The day began innocently and boringly enough. Same early wake up time, same exhausted, Muslim-postured prayer on my bed. Off to the shower and then straight in front of my stand fan, before the steam had time to turn to sweat. Then off to study Scripture. Just like always. At about 9:30, we got a text from the Linao Elders. Let's do lunch. Awesome. So we keep on studying till the appointed time, and then it's the tiny "out the door" song and dance of those last minute hygienic preparations- Talines emerges from the bedroom in a cloud of his girlfriend's perfume, rubs on whitening lotion and powders his face in the kitchen mirror (I will run to my comp's defense by saying these are all very acceptable things for Filipino men to do). For once, I am the low maintenance one in the house. A spritz of imitation cologne and some more fan time, and I am ready to go. We meet in Tuguegarao's unofficial center- the spot at which McDonald's, Greenwich Pizza, Jollibee, and Chowking converge, and then spent the next few minutes in a very predictable routine "where we gonna eat?" I pushed hard for Jollibee, much to the shock of my friends, who knew that I usually lobbied pretty hard for McDo. So in we went. Now I know what you're thinking- this is all pretty boring, right?
Let's start in on the bad luck.
Jollibee was packed, as always. Since it is the Pinoy version of McDo, it is also the largest fast food restaurant in town. I went to the counter in a flurry of stares and whispers that I have very much adjusted to by now, and ordered a king's portion of food. I was starving, and irritable. I was told the burger would take 12 minutes and didn't really care. Everything takes forever here. I was just about to carry my tray upstairs when Elder Coronel asked me to wait. Yeah man, no problem. So we stood there and chatted, until, without warning, my tray full of food slid off the counter and onto the floor. Down went the sundae, the fries, the three little sauce bowls of ketchup, my two lidless drinks. I have never heard 500 people get so quiet so fast. Imagine dropping your tray full of food on yourself in the high school cafeteria. Jollibee is very much like a cafeteria. And the food is about as good. Everyone was staring and waiting for my reaction. Everyone stopped working behind the counter. It had to have been a hilarious sight, but no one laughed. I had nothing to say either, and just looked down to assess the damage. Fortunately, I had been spared the wrath of the ice cream and the drinks. These only landed on my rubber shoes. And the ketchup landed on my thigh, blending discreetly into the fabric of my pants. But I was still mortified. I did a sort of shaky about face, walking out of the front of the restaurant in record time through the crowd- who had cleared a huge path. I went next door to the pizza place and made a beeline for the bathroom, hoping to cool off and squeegee the better part of the ketchup off my pants. I was pissed. I had just spent the equivalent of $6 on food that I probably wouldn't get back. Restaurant complaining is unheard of here. See a roach at a place in the States and they shut it down. Here, a roach crawls across my shoe and I just keep eating, hoping that the cooks are decent enough to pick them out. And the legendary Filipino hospitality is vaporized if there is money involved. So I was shocked, when on my far less than triumphant return, there was a tray of food waiting for me, even the burger that was supposed to have taken so long to cook. I mumbled a thanks and made my way up the stairs, a clear path the whole way. I was able to laugh about it by the time the other Elders got up the stairs with their food, but we left the place through another exit.
With that blunder behind me, I figured I had suffered through the worst of the day, and it wasn't even that bad. Elder Coronel had a quick pit stop on the way home and we found ourselves in a store, where I realized the back of my tie pin (that I won yesterday) had fallen off. We halfheartedly scoured the floor of the store and the small stretch of sidewalk out front before giving up. It looked like gold. It was gone.
So then Talines and I went home and put some finishing touches on our planning so we could start our work. And then the skies opened in a literal thunderstorm of mockery. Usually we keep working, but this was just ridiculous. I looked at Talines, who was wide eyed and waiting for my sage counsel. I could see it all in his expression: "Please let me take a nap!" I suggested we take an hour and see if the rain would let up enough so that we could work. And then I prayed. The rain stopped after some time, and I woke Talines up with a cauldron and its lid, because I needed to laugh. It's a good thing he's really nice too so that he could laugh as well.
