Monkey Business

We finally got the internet at our house. We were so happy...only to discover Jordon can play his games but can't surf the web. Mine has been working fine...but it can be really slow at times. I guess we shouldn't have expected much.

Saturday, right after we came upstairs from doing laundry I decided to open the curtains. When I did there were well over 20 monkeys running across our house and yard. They were so cute and fun to watch. Especially the babies hanging from the momma's bellies.

Jordon decided to knock on the window to see what they would do. Sure enough they looked right at the window with disdain. They have no fear of us. Shortly thereafter they moved on, one big older monkey kept looking back at the window as he left.

I guess we didn't make any friends. Maybe we won't have pet monkeys after all.

How Sweet?

One of my little ones just came up to me out of nowhere and said,

"When you die, like tomorrow or when you're a grandpa...I'll miss you."

I just said thank you.

The six year old mind is a curious thing indeed.

So the fickle gods of our school server have decided once more to ban us from the glorious land of facebook. The last two days were a nice reprieve of our banishment, but alas, all good things must come to an end. Fortunately we can still access gmail and our blog. Lord help us if we couldn't reach our blog! Ha. Anyway. We were discussing the fact that we post a lot about what's going on in the Philippines, but know very little about what's happening in the lives of our friends and family! So get off your duffs and email us at melissaquattlebaum@gmail.com !

The Quattlebaums

Our second three day weekend in a row!

It seems like we're the people other people think of when they're planning something. You know, they say, "do you think the quattlebaum's are doing anything? probably not, we should give them a call." And this is very nice. We had planned to do nothing but read and hopefully get the internet this weekend (unfortunately that's still a no go.) However, we ended up getting invited to do stuff all day every day. We're beginning to feel more comfortable in our niche.

Saturday the new librarian, Catherine, stopped by to take us shopping and out to lunch. She really seems to like us...probably because I read every book she recommends to me and then we talk about them. Anyway, after we went shopping with her we went to a place called Mountain Woods Resort http://www.mountainwoodsresortsubic.com/ And as it turns out if you eat lunch there you can use their pool. So Catherine did a watercolor painting of the view and Jordon and I swam in the pool for a few hours. It was really fun and relaxing. There were a few groups of people there on holiday from Manila. If you come to visit and don't want to stay at our place, this would be the place to stay. Oh, and if you go to look at the pictures keep in mind that the pool has been renovated into an endless pool with dark green tiles. Fancy fancy.

Then yesterday we went to church in San Fernando. We went with several other expats and a filipino. When we walked into the chapel they all turned around and the worship leader said 'hello, you're new...are you americans?' it was a little awkward...but ended up being a really fun and joyful service. Jordon thinks people are obsessed with Kenny Rogers here because we sang one of his songs at church and we have seen many Kenny Rogers Roasters resturants from Manila to here.

After chuch we drove to the big mall and ate pizza at Sbarro. You could almost imagine you were at the Columbia Mall...if you wanted to...and what kind of crazy would want to do something like that?

After pizza I decided I needed a new pair of shoes to teach in...all I really have here are flip flops and closed toed shoes. It's too hot for closed toed shoes and flip flops are a little unprofessional. So we went into the SM, which I guess started out as a shoe market, and we got a little more than overwhelmed by the vast extent of our options. The funny thing was that we were down to our last 500 pesos...Around $12...and so when I'd pick up a pair of shoes that cost 600 pesos I'd set them back down like they were a fortune...it was kind of funny. I found an inexpensive pretty pair. It'll do the trick. So, we're really poor still. But we're getting by.

The bank called the school to talk to us on Thursday morning and by the time Jordon got to the phone they had hung up. So, apparently they decided that we didnt' need a new credit card because the people who stole it didn't use it. Or haven't used it yet. Tonight Jordon's calling the bank and finalizing all this business. He's doing a fine job managing our lives here and I couldn't be more appreciative :)

So, tonight we're going to get pizza at A Tavola...an italian resturant that has AMAZING italian pizza with some of our coworkers. We're pretty excited...and we can still afford it if you can believe that!

Thanks for your emails...we truly love hearing from you!

Love,

The quattlebaums

Where we live

Kristin requested some pictures of where we live. We took a few before our camera was stolen...I'll put them up now.

These were taken as we walked to school one rainy Saturday.

Pants optional

One of my little dudes spent almost all of fourth block with his pants around his ankles today.

So, the kids here are 'babied.' Most of them have at least one yaya (nanny.) They seldom have to do anything on their own. They don't tie their shoes, take lids off their drinks, pick out their clothes, pull up their pants etc... on their own. There is generally a grown up nearby to take care of those tasks for them.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard my little ones calling "Mrs Quattlebaum...Mrs Quattlebaum...Help me!" from the bathroom.

