Musicians' Perspective: Week 3, Day 1 (June 17, 2012)

After a relatively smooth flight that half of us slept through, we landed in Manilla…again. We spent another two hours (mostly sleeping) in the car on our way to Mount Makiling, where the Philippine High School for the Arts is housed, and where we would be spending the remainder of our project. Mount Makiling is just outside of Los Baños. Some people have asked me "Doesn't 'baño' mean 'bathroom' in Spanish?" but the literal translation is "the bathing places," alluding to the thermal springs at the foot of Mount Makiling. Unfortunately, we were not able to visit these hot springs during our time there, but hopefully we can the next time we visit. Los Baños is in the province of Laguna, just as Catarman is in the province of Northern Samar, but more on Laguna in a future post...

Our first thought upon arriving at Mount Makiling was: Beautiful. The school is built on a mountain, there is no other way to describe it. We had a tasty fried fish lunch prepared for us by the school's staff and got settled in our rooms. Midori wanted to sleep more (she was still getting over her cold bug), so Brian went exploring with the dancers. The view is amazing here, with a view of rice paddy fields, the crater-shaped Alligator Lake, and the large Laguna de Bay just to the north. Their performance space is the Tanghalang Maria Makiling (Tanghalang is the Tagalog word for "Theater"), a unique pyramid-shaped amphitheater. We found the dance studio and came up with a really cool "gesture" dance, for fun. Unfortunately, though, by the time we were ready to walk home, it was dark and raining. Oh well, with the heat we were used to, the rain felt nice!