Flat Rocks!

Yes, I know it has been a while since I have written a blog, and for that I am sorry. There’s just so much to do here, and school takes up a fair share of my time too J. Anyway, last Monday (June 13), we (the five of us) decided to go to Flat Rocks on a whim. We don’t have classes on Mondays, so nobody really had anything to do. Flat Rocks is within UPLB’s campus, but it is a bit of a trek up through the mountain from the main part of campus. We started on our way around 9:30AM, and by about half way there, it started pouring. You would think that after spending 3 weeks in the Philippines where it rains almost every day, we would have thought to bring umbrellas, but nope! We tried waiting out the storm underneath the entryway of one of the buildings, but after about 15 minutes or so we gave up and just continued on our way. We paid our P10 (about 25 cents!) entry fee, and started on this path through the jungle. There was mud and huge masses of tree roots everywhere, and it was pretty slippery since it had been raining pretty hard for a while. Thankfully, nobody fell and we found our way their without much trouble. Flat Rocks is basically a bunch of huge rocks created by lava when Mount Makiling (yes, my school is on the side of a dormant volcano!) erupted hundreds or maybe thousands of years ago (nobody knows when it last erupted). The rocks are in and around the river that flows down the mountain, creating a lot of small waterfalls and pools. Basically an awesome playground for big kids like us! J 

The men, being men, had to assert their manliness and climb up on the huge rocks that the ladies couldn't scale…yes I am admitting a physical weakness here :P

Just plain awesome!

We were soaked from walking in the rain, so we weren’t shy about getting wet and playing in the water!

 RJ looking downstream. It is so peaceful here!

I’m sure there are cool places in the U.S. like Flat Rocks, but we would never get to experience them the way we were able to enjoy Flat Rocks, because of all the safety regulations. Being here, I am realizing how 

many neat things you can do when the government doesn’t regulate everything!

Disclaimer: I know regulations are supposed to be for our safety, but sometimes they just need to trust that we can handle ourselves and have a little fun! If everyone is careful and doesn’t do stupid stuff, there is no reason why we can’t enjoy nature. If someone falls, it’s their fault for pushing themselves too far. Just my opinion, sorry for the rant.

Registration….

Last week we had the joy of experiencing registering for classes the UPLB way. Most students enroll using an online program similar to what MSU uses, but as exchange students, we had a whole different system known as “pre-rogging,” short for prerogative. In this system, we had to find each professor and ask them to let us take their class. This could be done the day before classes started or throughout the first week of class. As you can imagine, this was mildly challenging, because professors aren’t required to be in their offices, or anywhere on campus for that matter, during the first week. Thankfully, the Office of International Linkages assigned us a UPLB student who was familiar with campus to help us out. We heard horror stories from other students about professors making them sing and dance and do other silly things before they were allowed into the class, but thankfully we weren’t asked much more than our background in the topic. As frustrated as RJ and I were with the process, the other MSU students encountered a great deal more hurdles than we did. We were done for the day around 10:30AM, but the others didn’t finish until about 3PM!! 

After the first day of registration, we only had 6 credits, so the next day we went out to try again. Luckily, things went pretty smoothly and we were able to get 12 credits of classes we wanted/needed to take. We were so excited to be finished, we turned our forms into the registrar’s office and went on our merry way. Later that night, we realized we had been planning to take PE classes just for fun. This made our registration process a lot more hectic, because we had already finalized our schedules with the registrar’s office. Thankfully, we met Luis, a chemical engineering student who studied at MSU for a semester, who helped us out here. In the end, RJ signed up for table tennis and archery, and I just signed up for archery.

I was soo excited to get into the archery class! I have always wanted to learn how to shoot a bow and arrow!  The class was full, but the professor was really nice, and offered to come an hour early to teach us. There are a handful of students that will be joining us for the early class, and I actually think it will be better since it is a smaller class, so we don’t have to wait as long to shoot. I think the fact that we are American helped us out a bit, because he said no to a lot of students that wanted to come early—he said he spent a summer in Wisconsin and he was asking me a bunch of questions about Michigan and what not. All in all, registration was a pain, but I am happy with my classes and pretty excited for some of them!! (If you are curious, I am taking Transportation Engineering, Foundation Engineering, Philippine History, Philippine Art and Society, and Archery J).

Botanical "Gardens" and Tagaytay

A lot has happened.

We've been pretty busy the past week trying to sign up for classes, which is sort of a pain compared to the online sign-up in the U.S. Here, we have to go to each professor and get the class signed off, and then have to wait in lines to get things registered. More waiting = not fun. But it wasn't so bad in the end. Classes themselves aren't too bad yet but that's probably because we haven't done anything, haha.

Anyway, onto more interesting stuff. Last week, we went to the Makiling Botanical Gardens, which is maybe a 20-25 minute walk from the SEARCA dorm. The title of the place itself is misleading....it's a JUNGLE in there. There was a lot of amazing scenery and a long river deep within the jungle. The experience was nothing like I've ever seen in the U.S.

So yea, I'll let some of the photos do the talking.

At the entrance of the gardens

A view off of a bridge

Jessica's Spartan pride

Us guys along a path through the "gardens"

Cool scenery

Us standing on a rock in the river

More cool scenery

Walking along a path surrounded by jungle

There you have it, just a few photos of the Makiling Botanical...jungle.