I've had one student pee his pants and one poop his pants.

This most recent story began with my student coming up to me with his fingers crossed (that's our class sign that they need to use the restroom.) No words are needed, but he came up and said he needed pee at the beginning of fourth block...as I was beginning the lesson. I sent him along reminding him that I don't need to know details. About two minutes later he walked across the room with his pants undone and bunched around his armpits saying 'poop! poop!' I asked if he pooped his pants or if he needed to poop. He said he needed to, so I sent him back to the bathroom again...only to hear him calling my name five minutes later. When I walked back there a few little guys followed me. We discovered that he was going with the door open. he then said 'bug! bug!' I told him to go anyway...and that I really don't want anything to do with his dirty business. He still wouldn't sit back down. So, I told one of the guys who had gone into the bathroom with him (it's a single stall) to kill it. It was already dead...so we all got out and I closed the door. I went back to teaching and a couple minutes later he came out with his pants around his ankles. He began to wash his hands...which is good...but his pants were down. I told him to pull his pants up. He said 'I can't." I asked him to please try. He tried for a few minutes. It was towards the end of the day and one of the little girl's grandpa walked by and saw through the window what was going on. I told the little guy to take off his shoes, right his pants and put them on. When I came back over to check on him he was putting them on inside out. I mentioned that fact and he took them off again to turn them rightside out. This took quite some time. He finally got them on about 2 minutes before the end of the day and asked me to zip and button them for him.

I can't tell you how bewildering this experience was for me. He's actually one of the smartest kids in the class. It was peculiar indeed.

Please don't flip out...

The Philippines is a great place to live and the Filipinos are an amazing people. As a rule they are very polite and friendly. When we pass people on the street they slightly bow their heads and say 'hello ma'am/sir.' We respond similarly and it's quite nice.

We live in Binictican in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Binictican is up on a mountain and it is where the American armed forces resided when they were stationed here. The housing is all similar and fairly nice. Some nicer than others but that's to be expected. The people of Binictican would be considered upper class (including us) whereas at the bottom of the mountain, down by the bay (off-base) is Olongapo. Olongapo is a third-world city. Many of the workers in Binictican live in Olongapo.

The workers are the people building an addition to the school, cleaning ladies, drivers, gardeners, etc. They come and go from Olongapo to Binictican as their jobs require. The average wage per day is 350 pisos...~$5. Most of them are hard working, trustworthy individuals. Some, however, are desperate. Some have starving families due to the rise in grain prices and other factors. Theft is not altogether uncommon.

At first we thought we just misplaced our things...as it turns out someone broke the lock on our downstairs sliding door and stole them. It's more of an inconvenience than anything else. They took our camera, my American cell phone, my travel bag which contained my passport and driver's license, Jordon's wallet (which had his driver's license, around $200 american, and a family heirloom opal that he was going to have made into a necklace for me.)

As soon as we realized what happened we let the school know and they leapt into action. The maintenence man went over and put bars in our windows and the sliding door so they couldn't open and changed our locks. They are also going to put bars on our windows on the outside as well.

Inspectors came by, took pictures, and insurance is going to reimburse us for the camera and phone. So that's nice.

We cancelled our credit card and are working on getting me a new passport.

We're kind of poor until we get our paycheck so that's a little frustrating. We went to a large mall in San Fernando with the intention of purchasing a new camera only to discover we didn't have the money for it.

On another note, that mall was insane. It was huge and there were thousands of people in it. And it was exceedingly loud. The shops are tiny and specialized...there was one that only sold CD-Rs... And each little shop has at least as many salespeople walking around as customers.

Anyway, we're getting by until we get paid and we're doing fine. We're really enjoying our coworkers. Different groups of them have invited us to do something every day this weekend.

The dynamics of the school social network is interesting. Nobody really seems to know where we fit in. At lunch we sit with the Filipinos (though they don't really invite us to do stuff.) Then there are the married expats and the single expats. We have been trying to get together with the singles but it has yet to occur. We keep getting invited to spend time with the couples. Which is nice, they're all really great...but they're all at least 15 years older than us. The singles are younger and live about 20 minutes away, walking. We're hoping to play wii with them tonight. We'll let you know how that goes.

Once we get a TV we'd like to invite singles and Filipinos over to play and hang out...one of our coworkers that we'd really like to become friends with is Bam. She's from Manila and really fun. She's a city girl so the same things that we're getting used to (monkeys, bugs etc...) she's also coming to terms with. Anyway, we share similar senses of humor. But we think we need to find someone else so we're not just courting this single girl. It makes me feel creepy...like the Nobles...but not...yuck....pretend I didn't say that.

Anyway, that's one thing we are working on now...making friends.

