Pakwan Festival

Sorry for the delay in getting this post up, we've been having some trouble with our internet.  This past week was a whole lot of firsts for me. 

First time leaving the city meaning my first ride on one of those buses Robby described (and our first selfie)

One thing Robby forgot to mention was that they play movies on the bus, generally action films, and at a volume that is way louder than necessary.  You have individual speakers above your seat which you can't adjust for volume, or there are big stereos in the overhead storage space playing the movie at full blast.  After two movies are shown they switch to CD's and for whatever reason they love their 80's music here.  The music isn't just background music, it is playing loudly over the speakers so you can't tune it out.  I can't figure out if anyone on the bus actually enjoys it, but it killed my head and even gave Robby a headache.  4 hours of YMCA/Like a Virgin/Beat It/Funky Town would give anyone a headache.  I don't get it, but someone must enjoy it because Robby said it is the same on every bus, even the overnight trips.  Anyway, aside from the bus I had a few other firsts.

First ride in a sidecar of a tricycle

First ride sidesaddle on the back of a tricycle

First Jeepney ride (!) - I was in the front seat because it was so crowded

Robby was hanging onto the back of the jeepney until seats opened up and he got a place on the benches inside

I also had a lot of firsts where Filipino food is concerned.  Wasn't able to get a photo of most of it, but I tried something new at every meal!  I had the local favorite "pancit", which consists of very light noodles (like angel hair pasta but clear) with veggies, pork, squid balls (chunks of squid), shrimp and quail eggs (basically tiny hard boiled eggs) all mixed together.  Pretty delicious and for $4 we got a huge platter of it big enough to feed four people, easily.  It was the only size option!  A lot of things here seemed to be geared toward groups or large families.  Most menu items feed 2-4 people and accommodations sleep large numbers as well, finding a room for just two is harder than you'd think and way more expensive.

Back to the food.  My favorite dish (and Robby's) was pork tocino which is pork marinated in what has to be sugar and something close to BBQ sauce (that's the best I can explain the taste), only it has a General Tso's chicken-type glaze has and it is cooked until almost crispy. Absolutely delicious!

Tocino! (That's a tomato peel folded into a rose on the side!)

My first traditional Filipino breakfast

Breakfast consisted of a fried egg, Alaminos longganisa (Alaminos is the city we stayed in and longganisa means sausage, it's like the chorizo of the Philippines and different regions cook it differently), fried bangus (milk fish), and rice.  A meal is not considered a meal here unless it contains rice. (For example, a cheeseburger is a "snack", unless of course you have rice on the side).

We both also had our first ear of corn "snack" which obviously wasn't our first taste of corn, but it was our first time eating it at 8am in place of breakfast.

Vendors wheel carts of these through the streets selling them, every time we go out we see someone snacking on an ear of corn- regardless of the time of day.

All of our meals were in gorgeous settings, we stayed at Hundred Islands National Park (video from first blog) so we had a view of them from everywhere we ate.

Looking over the 123 islands of Hundred Islands while eating

We switched it up one night and had dinner quite literally on the water where we watched the owner/waitress/cook prepare dinner for us.  The only other couple in the restaurant bought crabs from a boat that pulled up to the edge selling their daily catch.

Restaurant on stilts over the water

The real reason we ventured out of Manila was not to let me experience local food and transport, but to attend the 2nd Annual Bani Pakwan Festival. A little back story: when Robby asked the Mayor of the municipality Bani if he could do his research in their MPA she said "yes, on the condition that you have to attend our annual Pakwan Festival!" Who wouldn't agree to those terms?

In case you don't speak Filipino, Pakwan = Watermelon

The festival was a week long celebration, but we just attended the weekend events.  The first day we arrived at 11am only to find we had just missed the dance competition and nothing was scheduled to happen again until 3pm.  Whoops.  Robby introduced me to the Mayor and then she proceeded to hand us over to her staff who treated us like VIPs the rest of the weekend.  We were given lunch and then walked around the festival.  We were unable to find any watermelon to eat, our only watermelon siting in our first four hours was of this guy:

The square watermelon that was on display

We did however see some local products for sale, so I bought a purse made from corn husks!

Mayor's staff member to the right of me and some others who wanted to be in the photo...

We also found impressive art made from discarded plastic!

We were invited to go get massages with the staff in the down time before the games started, but we opted not to and walked around a bit more.  We were expecting it to be more of a "fair-type" atmosphere with booths and food vendors all themed around watermelon, but that wasn't the case.  There was a photo contest so we got to see some of the local sites vicariously via photographs, and we also stumbled upon a float being made for the Sunday parade.

Stay tuned to see the end result

We were a little worried about what we had traveled all this way for, but once the games started those fears vanished.  The first game was musical chairs, with a twist.

They had to grab a watermelon when the music stopped before finding their chair

Another game involved blind-folding kids and giving them a stick.  They then had to try and find a watermelon on the ground based on the shouts of the crowd and smash it.

We couldn't join because we didn't have blindfolds of our own

We did get to play the watermelon toss.  You had to stand across from your partner and toss a watermelon back and forth, only after each toss you had to take a large step backward.  We were doing well until the pair next to us had a bad throw. I caught our watermelon, but saw another one coming at me out of the corner of my eye.  I jumped to avoid it smashing on my feet and in the process dropped our watermelon.  Oh well, we still ended up in 3rd place!

