We had sticky buns and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We had a gecko in our room last night. They make a pretty loud call that sounds like they’re saying ‘ge-ko’. I was told that each individual gecko says it the same number of times every time, however, this couldn’t be true unless there were at least 5 or 6 geckos living in our room. The first night it made the call 7 1/2 times, but other nights it was 4, 11, and other amounts. It seemed to like to make it’s call around midnight or 1 am, unfortunately. It woke me up nearly every night. I actually started to expect it each night and almost look forward to it. When I’m at home, I usually don’t get up in the middle of the night for anything. However, since I’ve been drinking so much water here, I need to get up every night around midnight or 1 am to visit the “little boys room”. The live-in gecko usually reminds me that I need to get up before the flood gates burst. That might be “TMI” for some people, so I apologize. Moving on.
Church was at 9 am and Al, Gerry, and Ed got up to speak while someone translated from English to Palawano. Gerry read two Psalms while both Al and Ed gave their testimonies of how they became Christians. We sang several Palawano songs that I recognized as English songs translated into Palawano. Nilo finally had some clothes on at church. Liezel gave him some of her clothes, and although they were clearly too large for him, it was a welcome sight to have him dressed properly. It isn’t common or culturally acceptable to the Palawanos for a 12-year-old boy to go running around naked, so I’m sure several of the villagers were also quite thankful for Liezel’s generosity.
After church, several boys from the village and most of the guys from our team went to the local water hole for a swim to cool off. It was a very hot day. Some of the Palawano boys stripped down to their “birthday suits” while others kept their shorts on to swim. The water was cool and very refreshing. It had a green color to it and wasn’t clear so I couldn’t see the rocky bottom. I sustained a minor cut on my right ankle. The little trail going there led us through some minor jungle and there were little stickers (hitchhikers) along the trail. The boys were picking them off and throwing them at the boy in front to stick in his hair. Al Al (a Palawano boy) threw a handful at my shirt and all 15 of them stuck like crazy glue.
We came back and went to the kindergarten graduation for the Palawano kids. Lynn is the teacher and made sure that every student got an award for something (best at math, best at counting, best behaved, etc.). It’s very bad to be “left out” in Palawano culture–more so than in the U.S. They are the cutest kids and they were so proud of their awards from Lynn. I took several pictures (here & here) walking back some of the older kids asked me to take some pictures of them. I later learned almost all of their names, but at this point, I hadn’t even been introduced. The girls of the village are very shy.
My camera proved to be the most valuable relational tool I had since I didn’t speak Palawano. I put my camera down and we started playing soccer with the boys. After soccer we played tackle football. Good fun and almost the whole village was out watching our sporting events. It was like the village olympics. Afterwards we went to the swimming hole again to cool off and bathe with soap and shampoo. I came back to find Nilo learning how to shave with Larry. Then we had a good dinner (potatoes, mashed potatoes, veggies, and pork) and then went to bed around 8:45 pm.
