Filipino Games= Crazy

At our last staff meeting I casually volunteered to help out with the adult games for the Easter party. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The next day began the questions of what games are we playing? have you gotten all of the supplies? how many people can play each game? what about this game? I came up with a list of musical chairs, egg toss and 3 legged race. That's about it.

Little did I know that Filipinos have a whole slue of crazy games I have never heard of but experienced at the Easter Party on Saturday. Let me try to explain... The first one was called the ribbon game. In this game each team (of two) hast o tie four ribbons of different colors to four different places on their bodies. For instance, one girl will have the white ribbon on her head and her partner will have it on her ankle. Blue will be on one persons wrist and the other one's thigh. Then the clown (all Filipino parties have clowns) will call out a color and you have to run and find your partner and match up your colors. This involves a lot of screaming and a lot of falling over. It's basically twister without the mat. After a few rounds, the clown ups the ante and chooses two or three colors you have to match up. At this point, 90 pound women are on the floor, wrist to armpit, thigh to forehead. This went on for about 20 mins before a winner was finally declared.

After each game ended, the Filipinos immediately approached me and asked for the next game. After my three were over I was clueless. The clown was also looking to me for the list of games. I was all out! We then proceeded with the egg toss which was just vicious. Lindsay and I actually made it to the final round when our opponents (JoJo and Rual the guards) tried to intercept our egg mid-air and smashed it. I still think their egg was hard boiled.

The party was a total blast and completely different than any Easter party I have been to at home. All the midwives and nurses brought their children and the swimming pool was full. The one thing to note about Filipinos is that they actually can't swim. Their kids (like most kids), however, love swimming pools. For this reason, all children come equipped with cheap blow up life jackets that are somehow supposed to keep them alive. I'm not sure how that works considering how quickly cheap blow up pool toys deflate.

By the end of the party, I had eaten about 5 cupcakes and was sweating profusely from laughing so hard at the games. We also brought our remaining three kittens to the party and were able to unload them onto unsuspecting guests. Two of the cats, Sal and Tom, were taken home by the daughters of the OBGYN. Don't worry- they already have four cats. Two more won't hurt. Jerry, the biggest of them all, was taken home by a very nice young couple from Seattle (UW law school grads!). The man works as an attorney against child prostitution and his wife works at the clinic and is in training to be a midwife. We were excited to hear that we will be able to see Jerry at the clinic occasionally.

This entire Holy Week (from Thursday-Sunday) has been birth free and borrrrrinnnnggg. Lindsay and I have passed the time by playing countless games of scrabble, watching movies, reading and just plain old sitting around watching the clock tick. Women here don't want to have babies during Holy Week so they "hold them in." Never having been pregnant or in labor, I'm not exactly sure how that works. Just now a woman walked in, drenched in sweat, towel on her head and hunched over. She is 4 cm dilated and refused to have stripping done (opening of the cervix) last week because she was afraid of going into labor on Black Saturday. Looks like today might be her lucky day! I'm still waiting for a baby Lauren.

Check out the new pics on the blog. Also- coming up soon will be a post about my Easter Sunday Church interpretation. Missing you all terribly! Thanks for all the texts, emails etc. Keep it coming!