Just yesterday, my mom already left for home, so we saw her one last time before she left. She took us to the city of Tagaytay, which has the famous landmark that is a 'volcano-within-a-volcano-within-a-lake'. We didn't exactly go there, just to a hotel where there is a cliff overlooking the area. It was a pretty high up, but just a bit cloudy so we couldn't really get a fully scenic viewpoint. Legend has it that Tagaytay got it's name from a general who patrolled the area when the Spanish conquered it. He asked some locals (a father and son) what the name of the place was, and the son exclaims, "taga, itay!" or "strike, father!". Meaning attack the soldier. However, not understanding tagalog, they say that the soldier took the name of the place from that statement: Tagaytay.

Us posing, the volcano is in the back. I tried to stand on it that concrete railing but some dude was yelling at me not to because it was a pretty high drop. I did it anyway.

We also went to see my Aunt one last time and I got a photo with my young cousins. Owen is on the left, Anya is on the right.

Well, that's that for my entry. Stay tuned for Jessica's post on our recent adventure, the flatrocks!

Mga Bagong Kaibigan

Tagalog translation: New friends!

Apparently the other MSU students studying abroad arrived last night, but I was asleep. Jessica is rooming with one of them, Violeta. The other two, Kenny and Jose, are rooming together. That leaves me in a single, but I'm fine with that.

So Jessica and I decided to try doing laundry for the first time today, except the washing machines here are nothing like the U.S. ones. It's about half the size, and has the washer and "spin" drier combined (two compartments). So here we are, two engineers, trying to figure out this contraption, when this girl near us who was also doing her own laundry offered to show us how to do it. Her name was Ana. We had some small talk, and she found out we were from MSU. Then the coincidence of all coincidences: she actually was good friends with the a Filipino exchange student, who we knew, that was studying at MSU last semester! She was really friendly after that, and we asked her were to get groceries, and she actually offered to show all of us where the good places were at for eating and shopping...and so our day began.

We met her a few hours later in the lobby, and we took our first jeepney ride to the front of campus. I now know how to ride a jeepney. It may not sound like a big deal but there's lingo and signals to make everything go smoothly and I'm glad I learned it. Also it only costs 8 pesos for one ride anywhere along that jeepney's route (right now 43 pesos = 1 dollar), so the only trouble is finding exact change.

We took the jeepney to the front of campus where we met up some of Ana's friends: Ayo (ah-yoh), Doms, and Dre. It was about lunchtime, so we decided to eat at this place called Bonitos, and they serve authentic filipino food there so I was pretty satisfied with my meal. I think the other students were too, and I know Ana and her friends were. We talked a lot, about school and the differences between life in the U.S. and in the Philippines, like what shocked us the most or what seemed most different. For me, it was the traffic, and not necessarily how congested it is, but how people drive crazily here. Shockingly, I didn't see a single accident. I know if people started driving like that in the U.S., there would be no end in sight of pileups.

So after Bonitos, we went to the Robinson's mall-supermarket (another jeepney ride) and we got some essentials and I bought some longaniza to cook and some rice for dinner in the future. After shopping, we went back to the dorm to drop off our groceries, then took a short trip to the Office of International Linkages to get some class schedule stuff, then it was back to our outing.

Next up we went to Chow-king, which was a fast-food restaurant, but we weren't going to eat a meal. Everyone wanted to try halo-halo, which is a traditional mixed fruit shake type drink. I think everyone liked it, but I know Jessica LOVED it. See demonstrational image below:

I didn't get one though. Ayo and Ana said they were going to buy some Kwek-kwek, which was breaded quail eggs. I was intrigued, so I went to eat that instead. None of the other MSU students wanted to try it (well, Violeta did, but I don't think she liked it), but I thought it was delicious! A nice little snack and for only 12 pesos.

After that, we sort of decided to wander around to a more rural area around UPLB to find more "street food" so-to-speak, but we didn't end up eating any more (just yet) and just walked and talked. I practiced my tagalog with them, which was fun for me. I don't ever speak tagalog at home and I'm surprised I picked up so much just from it being spoken to me by my parents. We seem to share a lot of interests too, and I think they are all pretty hyped to see the last Harry Potter movie (which is good for Jessica). We ended up stopping at a coffee shop and a few of us ordered some shakes/lattes just so we can have a place to hang out and talk some more. Someone made a good point about how we, in the U.S., have an in-and-out attitude about anything other than a sit-down restaurant. Filipinos, even in fast food restaurants, will eat and sit for maybe 20 minutes or more just talking and hanging out. I got the feeling that they just enjoy hanging out and relaxing together which is nice, and I don't mind it at all.

After the coffee shop, we went back to the SEARCA dorm and bid our farewells to our new friends, ang mga bagong kaibigan namin, and everyone kind of just went to their rooms. Jessica told me her roomate is already asleep, and I think Kenny mentioned something about passing out soon, haha...I'm just here in the lobby finishing up this blog.

All in all, it was one of the best days I've spent here already, and I'm really thankful that we met these new people. I'm looking forward to meeting more and making the most out of our semester here in the Philippines.

Left to right (in the jeepney): Ana, Violeta, Me, Ayo


Left to right: Jessica, Kenny, Jose

The front of the jeepney looks like from the inside

At Chow-King, left to right: Violeta, Dre, Doms, Me, Ana, Jose


Halo-halo! (pronounced hah-low)

Jessica and her halo-halo

Everyone at the coffee shop, left to right: Dre, Jessica, Violeta, Ayo, Jose, Doms, Kenny, Ana