Also, we finally saw the monkeys! And they were terrifying. I first saw one across a field and of course smiled, pointed, and squeeked in delight. It didn't like that. It stared and behind us we heard scary monkey noises. We quickly moved along without turning back.

The next day we spotted some across the street. There was a whole family, 6 of them. We were so in awe that we didn't mention their presence to the men walking on that side of the street, much to their dismay. One of the larger monkeys lunged out and hissed at them showing its teeth. The men shrank back, obviously terrified. Then they slowly curved out past them to safety. It was pretty scary. I thought there was going to be a rumble. I had my switchblade, er, nalgene ready to use if need be. We told them to 'sit on it' and hurried to school. The Fonz would have been proud.

That's about it. We're at school now to plan for our week. It's a shortened week because today is a holiday Ninoy Aquino Day. And next monday is National Heroes Day so we're off as well. Pretty nice.

We love you all. Thanks for your emails...they make us happy and keep us from getting too homesick.

Until next time,

The Quattlebaums

What's the name of that robot from the Jetsons anyway?

So we hired our own personal maid, and she started today. She's washing the floors, dishes, taking our the trash, etc. We'll have her do windows and perhaps some shopping for us since she's from Oolongapo...she'll be able to get a better price at the market than we would. Rice, green veggies, fruit etc. Perhaps some spices as well. She will come to our house every tuesday.

I really hope it works out. We looked at a car yesterday. More on that to come. I'll unveil some pictures later... it's got character.

Melissa and I are well, we're looking around for some of our things. We moved some things around so if the maid snooped she wouldn't be tempted to take anything of value... and now we can't find where we've hidden our camera and a couple of other items. I'm just glad we noticed them missing before our maid came today, that way we know it wasn't her. It would have been awful if we had to fire her for something she didn't do.

We get our ID's for benictican (basically a small town in itself, set up in the rainforest..it's where we live) today, so we can feel free to leave the neighborhood, and feel good knowing that we can prove to the guards that we do indeed live here. Pretty soon we'll be interviewing for our work visas as well, which involves a pretty thorough physical. Chest x-ray to check for TB (a real issue here), blood work, dental exam, etc. They also give us a 'psychological' exam. Though from what I've heard it's a bunch of bunk. Hopefully neither of us get thrown into the looney bin.

We love you all and look forward to hearing from you. Everytime we have an email from family or friends it makes our day, so thank you for writing!

Yours, The Quattlebaums.

A Grade One Perspective

My little ones are so adorable. I came to this country anticipating third graders. It came as quite the shock that I would be teaching First Grade (or as they call it here, Grade One.)


They are currently having Religious Studies in my room and as I have planned for the week I have nothing better to do right now than to update this blog. Also, to set the stage...one little one has wicked gas much to the greater dismay of the rest of us. And in the short time I've been typing this two little ones have come over to me saying, "Teacher, Teacher." That's what they prefer to call me. I can't tell you how many times I've asked them to call me Mrs. Quattlebaum. Addressing teachers as Teacher seems to be their way.


I have thirteen students. Five are girls, eight are boys. Seven are Korean, Four are Filipino, One is American and One is British. Sometimes understanding them is difficult and four of the Koreans don't really speak English yet. So that's a struggle. Luckily for me (and them) they are all so cute that I can't get frustrated with them. I guess we'll see if that changes...


I don't know if it's legal for me to put pictures up or not...but I will anyway so you can get a feel of what my kids are like.

First Day Jitters..

So yesterday was our first day of school and wow did it fly by. I have 18 students at the moment, and they're all terrific. Yesterday they were all terribly quiet. One girl asked "How long is your contract here?" and when I answered "Two years, and then we get to decide if we want to go back home or not." She pleaded, "Please stay!" It was really cute.

The students are incredibly smart. The work ethic here for education is totally different than back home, though that might be partially because some of the Korean families beat their children if they don't study hard enough. We heard about a student who, if he went to be before 1am, his mother would wake him up screaming at him about how lazy he was. It's really a different culture. Roughly 60% of my classroom population is Korean, and the other 40% are Filipino, or Filipino/American. The families are extremely respectful. Korean students will hand me their papers, or anything else with both hands as a sign of respect. Korean parents offer slight bows when passing along the corridors. Filipino parents and students always seem to be smiling, and are extremely pleasant as well. I have no 'white' students in my classroom. Melissa has one or two. We're beginning to be OK with being the minority, getting used to the looks strangers give us as we walk through town and our neighborhood.

More to come on this post in a bit, but we need to go for now.

-Jordon and Melissa.

Typhoon Lagoon..

We had our first Typhoon today! It was really neat. "Itty bitty sideways sting-ing rain," Forrest Gump style. I wish I would have taken a picture. We literally had a moat around our house. I think I'm going to petition the school for a drawbridge.

