My 7-Day Trip To Kabankalan: Day 3

Continental Breakfast

For day 3 of the trip, we had to get an earlier start than usual. Also, Zaycoland didn’t serve any real breakfast until 7 AM for some reason, so all they could serve us was their version of a “continental breakfast” which consisted of a large banana and a whole loaf of bread (I swear) cut into about 4-6 large-slices along with some butter and jam. Needless to say, I didn’t care much for the meal. Fortunately, we did have some yogurt which we’d bought at a 7-11 the day before. It’d have to do temporarily since we’d be leaving at 7.

After the 30-minute trip to CPSU, we got off at the Arts and Sciences building directly this time. My  mother used the entirety of the morning to give a lecture on the different communication processes. Also, as a picker-upper, she had her favorite Zumba session thanks to one of the students whom I’ll call “F” who brought her subscription-based LTE router along. Sometime during snack break, everyone wanted to see what kind of stuff I wrote so we streamed one of my works, Unpolished (I’ll put the video into this post).

I was really overwhelmed by the positive response. Everyone loved it despite it being a short, text-only piece. I think it helped out that my mother gave them a primer that this was a real-life story that I’d dramatized into fiction and that it was about my older sister’s actual experience. Anyway, many of them admitted to being nearly brought to tears by my piece – which made me misty-eyed as well.  Seriously, this was the first time in my life that one of my writings, one that I’d really put my heart and soul into, was praised so positively by so many people at once. The feeling of euphoria was overwhelming and because of this one single moment, Kabankalan and CPSU will always have a special place in my heart.

Lunch was served at Mt. Balio Hall as usual and we had them with the students and the other trainers and their respective classes.

In the afternoon, after another quick Zumba session with my mother (I never join those, but I can dance… I assure you.) It was time to do the near-impossible: cram one whole course’s worth of Oxford-Oregon Debate into one afternoon. 

Debate 101 -- In One Afternoon

So I went with a pretty dynamic approach. I used my laptop as a whiteboard and using notepad, I typed in some key points every now and then. I went over the basic flow of an Oxford-Oregeon Debate, which includes how to construct arguments for necessity, beneficiality, and practicability and what each side needs in order to win. Also, by the end of the lecture, we’d have a short, actual debate in the class by dividing them into two groups. I also went over the actual conditions needed for the negative and affirmative side to win – really, judges of oxford-oregon style debates should know these things, but in many cases as I’ve experienced myself, they usually don’t… but whatever!

Finally, to top off the lecture, I went over how to write a constructive speech, a rebuttal speech, and the secrets of winning the interpellation – which I won’t reveal here. I will say this though: It’s all about flowchart questioning.

So by around 4:00, everyone was more or less oriented on debate, but it was admittedly quite a bit of information overload. I acted as the moderator for the mock debate, which started at about 6:00 PM. I have to say, with a little bit of coaching from me and my mother in-between, everyone performed quite admirably and the last two speakers especially, actually had what I would consider a high-level exchange during interpellation. We didn’t have time for a rebuttal, but I was happy to see that everyone had really learned something in that one afternoon. I would say they were still a bit rough around the edges and could have used a bit more aggression, but it was actually the opposite of what I’d expected. Usually, when I coach people in Oxford-Oregon debate for the first time, they start losing control during an actual mock debate and go into panic mode just shouting out and being as aggressive as possible in an attempt not to let the opponent get a word in. Long story short: everyone’s performance exceeded my expectations.

After that, it was dismissal time and me and my mother had dinner at Mt. Balio Hall together with the other faculty. Truth be told, I didn’t like the food there… which didn’t matter much since the group was planning to once again take a trip to City Mall.

After the 30-minute ride back to Kabankalan City, we arrived at City Mall. We bought some more provisions in the form of some snacks from the grocery and some take-out food from Jollibee (our version of McDonald’s and yes, we also do have McDonald’s here) and Chowking. I also took the opportunity to buy one more set of artist brushes from Expressions.

Nagi's journey episode 3: A Land WIthout WiFI!

After that, it was back to Zaycoland, wherein I had to do some work downstairs at the lobby since as mentioned before, my 4G connection only works at the lobby area for some reason and getting a connection in Zaycoland’s faulty wifi system is like winning a lottery, they even give you several “raffle tickets” in the form of their vouchers to see if you can connect to a single one of them.

Anyway, with work done, I went ahead and formulated some questions for the impromptu speaking (we call it Extemporaneous locally for some reason. Extempo and Impromptu are interchangeable in the Philippine context. Basically, it means a speech wherein you are given a question and then given around 3 minutes to prepare your answer.)

Odds & Ends

After that, it was time to turn in for the day. I actually watched some old movie starring Van Damme on TV. The good news is that tomorrow would be the scheduled filed trip to Mag-Aso falls where the midterms would take place as well. This meant I wouldn’t have to turn in so early and could have a proper breakfast because yech, “continental breakfast :P”

Stay tuned for Day 4. I'll have it up by tomorrow because I've actually already written it down.

This cup of yogurt didn't come with a spoon, so I made my own spoon using the tinfoil cover.