Manila in Manila

This past weekend I traveled to the Philippines to play ultimate with a pickup team in the Manila Spirits tourney. One of my teammates (left) was coincidentally named Manila -- so she wouldn't forget where she was from, her parents said, before they looked it up in the encyclopedia and found several other cities of Manila. This one has got to be the biggest, though, sprawling and densely populated. The streets are jammed with cars, buses and jeepneys -- the uniquely Filipino mode of public transport, originally made from US military vehicles after WWII and decorated colorfully (right). I've experienced comparable traffic conditions elsewhere, but I've never witnessed such an extreme gap between the rich and poor. I was met at the airport by the family of the girl I'm sponsoring through Children International. That evening I found myself in one of the most exclusive, and heavily guarded, 'villages' in Manila, mingling with employees of Lonely Planet, the Asian Development Bank and other high-powered financial and governmental institutions. In other words, my ultimate frisbee team, the Dharma Bums. (Yes, that's Jack Kerouac on our jerseys.) Despite our average age (35?) and being seeded higher than we could handle, we managed to pull off the Pool B championship. Team Philippine narrowly won the tournament in one of the most intense games I've ever watched... and the crowd went crazy.

PS photo credits go to Ms. Manila

Another picture post...

... but I couldn't resist. This was the beach in Nan-ao this weekend.

Phunny phonics

I had never even thought about English phonics before coming here, but it turns out to be a crucial part of the curriculum. It can also be a hard concept for students to grasp, not only due to the differences from Chinese phonics but also because of the way they learn (or don't learn) it. Instead of building the skills to sound out an English word when they read it, or try to spell a word when they hear it, many students simply memorize the vocab words from phonics lessons. Some of these lessons are pretty darn phunny:

I'm really not sure when my students are ever going to use the word 'vat.'  They might encounter a duke in future literature classes... the point of course is for them to learn the rules and sounds. One thing that seems to work well is having students brainstorm  -- the sixth graders like making lists of words they know that have a certain sound, e.g. words that begin with st, sp, sm, ..., especially when they get to use words like 'stupid' or 'spiderman.' They're not quite as fond of 'study.'

These are a few of my favorite things...

my second-graders

kids' art (this is Jamie's monster... how many hearts do you see?)

my roomie!

my beautiful school

(Ariel and Katie, there are some pics of your favorites here)