Festivals, Feasting and Fraternity

Today is the festival day of the patron saint of our barangay, Old Cabalan - St. Vincent, the hope of the poor. We have had several days of beauty pageants: Friday night was young beauties who a couple of our guys paid money to dance with (I didn't attend since my family took me to Subic to walk on the boardwalk, listen to live music and buy 'ube' -sweet potato- ice cream). Last night, however, after the gay parade, complete with fire breathers, I did attend the barangay's Ms. Gay Fiesta which was something to behold.











There were 14 contestants, who first showed in costume, then talent, then swimsuits and answered questions - just like the Ms. Universe contest...and how they tied their 'talong' was beyond me - the front of their very skimpy bikinis were absolutely flat...and we had front row seats and really checked it out.

The 'she-man'- as they say here - who won the contest (we stayed until 11:30pm) was gorgeous and man could she dance - other contestants moved like men trying to be girls, but this girl danced fluidly like a woman - the guys in our group were hard pressed to see any masculine qualities. It was entertaining in one respect but heartbreaking in another: the community seemed to come to laugh at these souls, who had the courage to show themselves as they felt on the inside. Although the Filipino culture is very accepting on one hand, these people really don't fit into society. My family says that the only way that they have partners is if they have money, because survival is such an issue here that poor men can be bought.



Today, each Catholic home (mine is Mormon and doesn't participate) cooked a feast and opened to anyone who visited. We all attended the lunch of Bas Palo - the barangay captain - wow, what a home he has - they say it cost more than 5M pesos and is considered a mansion by my family. We then visited two more families and ate at each one. And, as I write, I hear the xylophones and drums from yet another marching band. At 3:30pm we watched as students we had tutored marched up the street in their red and white uniforms. And earlier, another high school marching band serenaded us - I have no idea who is marching now!


Last weekend we did make it to the beach - we caught a bus at 5:30am in order to get the surfers in our crowd to the waves early....after a 1/5 hour ride on a standing room only bus (I was on the last step of the back door with the door wide open as we drove!)we arrived at the Crystal Beach Resort in San Narciso - to utterly flat waves - actually, there were no swells.
Even at 7am, it was HOT in the sun...but I was sooo jazzed to finally find a clean-ish ocean that I raced into the water (here, one is fully clothed in a t-shirt and shorts when one swims. I have never swum in water that was so hot - my body overheated if I swam a few strokes!! And, it seems typical that resorts dynamite out the beach so that the sand is smooth to the feet...which meant that there was no life - animal, plant, or even rocks. But - we all had a blast - played volleyball at 7:30am, sweating so profusely that Matt served the ball and his wedding ring flew off...we sifted through the sand, finding several buried pesos, but no wedding ring. Lots of great camaraderie though...perhaps a little too much as we discovered the following day that Christian had contracted "pink eye" from one of the children we worked with on Saturday - by Monday 5 of the 10 of us had severe cases of conjunctivitis. Now, over a week later, two still have blood in their eyes - scary (I escaped).

Ah - I'm over an hour on the internet and need to retrieve my clothes and hang them with hopes that they dry in a couple days!!