Monday, February 14- Cooking for 45 on Valentine’s Day

So today is Valentine’s Day—a day which I pay no attention to in America, however turned out to be my busiest day by far since being in this country.  The events of today which you will read about below (if I can find the energy within me to document them) can definitely be classified as disastrous.

Today began last night.  Emily and I stayed up in here room chatting and planning the V-day events until around 11:00pm.  Neither of us was too keen on being alone in our rooms due to lizard noises and large bugs.  There are certain creatures that not even the comfort and protection of you mosquito net can make you forget.  (Side note that you need to be aware of:  Both the lizard and the rat that reside above my room and the evil rooster that lives outside my window have been named.  The lizard is Chadwick.  The reason for this is that while I was reading my book, trying desperately to relax, he simply would not shut up.  Right when I was introduced to the person of Chadwick ((In the book Between a Rock and a Hard Place)) he bellowed out his awful “REEERER!” and continued to do so until I had to put my book down, grab my mp3 player and try to drown him out.  The rat is Keith Olbermann.  No explanation necessary.  The rooster’s name was a combined decision between Emily and me.  He is Obama.  Just so you know, whenever he disgorges that ridiculous squawk at 3:30am ((or 2:25am like this morning)) the children boys in our dorm have been instructed to yell out, “SHUT UP, OBAMA!” ((This is what happens when Mississippi meets Texas meets the Philippines)). All these animals will be hereafter referred to by their proper names.)

So as I said we were up late and when we both finally went to bed we both had nearly entirely restless nights, as we discovered through the sharing of similar horror stories this morning.  From stinking Chadwick’s scuttle across the tin roof to (as previously stated) Obama freaking starting his never ending cackle starting a full hour earlier than it’s usual ungodly start point to Emily’s attempts to ward off an oppressive arachnid sans her contacts and then deal with a built up adrenaline, neither of us got more than an hour of consecutive rest.  That would have been unfortunate for a normal day, however today had already been given an extra measure of stress.  Nanay decided that V-day could also be a smaller version of our upcoming “American Day”.  Emily and I were asked to be in charge of preparing breakfast and lunch, and after asking what we thought were all the needed questions we purchased all of our ingredients at the market last week.  Well about 5 minutes after we began preparing to prepare breakfast (at 5:00am) we realized we were grossly unprepared.  We asked what ingredients we needed to prepare pancakes vs. what ingredients they already had and were told all we’d need was flour; when I got to the kitchen before me sat our 4 kilos of flour plus 8 eggs.  That was only the first time my stomach dropped today.  Doing my best to explain to my ilonggo-speaking helpers that I needed other ingredients to make anything edible, we rounded up a small amount of baking powder, salt and sugar (Blythe Meyer, I sincerely hope that images from 4^th grade are flashing through your head right now).  After a brief call to the states to find out more precise measurements and substitutions from my mom, we went to work mixing, adding this and that, more of that, less of this and everything we could think of as our 6:30am deadline rapidly approached and 42 children (plus house parents) began arriving with empty bellies. Runny batter on a not so hot make-shift skillet made our job look completely impossible.  We were able to rearrange the burners enough to get about 6 inches of surface hot enough to turn our batter into cakes.  Since we had no milk we had to use water in the batter which added another level of stress as we Americanas are not to drink the non-purified water.  We couldn’t taste the mix along the way (much) so we said a prayer and kept cooking.  We used leftover chocolate from our bonfire to make them “chocolate chip pancakes” which was good if only to distract the eaters from any less than delicious tastes.  Tastes then proved to be the least of our worries when came up 7 cakes short of letting everyone have ONE. (This is probably the first time many of the kids actually felt like hungry orphans at Uncle Dick’s Home.) A very hastily thrown together final batter got us to our mark with a few left over for some of the boys, but even with many of them assuring us they tasted “namit” (delicious) we pretty much felt like total failures.  We walked the kids to school and returned exhausted, dejected, and after a brief pity party of tears and gobstoppers, we pulled ourselves together and returned to the kitchen to prepare lunch: PB&Js! Much simpler, we thought.  It turns out though that no matter the how simple the meal is, preparing it for nearly 50 people will always complicate it.  We started making sandwiches at 9:00am and continued for two hours until we were sure we had enough.  We also mixed together 3 gallons of pink Kool-Aid and had a few minutes to sit and relax.  Just to make up for the sparse breakfast, we had our kitchen pals throw together some rice as well.  That turned out to be completely necessary, and though I can’t seem to remember exactly why now, we again ran around like wild animals trying to get everything prepared as dozens of Filipino children crowded and stared as we worked like mad.  We walked away feeling better than breakfast, yet still not too thrilled with ourselves.  It was about this time that we realized we had not eaten at either “American” meal, but we felt too mentally and physically exhausted to pay too much attention to that.  We had about 10 minutes to breathe before moving on the actual activity of making Valentine’s for all the children.  They stayed home from school in the afternoon (something Nanay didn’t seem to think was a big deal at all) and we explained what they were to make notes for their friends and put them in the decorated envelopes we made on Saturday.  This process began at 1:00pm and, not including clean up, finished at 7:00pm.  I think Emily and I looked at least 5 years older by the time the last scrap of paper was swept up, the last card was put in the right envelope, the last child stopped trying to break into their loot early and we heard the blessed sound of the dinner bell.  Filipino food for dinner and enough to go around was a happy sight for all the kids, and any food was a heavenly sight to us. 

It is now about 24 hours since all of this mess began and I am just about to head to bed.  Obama, Keith Olbermann and Chadwick better not mess with me tonight.  I may be exhausted, but I am fed, showered and after today I feel like I can conquer any foe. However, in the words of the sweetest boy here, Jestoni (whose Valentine brought tears to both of our eyes), “I’d kill that rooster, but he is just too fast!”

This entry is dedicated to Andrew Bain who was thought of in the naming of the rat and the rooster.  I’m sure you will appreciate those names more than anyone. J