Monday, July 11, 2011

SEAsia Update #3

Urgent.

School has been suspended for the next week or two, and I am cleaning to make the safe house safer and more house-like. Yesterday's events do not shake me behind my diplomatic safeties but this is not the case for the messenger pigeons here or the smurfs at the YMCA.

Speakin of shakin, a 6.2 earthquake hit Negros this morning around 5am. Expecting aftershocks and minimal damage but still grateful to have been here, not there. The messenger pigeons phoned home and their broods are safe. As for the SMCI campaign I was supposed to join this coming weekend, so far 37000 students have been splattered with good news and 22000 have asked for follow-ups. I don't know if I will still be flying into Dumaguete City. Waiting for a word.

The Martians invaded one of the YMCA's yesterday morning. I am truly humbled at the smurfs courage and determination to smile and laugh for each other. After teaching math and English at a YMCA yesterday morning, I spent the rest of the day with three teenage smurfettes and one of the pigeons. They joked around over the anxious undercurrent to be strong for their friends. We had girl time and an English-only rule and I gave them pedicures. They were very interested in my love life, so I began by talking about being hung up on an ex and ended with a story about this impossibly good invisible man who washed and bandaged my feet. Sometime after, last night, the pigeon took me aside and was in tears and we called Papa up about it. This morning a smurfette came to my room crying and admitting fear but saying not to tell the others because we need to lol together through the tension. We had breakfast together just us two and talked to and about Papa before the smurfettes went back to the Y. Now two pigeons and I are hangin at the house and we await further instructions.

The pigeons and smurfs are laying low for now. Continue to yell at the sky for their safety, that the Martians won't invade the YMCA. And for health--theirs moreso than mine. I'm never as diligent at home about spf, sleeping, vitamins/supplements, hand sanitizers, and washing with soap, so I am probably in better health abroad than usual. I doubt the slums are much worse than the subways and Harlem, and at the end of the day I'm air conditioned and showered. But smurfs live and swim in poop. Such is poverty. What poop are you swimming in? Even before he got pwned on the plus sign, even before he got borned in a poopy barn feeding trough, Massuh became a fetus swimming in a bag of his own poopies. Though he had castles in the clouds he became po' to make us rich and filthy to make us clean.

Sorry(but not that sorry) to be ridic and cryptic. It was fun and not that necessary. But just in case the Bahasa-Martians are on the line. Thanks all. Miss you and grateful to be body surfin on the things you lift up when it looks like you're talking to yourself. Today's a good day to write or chat me at least for the next few hours we just chillin.

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