"It's not a meal if it doesn't have rice."
Locals swear by this phrase. Friends have told me stories of times they made fancy dinners of lasagna, garlic bread, the works, but served no rice and their Filipino friends went home later and cooked another meal because there was no rice. Although I'm not actually at the point that I'm a believer of this phrase yet, we do eat a lot of rice. Rice at lunch, rice at almost every dinner, sometimes I catch myself snacking on leftover rice. I wasn't a huge rice eater before, but now I would say it's easily 98% of my diet. (Okay maybe that's a slight exaggeration.)
"Is that drink fill-able?"
THERE ARE NO FREE REFILLS IN THIS COUNTRY!!!! WHAT HAS MY LIFE COME TO??? On the less overly dramatic side, we've found one place called S&R that has free refills, or as they call it here fill-able drinks. But that's it. My roommate and I were obsessed for some period of time with the sad idea that we can never get a free refill anywhere and still joke about how we're not going anywhere to eat unless they'll give us a fill-able drink. The funny part is, in the States, I hardly got a refill anyway. I just hate the idea of being denied that freedom!
"There's always room for one more."
This is the motto of the jeepney, which is our most common form of transportation. Jeepneys are old transport vehicles from World War II, but since in the Philippines they recycle everything, these are now the cheapest form of transportation in the city. And the most crowded. Often we end up sitting uncomfortably close with our friends, the stranger next to us, the small child across the way, everyone. And even when you think to yourself, "Yes, the jeep is full! Things will move faster because we won't have to pick up anyone else!", the jeepney driver will make that slow crawl to the side of the road and let one more in. Because there's always room for one more!
"Which one of us do you think they're staring at?"
When we first got here, we were told we would get stared at for 3 reasons: our white skin makes them think we're rich, we're freakishly tall, and they think we look like goddesses. In fact, I've had a friend actually get told she looked like a goddess once while we were out shopping. Or a cactus. It was hard to tell because the English was a little rough. But anyways every where we go, we get stared at. At first, this always had me on my edge. Now I've gotten more used to it, but some days this really does bug me a lot still. But at least we can deal with it by joking now, "Nah, there's no way they're staring at us. There must be something behind us", "It must be you, ya cactus ;)", "Surely they're not on to the fact we're not locals...."
"I don't know that that looks American size."
Once a lady at a shop said, "See how pretty this is. And we even have it in American size." Not American sizes, American size. Which I'm pretty sure means fat. And tall. Which isn't what we are, but locals are the far other extreme. Tiny. And incredibly skinny. So when ever we look at clothing, we need to double check if it fits because let's face it: We are not Filipina size in most regards.
"Must be a Filipino (insert time here)."
We first learned about Filipino time while searching for houses. People were constantly running considerably later than when they said they'd meet us. Whenever this happened, our friends that were helping us said, "Must be a Filipino 3 (or 4 or whatever time it was supposed to be). Filipinos are constantly running late, which isn't necessarily a bad thing like we would consider it to be in the States. Instead they're running late because they value the relationship of whoever happens to be in front of them at the time so much that they wouldn't dare think of insulting them by leaving just to keep an appointment. While starting late doesn't naturally appeal to me, I do like the relational emphasis of why this happens."Salamatpo"
In Cebuano, this means "Thank you sir". Filipinos are incredibly polite and we try our hardest to mimic them and exchange the same politeness back. And when we can say it in their language, it does another step of showing that we're making an effort to meet them where they're at and care about them. It puts us one step closer to shaking that rich, selfish white person stigma that we have to start every interaction with.
"No, really you don't get it. That's all the Cebuano I know."
This is probably my favorite phrase because we usually have to say it while laughing at the situation we've gotten ourselves into. I know how to say "Good morning", "Good evening", "Thank you", "How much?", "Yes" and "Bayan" (which I don't know the English translation to but I know if I say it the jeepney driver will then take my money to pay for my ride). Sometimes we casually will throw one of these phrases out there. At which point one of two things happens. Someone responds by fluently speaking to us in Cebuano. To this we respond, "I have no idea what you're saying. That's all the Cebuano I know." Generally they just keep speaking in Cebuano to us until we've said it two or three more times. Like I lied to them the first time and am secretly fluent. The other scenario this leads us to is them asking us, "Oh you know some Cebuano? What do you know?" And then we share our few phrases and they eagerly sit on the edge of their seats waiting to hear more. At which point we awkwardly sit there for a while until we say, "No you don't get it. That's really all the Cebuano I know." And then we both giggle awkwardly at our valiant effort but major incompetence.
So hopefully you've had fun reading about my new phrases in the Philippines. They definitely don't completely capture the picture of what's going on here, but I thought it might give you some insight to what life is like down here. I miss you my friends and God bless!
