Utak na prito (fried brain)

Today... my brain was fried from trying to understand a movie about the parallels of Philippines Literature and History in it's different forms from precolonial till present time. Napaka malalim and I didn't understand a word of it during the 35 minutes we watched. At least I could see the pictures, but the rest was beyond me. A difficult lesson and one that I felt more despair over that usual. Before that we had our weekly test and 1/2 of it was far beyond me. People keep telling me to let the Tagalog flow out, but it's not in there in the first place. My brain is fried.

I'm sad, I'm frustrated, I need to do my regular crying thing... overwhelmed temporarily, I'm so happy to just rest and write in English- it's my revenge for the challenges of the day. I'm not sure it's helpful to think of it that way, but I'm just done for a while. Rest time for now. I'm just glad to be back in my room, done with dinner conversation, done for while with everything. There were no other students on campus, just us. The storm (Hurricane Frank)blew down a great deal of debris from trees and covered all the walkways. The many workers there worked hard all day and it was looking very clean at the end of the day. After class and lunch we switched to a different NGO. This one is the juvenile hall unit for elementary and middle school street children. We sang songs and played basketball with the younger ones. There was no hoop there, so Charity, who is leading most all of the activities there bought one and Ed, also part of our group, just holds it up during the game. The kids have scabies and other skin ailments. We disinfect with hand sanitizer after any contact with them, but I wonder if that is enough. Afterward, we sang songs and did some journal writing with the older youth. Tough tough lives.

After that we decided to join staff from the community NGO to help distribute government food rations to people affected by the big storm. We passes out about 200 rations, but of course ran short. I just got bit by an mosquitoes on my feet while typing. Eventually we made it back to the classrooms and our teacher gave us an impromptu head start on tomorrows lecture, which seemed like another lecture in and of itself. My headache was in affect by then. I get them usually from being out in the sun without my sunglasses, which I was today. They last about 4 hours. I still have it.
We have journals that we write in and I wrote about the challenges. My teacher is sympathizing with me, but also clearly showing where she can't handle my frustration or struggle.

I got a text message earlier in the day that the news team will not have the beauty queen host, but the writer, cameraman...and instead of coming tomorrow, they are coming instead on Weds at 12:30pm to interview me about the use of waste vegetable oil in diesel motors. It's the project that I initiated here, mentioned earlier in the blog. I had to give their names to our program staff so they can be allowed on campus to interview me.
Writing is such good decompression.
After a Jeepney and Tricycle ride, I am back with my host family, done with another great dinner and now in my room. My host Mom said that I was looking handsome, part of that was about me gaining weight and looking healthy. I'm definitely well fed here.
Now, just tired and itchy on my ankles, now covered in socks.
Some people in our group are going to Tagaytay tonight to drink (coffee they said, but I think more will be involved) and do videoke. Everyone else has so much more Tagalog in their backgrounds, minds and systems. I'm going to rest some and study some and then sleep. Also, I need every brain cell. I can't afford to be killing them with alcohol.

Yesterday I covered almost the first 60 pages of my grammar book, review and new stuff.

It's a challenge to keep defining success by my own measures when I'm being evaluated by theirs. I'm already getting a great deal out of the experience and I'm speaking with more and more confidence each day. I made it this far and it's not like they are going to send me home for not being at the same level as everyone else. I did have that fear the first day. This is a good chance to repattern my study habits and fully apply myself at learning and resting and going after my dream of Filipino fluency. It the chance to keep reaching for a bigger mind. All of the concepts from Brain Plasticity and thoughts around rewarding effort vs. success come to mine. See earlier blog from 2 months back.

J