So then we went out to work and got in absolutely nowhere. We just trudged from place to place, sometimes through mud, sometimes through standing water, always in a slight rain. Talines cowered under his umbrella; I'm too big of a man and too stingy to buy one, so I just got soaked. The only thing I had to look forward to was a dinner appointment later that night with a family that I really liked. Then we got another, much less welcome text from the gossipy, almost unbearable girl that sometimes works with us, along with a few of her friends that are also getting ready to serve missions. Apparently, we had a dinner appointment with her parents that night too. She was in Baguio City, still bossing us around from a few hundred kilometers away. Now, two dinner appointments is definitely not a problem, but is at the same time. We couldn't cancel either one- the first because it was at the house of a family we very much liked. Cancelling at short notice would be incredibly offensive. And we apparently couldn't cancel with this girl's parents either, because they had already cooked. So Talines and I discussed the age old impossibility of being two places at the same time, and then we texted the girl and told her we would go to her parents house as well. She had left us no choice. We got to the first place and my excitement quickly faded when I saw the ulam (what goes on top of rice). It was tiny fish, served in a thin clear sauce, or the same tiny fish, fried. In my past experience, these tiny fish are flavorless and mostly bone. Why people recreationally eat them is beyond me, but they are a local favorite. Talines was elated. I opted for the one with sauce, reasoning to myself that I could at least add some flavor to my rice, even if that flavor was ginger water. It didn't take our hosts long to realize that I was having a hard time eating the fish, and then came the mockery. "Silly Americans don't know how to sift through fish meat with their mouths to find the bones and delicately spit them out." And I just offered some fake laughter while thinking "so this is what mercury poisoning tastes like." The food was terrible, and the companionship, which I was expecting to lighten the mood, felt even worse. We finished up and rushed over to the next house, where I was unsure about the food, but knew the companionship would not be great. "Where is everyone?" was the first thing the mom said when we walked in the house. "Why isn't there anyone working with you? Did you even work?" With my perfected plastic smile, I explained that we had, and we all walked into the kitchen, where two heaping serving plates of spaghetti awaited us. The first real smile of the day broke across my face, and the storm of nagging raging all around us rolled right off my back. I didn't care about the tirade of questions about what we did on P Day, and the "are you even allowed to do that?" we received in response. (The answer, of course, is yes.) I just piled on the spaghetti. Somehow, the game of Twenty Questions ended, and in a strange but merciful bout of cosmic bipolarity, the conversation turned pleasant and we had a nice meal. It was still raining when we walked home, but I was happy to call it a day.
I sat down at my desk, peeling myself out of my damp smelly dress clothes, put on my lavalava, and decided that scrolling through my mission pictures would help me feel better. I immediately noticed that the number on the card was much smaller than normal. There were supposed to be 1,500, but there were only about 900. I diligently searched the pictures to see what was missing. I started from the beginning to find that my entire MTC experience was gone, as was my first month or so in the field, as well as a couple hundred pictures from my second area. I had no backups. There are no copies. Gone. It only took me a second to realize what had happened. When we had gone to have our t-shirts printed, the printer had found a virus on my camera and politely offered to take it off. I was happy about it, and told him to go right ahead. Apparently, and unbeknownst to him, I'm sure, the virus took my 600 pictures with it.
I was beyond ready for bed, realizing that sleeping was the best way to solve the problems of a bad day. I prayed and crawled into bed, texting a friend for a few minutes. The topic of how our days went, how the work was, etc, eventually came up, and I couldn't help but laugh. I fired off a response, and my day in print was hilarious. We laughed about it, cause that's what friends are for, and then I finally realized I had a story for you fine folks. I also couldn't help but remember the good stuff that had happened that day too. The kind (read: frightened) women behind the counter at Jollibee had replaced my food, I ended up having a spaghetti meal that shoved the stray fishbones down my esophagus, and I have friends. So then I prayed again, grateful for the small good things that happened that had somehow outweighed what was bad. I realized that, as always, I had Someone looking out for me. It definitely wasn't the kind of day that makes you shake your fist and ask "why me?" But it sure was annoying. But I was able to count my blessings and notice that I definitely come out a winner.
