Our second week of our time in the Philippines has come to a close and I am finally staring to feel comfortable here. Everyday is still a new and intense experience but I am starting to know what to expect. I can almost ignore the longer than usual glances I get when in public and stop trying to evaluate what the locals think of when they see me. Initially I was not sure what to make of it but I realize now that even when I see a foreigner I definitely notice. It is strange to go from a place like the US and specifically Seattle which is a huge melting pot, to a place that contains almost solely people that are native to this country.

With this week has come more eye opening articles pertaining to the complicated history of the "special relations" between the Philippines and the US. Two articles touched on the subject of the forty months of Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Something in Alcantara's article that I did not know was that only five hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor the Japanese flew over and bombed the Philippines as well. I never realized that they were doing an all out attack on the Pacific. I do not know how much of this was related to the American colonizer's presence but i would guess it was no coincidence.

I found Lumbera's article From Colonizer to Liberator especially interesting. The US, while colonizing the Philippines, inevitably created a feed of Americana into this country conditioning some Filipinos into the same false ideas of necessity to consume that Americans had already found themselves blindly content with. With the arrival of the Japanese, the mainlining of American goods and entertainment ran dry. As Lumbera said, "The war cut off the flow of culture items from America and the resulting deprivation intensified the fervor of waiting for the return of the Americans". Because of this deprivation the return of the Americans after the defeat of the Japanese seemed liberating to some Filipinos. Compared to the openly hostile Japanese, the Americans I suppose were the seemingly lesser of the two evils at the time (debatable), and their return meant the return of American goods. The article goes on to say, " 'liberation' later would always include Babe Ruth chewing gum and cigarettes made from aromatic Virginia tobacco". This is one area of America's influence that is still obvious and perhaps one of the most lasting effects the US has had on the Philippines, it's commercial influence. If you were blindly led to certain areas in Manila and asked where you were you may even guess a town somewhere in the states. It's impossible to ignore America's lasting influence when there is a McDonalds on every other corner and a Starbuck's in every mall.

In my blog post last week I had talked about our trip to Batad and how it seems that American's tend to except to be welcomed wherever we go. In this same article by Lumbera he touched on the same subject. He recalls that when the Japanese were finally defeated in the Philippines and the Americans had returned he saw American G.I.s bathing nude in the town stream noticing that, "if the adults among the onlookers did not feel violated by such a blatant disregard for the townspeople's sense of modesty, that was a measure of their readiness to overlook any cultural slight by soldiers…" which is a perfect though more extreme example of what I was talking about. Because of the circumstances these soldiers were not questioned, further reaffirming their "welcomeness".

There was one more thing I wanted to brush over from the Lumbera article, as it relates to this week. I just thought it was ridiculous that as Lumbera remembers there were only two first run theaters for Tagalog movies when he was a kid though there were of course plenty of American movie theaters. Earlier this week we went to the theatre to see an independent Filipino movie called Amigo which is a glimpse into one of the many barrios during the Philippine-American war. As a typical American I had not really considered that

maybe the movie would not have any subtitles for the parts that were in Tagalog (I would have been appalled if the movie was entirely in English). But as it turned out that was exactly the case. Since there were Americans in the film there was naturally some English but a majority of the movie was in Tagalog without subtitles. Even though the American movie industry is still obviously dominate here (Transformers and Harry Potter are heavily advertised), it was almost refreshing to not be catered to. I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie, watching from the perspective of the Americans in the movie who did not know Tagalog either. I would definitely like to re watch it with subtitles now. If you do not really know much about the Phil-American war, or even if you do, this movie is a really good place to start. Its pretty atrocious but it is an honest, blunt depiction, I think.

This week getting out into the city more and more is creating a more and more lasting effect on me. The things we see everyday get to me sometimes. I would have to say that the kids on the street are the big one for me. Some actually seem happy but when we got off the light rail the other day there was a kid that could not have been more than four sleeping alone in the train station. That one really got to me and although no one said a thing I could feel our helpless silent response. These sort of things in conjunction with other observations and things we have learned about in class and from our meeting with Anakbayan have really got me thinking. These things are starting to add up to the point that if I go home and let my conscience go back to sleep it would be almost inexcusable. I have not gotten as far as deciding what I would I like to but I am starting to feel like I should really do something. There is no question that the people here are being oppressed and as my classmate John and I were talking about, countering white supremacy has to start with white people realizing what is going on as well. I would like to think that I have always been fairly conscious in general but I am realizing I perhaps have not been seeing as much as I should and I would like to become a positive influence in some way back home.