place.

It all happened very quickly - getting the approval from PC, buying new locks, then repeatedly walking all my things from my old bedroom down the road to the new place. Then quite suddenly, everything was there, and then I was spending the night.

And I have to say, I love living alone. My host families were very wonderful and generous, but something about living in someone else's house lends your life a permanent guest-like feeling that is hard to adjust to. Peace Corps likes you to stay with your host family as long as possible to help with your integration, but after just two days of living alone I can tell that, for me, being someone's neighbor is going to help me feel a lot more like part of the community than being the guest holed-up in someone's spare bedroom.

And there's the food thing.

As much as even being in control of what I eat (no rice for me for a while), I just love love love to cook. And naturally the first thing I did was completely un-elaborate: I made a grilled cheese sandwich.

Grilled cheesing before I've even really moved in. That little cardboard tube in the upper left-hand corner is a Peace Corps-issued stool sample kit.

Hello beautiful. It's been a while.

I actually got teary-eyed with happiness after the first bite. I couldn't help it. Familiarity is a wonderful thing.

Welcome to my kitchen.

I like to think of these water-stained bathroom walls as having a nice natural patina.

A bucket to call my own

Accidental Tourism

Late last month I set aside a day to go to Kate's center before remembering she was flying to Manila that day. Left with no plans, it was pleasantly fortuitous that Todd sent a text asking if I wanted to come along on a somewhat spontaneous group day trip to the interior.

Yes please.

After a cheerfully bumpy bus ride through natural jungle and man-made mahogany forests, we arrived at Bohol's most highly touted tourist destination, the Chocolate Hills - seen here in a pre-chocolate green.

I did not go see for myself, but apparently these bathrooms really are very clean.

The hills are little heaps of interestingly eroded limestone. Someone here recently told me they were the 8th wonder of the world, which speaks more to their local importance than their overall grandeur.

After leaving the hills, we were to Bohol's Butterfly Garden (or was it farm?...) for lunch.

We looked at all kinds of pretty butterfly-friendly flowers.

And I found the tiniest of mollusks on a leaf.

Looking up through mahogany trees on the ride back to the coast.

Nag-trabaho ko sa Lila

Linkage!

Well hello there!

As a devoted student of the Internet, I thought I would share some new and favorite (and completely random, with no discernible theme) discoveries. Let the wild clickage start!

I find this website for the reading traveler (or travelling reader) positively ingenious. The flying fish is charming too. Though I eat those guys now.

As a kid I must have read or listened to The Man Who Listens to Horses a thousand times. Monty Roberts was and is my hero. And now, thanks to youtube, videos like this exist. Just watch and listen, horse person or not, it will give you chills.

This lovely blog is a professional escapist's dream. Completely transporting.

And of course, a happy birthday video, courtesy of the US Embassy in London, was just what the doctor ordered today.

This fantastic blog about homeschooling in small town New Mexico is an inspiration.

And finally, Kate updated her blog at long last, and provides a healthy dose of wit and cockroaches for those of you who can't get enough of the wildlife featured here.

Boo

I think my little sister might be the coolest person I know.

Okay, so this post has nothing to do with the Peace Corps, or with creepy crawlies or food crises (neither my own and those of the country where I'm serving), but it's pretty much the only thing on my mind today.

Really, the girl rocks.

We were best friends when we were little, and though we subsequently spent a good deal of time rolling our eyes at one another and dishing out extra-cold cold shoulders, most of my favorite childhood memories have that little peanut of a girl by my side, her wild blonde mane and painfully adorable dimples making her just about the cutest thing to have ever tromped barefoot through the top-soil piles of Montana.

On one of many family camping trips. I'm the boy in the raft.

Back when we were little, the two of us spent uncountable hours lost in our own well-synced imaginations. We built cities for our Beany Babies that had fully functional commerce systems, including the concepts of scarcity and supply and demand. We weren't allowed to have a trampoline (they were too dangerous, a fact later proven to us in high school), so we found a possibly more dangerous way of turning young and sick trees into human slingshots instead. We devoted a significant number of days to trying to rehabilitate the near-kills of our ultra-successful-killing-machine cat Missy, and for those we could not save constructed a bird and rodent graveyard in the forest behind our house.

Visiting Susan B's house on one of the most epic historical exploration trips ever conceived of by a home schooling mother.

She was a devoted side kick, and though she let me get away with torturing her in the name of science for a good deal of our time together (I wish I could say tooth extractions and twisty-tie braces were the whole of it), I was also always keenly aware that she had an unflappable moral compass. She has always been generous, has always been loyal, and she has always had an uncanny sense of right and wrong. Sure, she's as stubborn as they come, but that has primarily manifested itself in her refusal to be anyone but herself. Even when that peanut self grew into a tall, athletic, stunningly beautiful woman, she maintained the kind of individuality and integrity of spirit (and biting sense of humor) that most of us would for personal reasons like to think is a myth.

And now, more than ever, she a rockstar. The girl is unstoppable. She does really, really important work. She holds herself to standards very few people would dream of setting even in highly unrealistic New Years resolutions, and then she meets and exceeds them. The girl actually changes lives.

I've known for some time now that, as her big sister, not only am I intensely proud of the woman she has become, but I also look up to her now too.

Two years ago at my college graduation

Lists and Lines

It's March 1st. This means I have been here six and a half months, and also, in a few more days, my service is one quarter completed. I promised myself when I first got here that I wouldn't do this - that I wouldn't keep track and count down and otherwise treat this time as some kind of diversion from my normal life, something to be gotten through, finished, accomplished. No, I wanted this to be a simple continuation of life. This is just what I am doing now, I am here, and I'm not going to spend any time pondering some vague event at some arbitrary point in November of 2012.

Ha. Yeah right.

I think about points on this timeline all the time. I think about November 2012. I wonder about other dates and numbers too. For instance, last night when I was lying on my bed under my mosquito net and I realized that over six months have passed and that meant I was one quarter finished, I started wondering how many other things I have finished too.

How many pairs of shoes molded? Four

How many books read? Eight and four halves - all but one of those in the last three months

How many mosquito bites sustained? About seven a day for the last six and a half months...too many

How many mosquitoes killed? Clearly not enough. I will get them ALL.

How many IEC presentations given? Eighteen

How many fisherfolk and community members reached? Six hundred ten

How many Bantay Dagat members acquired since my arrival? Four

How many small children high-fived? Two dozen

How many ants consumed? One bajillion

How much do I miss my family, friends, and Teebs? Incalculable

And of course, how much time left to go? Twenty and a half months

Photo stolen shamelessly from Kate.