"Ulan"--"Rain"

Today has been another day of “homework,” as my translator and I like to call it.  It just means we both sit at home all day working on…well, our work.  She’s writing up and translating last week’s interviews and I am writing fieldnotes (my goodness it never ends!) and planning future interviews.  I told myself I wouldn’t blog until I caught up with my fieldnotes, but then it started to pour and I said, “I just have to write during this storm, it’s awesome!”

So yes, I am writing to you in the middle of a ferocious storm.  I have never EVER heard thunder this loud!  The only time it’s cool in the Philippines is when it pours like this.  I have my windows open and ahh, it’s just so nice to feel a cool breeze rather than warm air!  Oh, the power just went out.  By the way, when the power goes out in a city it’s called a “brownout” (a “blowout” is a big birthday celebration).

But the sad part is that I know many streets are already flooded and it’s only been raining for maybe 10-15 minutes.  A major problem here is the poor drainage systems (generally cluttered with trash, especially plastic bags--the use of plastic bags in grocery stores is actually outlawed now).  In Manila (where flooding is even worse!) they have trucks on call every day to transport people around the city because they’re the only vehicles that can still drive in that much water.  It just blows my mind that some people experience flooding basically every day for half the year.  Flooding as a normal occurrence in life—it just seems so bizarre to me.  My host said, “I always pray for rain so that it will be cooler, but then when it rains I always pray for the other people who are suffering because it’s raining.”  Goodness, what a natural dilemma.  Is this what a broken relationship with creation looks like?

This weekend I experienced more birthday parties and some more traditional foods.  I walked around the University of the Philippines in Los Banos (a major agriculture school) and visited IRRI (International Rice Research Institute)—I was a bit skeptical at first—about going to a rice museum—but IRRI was awesome!  It’s all about how to manufacture and grow rice in a way such that people all the people in the world can afford to eat.  The rice museum really made me love rice!  (no, I actually didn’t love rice before) (perhaps I just love anything I see in a museum because I love museums…)  There are so many different types of rice!  And you can make so many different products from rice!  (My mom is probably nodding her head like I’ve finally seen the light or something :D)

Thanks for your prayers!  I had some really discouraging interactions (or lack of interaction) with the young people at church this week…all I could do was sing to myself to distract my tears.  But I sat through it and didn’t run away.  God gave me extra initiating effort and eventually that led to some really encouraging interactions with two young people in the church—small as they may have been, they seemed like huge steps to me.  There are no hard feelings; rather, the difficulty lies in living through the uncomfortable-ness of the situation.

Keep praying for the baby I mentioned last week.  My translator and I went back to visit the other day and found their two little girls (5 and 8) at home with the sick baby—the parents were out working (they sell scrap materials for a living).  We will try to visit again this week.