halfway through

Hello everyone!

Things over here have been becoming to become a bit more routine and the initial bewilderment at everything completely new and different over here has been becoming to wear down. I have been getting to know some of the teachers at the school more and more, and have been exploring the island. Typhoon FengShen has been hitting the Philippines these past few days, it actually overturned a ferry in the central Philippines. We got a bit of it on Friday and Saturday, and it was weather unlike anything that I had seen so far on my trip. Strong, gusting winds coming from nowhere, unbelievably strong rain that lasted almost for two days. This is the beginning of the wet season here in Camiguin, and the dry season in over. Over here there is no summer, fall, winter of spring. Only wet and hot.

I have been progressing with my work and have been discovering that a few more of the teachers are very excited to learn English. But some of them also do not seem to be very motivated, and seem to avoid having a lesson with me at any cost, lest I have to push it on them. Maybe it is because they are shy and ashamed of their English, I don't know. But maybe it is because they simply don't want to.

I am sharing my room with a teacher called Wilvin, he is 25 years old I think, and he has a 3 year old son. He is the head of English at the school, and while at first he avoided English lessons and did not want to schedule a lesson, saying that we live together and I sit in on his classes, and that that is more than equal to an English lesson, he has recently come around and has been very keen to work on pronunciation and grammar. Oftentimes, when I am free, he says "Eugene let's work on pronunciation" or "Eugene let's work on my English," and that makes me happy because I was a bit resentful at first, when I felt that he was avoiding English lessons, because he does in fact have some things to work on.

I have been sitting in on Wilvin's English classes. He teaches Language and Pronunciation to Grade 6 students and Language to Grade 5 students. During the classes, I sit in with a notebook and write down when Wilvin makes a mistake in pronunciation or grammar, and I think that he is quite sensitive to it. Of cousre he appreciates that I do it, because I am doing it to help him, but I can tell that he is also a bit bothered whenever I start jotting something down in there!

Wilvin has also given me the opportunity to teach several lessons in his classes. I taught part of one grade 6 class, and the entirety of another grade 5 class on pronouns. It is very hard! And it is true what they say, that standing up there in front of the board makes you dumber! Sometimes you don't know what to say or do, and you are completely lost.

I have also been making quite a bit of progress learning sign language. There are many deaf students at the school and 2 of the teachers are also deaf. During my English tutoring classes with them, I pick up a lot of the sign langauge because it is better to communicate with them in sign language than through jotting things on paper. But I have learned enough that I can sometimes say an entire sentence without not knowing a word, and if I don't know it, I can spell it out in sign language and then they show me the sign. One of the teachers, Archelene, can also read lips pretty well, and that makes communicating with her much easier!

But the problem is that sign language does not really follow the same rules of grammar as spoken language. In fact, they usually take a lot of shortcuts. So instead of signing "I am going there," they usually sign "I go there." Furthermore, sign language does not have the various tenses that spoken and written language have. For example, the signs for "I went there" and "I have gone there" would be the same. This makes the deaf teachers have many problems with written grammar, because they have never been exposed to it, not even in their communications in English. And this has made working with the 2 deaf teachers, Archelene and Tonette, particularly challenging and also particularly rewarding!

Goodbye from the island, for now.

Eugene