It is the internets falt.

Lake of updates, lack of contact, I am blaming on the internet. Really really slow internet. Also on power-cuts, and plenty of them.
On Friday we (Nikki, YuJin, Adiam, and I) were invited to  Cabalutan High School to judge a cooking competition, the competition was part of there nutrition month celebrations. Nikki and I arrived after 8, the other two were already there. We were introduced to some of the teachers before they started there celebrations with a concert. There were kids singing and dancing and giving presentations up on stage. Apparently one of the teaches asked Nikki and Adiam who could sing, about ten minutes later the emcee announced that I was going to be giving a vocal performance on stage for them. So thanks to Nikki they got to hear the NewZealand National Anthem (or a strange interpretation of it). We went to the teachers house for lunch, (the cooking competition was afterward) where there was more singing this time in the form of karaoke, we were told that we would be fetched when we were needed for the competition, but the teacher who was going to come and get us forgot so we never ended up judging. So we spent the afternoon drinking with the teachers instead.
On Saturday, we had another eventful day. Nikki had been invited to speak at a corrination ball in Carmen that started at 7. Then In the morning we went to a town on the otherside of the island with Adiam, YuJin and there host family, it is over two hours away, we were leaving at 8.30 and arriving back in Carmen at 6. Town was ok, there was good icecream, something lacking in our town. Problems arrived when it came time to leave, the event that the captain was at was suppose to finish at 4, at 4.30 you could see the panic in Nikki's eyes, she was so worried that people would think she had just not turned up. and because our host family is in Manila for a seminar we had no way to contact the organisers to tell them we were running late, we finally left town after 5, got back to Carmen at 7.30.Nikki was freaking out the whole time. Were we were told it was fine she wouldn't be speaking in-till 9 or 10, and we had plenty of time to have dinner and a shower before going to the dance. Nikki and I got to the plaza were the dace was to be held after 8 there was very few people there, they were running on Filipino time, which is always late. Nikki gave her speech, then we danced till there was a brown-out (powercut) which was about 1.30, then we went to play cards with some locals, at about 4am someone suggested a run, for some unknown we went for a run towards cabaluton, (up a hill) then we went for a swim and watched the sunrise, we tried to go to church (they have church in the phillipines at 6am) but were falling asleep so we had to go home to have a nap. a slightly busy night.
Yesterday, Vincent came and asked if I could do some teaching for a couple of days at the high school, some of the teachers have to go to manila for a family emergency. So today I taught English to first year high school and third year high school. The kids are a lot of fun, even when they don't understand what you are saying most of them will try, or they will just tell you that they don't understand. very unlike the younger kids who a lot of them just wont say anything. the year ones are on a topic which involves listening, I was reading them a passage of text and they had to tell me what it was about. you get some strange answers because they just pick out random words they picked up from the passage and put them together. one kid told me the passage was about books underwater. He got the book part right.
The year three class are doing past tense. which is surprisingly fun, I was getting them to read out there answers to me for an activity from there text book. One of the boys spoke so fast that I had to get him to repeat himself three times. I am looking forward to teaching them again tomorrow.

will try and update next week.
much love