Other games included a guessing the weight of the watermelon, but we had to guess in kilograms which made it a little tough.  They also had a jar full of watermelon seeds and you had to guess the number of them inside.  We didn't guess correctly, but we did learn that they plant a certain watermelon just for their seeds which they then eat.

I'd liken them to very large sunflower seeds

You'd crack them open in your mouth, spit out the hard outer shell and eat the center

There was also a watermelon carving competition which was a lot of fun to watch.

They'd use a big knife to cut off the outer skin

Then smaller knives and tools to do the more detailed work

Most of them made flowers which were gorgeous

One guy used the outside shavings to make petals

Another made a fish

The highlight for me was the watermelon eating contest!  The rules were simple: you had two minutes to eat as much of your slice as possible only your hands had to be behind your back.  I entered, Robby said he'd rather watch me attempt this than participate so he took photos.

There were three other girls at my end of the table and four boys at the far end

I was doing well until I got to the seeds (they weren't seedless melons...)

The seeds slowed me down, I was attempting to spit them out as I went, but it was harder than I thought it would be.  When they called time I looked at the other girls and felt that I had definitely eaten the most (Editor's Note: she absolutely ate the most), then I looked at the other end of the table.

Robby caught my "no way can you see theirs!?" face

The boys put me to shame...

Evidently they just ate the seeds

On the up side, that meant Robby got to enjoy some pakwan

The watermelons from the games were, oddly enough, the only real melons we saw the whole weekend

Remember when I said we were treated like VIPs?  Well, what came along with that was an almost celebrity status.  I think more so because we were foreign. The local kids took a lot of interest in us, at times openly staring. Robby caught this one moment that encapsulates what I'm trying to get across.  All I was doing was writing my email address down for a man that had taken some pretty good pictures of me during the watermelon eating contest.

And all the kids wanted to see

We also got interviewed by a news station, we turned around and quite literally had a camera and microphone in our faces. They didn't ask if we wanted to be interviewed but just jumped right into it!

No idea when or where, but we were on TV!

The day ended with a talent show, but we decided to head back to our place for dinner.  The next morning we arrived at 6:30am for the parade.  The floats were on all sorts of vehicles:

From trucks

To tractors

To a generator on wheels

Some were so decked out you couldn't tell what was underneath

My favorite float was proceeded by this woman showing off a beautifully carved pakwan

And the float had a bunch of carved melons on the back

Oh and here is the final product of the one from yesterday!

In between floats were marching bands from each of the local schools.

Each of the schools then performed a 10-15 minute performance for the judges in the town square.  We were given special VIP seating with the Mayor's mom who was incredibly sweet.  The kids were absolutely adorable and so impressive!  Robby and I felt sure neither of us would have remembered all of the steps they were required to at that age, let alone all of the notes on their instruments.

They were so tiny!

Each band had drummers

Standing xylophone players

What I can only describe as upright xylophone players (first time we'd ever seen anything like them)

Kids playing xylophones hanging from their shoulders (catching on to a theme here?)

Girls twirling flags

Others twirling batons

All of the schools incorporated pakwans into their performances in some way, either via costume:

Sombrero's cut in half, ingenious!

Or through the use of props:

Watermelon balls

Umbrellas

Flags

Or fans

I did not realize how many schools were in Bani. After 3.5 hours of performances we had only seen the elementary schools, and the high schoolers still had yet to perform.  My head was done though, (listening to drummers for that many hours straight was easily one of the worst things I could have done for it) so we headed back to our place to relax for the remainder of the day.

We found a great spot for our hammocks and watched the sunset from inside them

After resting, we headed back to Bani for the street party that night.  We were given free drink passes by the mayor, but we only used a couple because the staff kept getting pitchers and refilling our cups. Such a nice group of people!

Us with the staff

There was a band playing on the stage in the street.  The opening act was essentially someone doing karaoke with a guitarist, a bassist and two dancers on stage with them.  The singer was quite literally reading the words out of a book he had propped up on a stand.  Karaoke is huge over here so it really wasn't all that surprising.  You often hear popular songs on the radio covered by a local singer singing them.  There was a karaoke machine in our hotel restaurant and many bars and restaurants center around karaoke.  I havne't sung any yet, but Robby did his fair share at the holiday parties he was invited to at UP and with Fulbright before I got here.

The festival ended with a fireworks show and then we headed back to Manila the next morning.

On the left is the Bani municipal hall where the mayor and her staff work

Robby is putting together a video with all of our footage from the festival, hopefully it will be up soon!  Until then, here is another fun cultural fact!  Here in the Philippines people get titles for a larger variety of jobs than they do in the US.  For example, while both countries give the title "Dr. Smith" to MDs and PhDs, here they also say "Attorney Smith", "Engineer Smith" and "Teacher Smith".  I learned this when I went across the street from our condo building to a local school to ask about possibly volunteering.  They were quick to say yes and so I became "Teacher Danielle".

So far I've been able to help an 8th grade writing teacher with lesson plans and in the process learned what a "collocation" is (for english as a second language learners, things like us saying a lions roar not a lions scream).  I also got to work with 2nd and 4th graders during their art class and help the 1st grade math teacher with her lesson on geometry (well, shapes).  School ends the first week of March here so the position will be short lived, but it has been fun to get out in the community!