do the whirlwind

well it's been a whirlwind and a half since i got back.

i got back here on a friday and then on saturday, went over to romblon for the town fiesta. scott and carly were already there (they went over on friday), and i came over with denise (new volunteer! another aussie. staying in sugod for six months. teacher.) and eden. it was absolutely pouring down rain and continue to rain for the entire day.

the town was decorated with flags everywhere lining the streets, lots of stalls for selling things, and so on. fiestas are technically for the patron saint of the barangay and i have no clue how the date is chosen, but this one is a big deal since romblon is the capital of this province. so there were just HEAPS of people. the patron saint of just about everywhere is "senor santo nino". it's a week long celebration, but saturday, apparently is the really big day – a parade, boat race, music all day, so on and so forth. everywhere has also adopted the ati-atihan thing a la kalibo (see previous), and i'm not sure why since it's historically significant in kalibo, but who knows. anyways, they divide up into tribes and dress up and march through the roads dancing and playing these huge drums which just shake your entire core. it was awesome, despite the pouring rain.







[yup that's a man]


the drums are really the best part. the whole town seemed to be vibrating with them. here's my attempt at a video of it ...





and then the dancing





we missed the boat race since it was raining so much – we were all just absolutely soaked. and water got into my camera, so it's broken. sucks. the plan originally had been to go back to long beach that afternoon, but it was raining so much that the boat didn't actually go. carly and i went to the church where wilma stays with the nuns when she's in romblon to dry off, and then sort-of got stuck there (as in, we were told we weren't allowed to leave). however, there was a boat leaving at 4 am, so we agreed to stay at the church for dinner, and then said we were going to leave, meet up with scott, and stay up all night to catch the boat. [a sidenote: we also got to play scrabble and drink red wine with the nuns]

we met scott who had been drinking ... all day basically by this point and the assorted collection of white people in romblon (there were so many! i've never seen so many white people in romblon before!) and had drinks. there was a filipino-american guy there as well, carlos, who's mom is from romblon and he's here for a few weeks. we all went and watched the music in the square (pretty good) and then just went to the boat to sit for an hour before it left. we did have quite a bit of fun, though. staying up all night and chatting with people.

so that would be two nights with no sleep within a three day period. goodness. i slept quite well the next few nights, i must say, in attempts to recover.