Woke up to furious pounding on the front door this morning. Our neighbor (who just happens to be the lower school principal!) wanted to let us know that the Upper School Principal (the guy we saw Dark Knight with) was sending his wife to come pick us up on account of the crazy rain. Everyone here is like that, doing things to help us..offering to find us house help, a car, take us shopping, etc. The power was out for ~2 hours or so due to the storm.. We canceled our Open House, and we're just going to start school on Thursday without an open house.. so the first time I'll meet my students is Thursday morning. I found out I've got 20 students, which is more than I expected, but still a good class size as far as that goes. Back home they were running anywhere from 20-30, so 20 isn't bad. I've heard they're really sweet kids.

I filled out an internet application today for wireless, but it'll definitely be over a week before we get any results.. the company is in Oolangapo, so today Ms. Edna (the matriarch around Brent Subic) helped us fill out the forms, and hopefully in a couple of days the drivers will take it to Oolangapo. Then we'll wait for the internet company to run a credit check, and THEN we wait for them to show up for installation. Things take awhile around here, which is fine, just something to adjust to.

Keep those comments and emails coming and we'll keep the posts coming. More pictures soon, we promise.

-Jordon and Melissa

Shopping, Construction and School lunch, oh my!

It's Sunday here, which makes it a full week since we left home. It's interesting here...everyone is very polite, and whenever I go shopping or even say hello to the guards, it's always "hello sir." The school organized a trip to Clark (where Dr. Long used to live.. it's roughly an hour drive from Binictican, our housing area), and I bought several things for our house. The malls here are amazing. I was informed by someone that out of the ten biggest malls in the world, 6 of them reside in the Philippines. They employ a huge number of people in every store, making it impossible to go down any aisle without someone there to offer you help should you need it. The most notable purchases were a microwave and a big rubbermaid garbage bin with a lock top so the monkeys don't get in and scatter our trash all over the yard. I got some smaller things as well, duct tape (to seal up the gaps where our wall unit AC's are installed), and some Combat to deter any creepy crawlies from becoming our roommates.

The other night I woke up in the middle of the night startled by the three loud "THWACK!" noises coming from the kitchen. Melissa crawled into bed a moment later informing me that she had just killed the biggest roach she'd ever seen. The next morning I woke up to find a cockroach a good 3 inches long and 1.5 across. Needless to say, I spread the combat as soon as I got home with it.. we haven't seen any crawlies since. Good riddance.

We still need a lot of things to really feel at home.. but we're managing. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese would be at the top of Melissa's list, while I'm jonesing for the internet so I can skype with everyone and play some games with my friends back home. However it looks like the soonest we'll be able to get an internet connection from our house will be about 2 weeks (rough estimate)... so we won't be Skyping anytime soon unless we get to school early or stay way late.. the thirteen hour time difference makes things difficult. A TV and DVD player are also on our list.. but then we'd also need some DVD's. Getting settled in has been a little expensive, but it's all expected. We're wondering about a used car or scooter so we can do a little traveling on our own without relying on others. It's sort of nice to have to rely on others for rides because we're forced to be social.

Melissa came down with a tummy bug, so I went to Clark without her... I came back 7 hours later with some medicine for her. They sell presciption medicine in little doses, like the trial packs back home. A couple of doses of two different meds ran me about 2 dollars US. Not a bad deal at all. She's feeling better now, a little tired, but otherwise good. While I was gone she wasted no time in watching the 6 hour Pride and Predjudice movie on our laptop in bed. Unfortunately that's one of only 3 movies we brought.

We have open house wednesday evening, and we're getting excited to meet our students and their families.. there's ongoing construction at our school, they're building a new wing that's 3 floors... it's been a little delayed and won't be opening for another 3 weeks or more, so we're temporarily teaching from the old classrooms. It makes it hard to make our classroom a 'home' for our students, knowing that any decorations will be taken down in just a few short weeks, but it will be wonderful once the new classrooms are completed. As it stands, our rooms have a restroom and sink in the class, which is a big step up from last year.

Another surprising twist.. our school has a chef. School lunches are AMAZING. On friday we had tuna steaks with a terriaki sauce, white rice, FRESH steamed vegetables, and a lipton iced tea. We found out a lot of teachers eat school lunch everyday, and often times buy two lunches each, taking one home in a to-go box to have for dinner. We might very well hop on that bandwagon. They are -that- good. Definitely beats the sloppy joes back home.

More to come soon, please write us at melissaquattlebaum@gmail.com with all of your updates. We miss all of you and look forward to hearing from you. -Jordon and Melissa

PS. In Honduras a lot of the workers called me Harry Potter... Philippinos on the other hand, refer to me as spider man. Personally, I think I'm moving up in the world.