ACTIVITY 1.

My Brother’s Peculiar Chicken, by Alejandro R. Roces

My brother Kiko once had a very peculiar chicken. It was peculiar because no one could tell whether it was a rooster or a hen. My brother claimed
it was a rooster. I claimed it was a hen. We almost got whipped because we argued too much.
The whole question began early one morning. Kiko and I were driving the chickens from the cornfield. The corn had just been planted, and the
chickens were scratching the seeds out for food. Suddenly we heard the rapid flapping of wings. We turned in the direction of the sound and saw
two chickens fighting in the far end of the field. We could not see the birds clearly as they were lunging at each other in a whirlwind of feathers and
dust.
“Look at that rooster fight!” my brother said, pointing exactly at one of the chickens. “Why, if I had a rooster like that, I could get rich in the
cockpits.”
“Let’s go and catch it,” I suggested.
“No, you stay here. I will go and catch it,” Kiko said.
My brother slowly approached the battling chickens. They were so busy fighting that they did not notice him. When he got near them, he dived and
caught one of them by the leg. It struggled and squawked. Kiko finally held it by both wings and it became still. I ran over where he was and took a
good look at the chicken.
“Why, it is a hen,” I said.
“What is the matter with you?” my brother asked. “Is the heat making you sick?”
“No. Look at its face. It has no comb or wattles.”
“No comb and wattles! Who cares about its comb or wattles? Didn’t you see it in fight?”
“Sure, I saw it in fight. But I still say it is a hen.”
“Ahem! Did you ever see a hen with spurs on its legs like these? Or a hen with a tail like this?”
“I don’t care about its spurs or tail. I tell you it is a hen. Why, look at it.”
The argument went on in the fields the whole morning. At noon we went to eat lunch. We argued about it on the way home. When we arrived at
our house Kiko tied the chicken to a peg. The chicken flapped its wings and then crowed.
“There! Did you hear that?” my brother exclaimed triumphantly. “I suppose you are going to tell me now that hens crow and that carabaos fly.”
“I don’t care if it crows or not,” I said. “That chicken is a hen.”
We went into the house, and the discussion continued during lunch.
“It is not a hen,” Kiko said. “It is a rooster.”
“It is a hen,” I said.
“It is not.”
“It is.”
“Now, now,” Mother interrupted, “how many times must Father tell you, boys, not to argue during lunch? What is the argument about this time?”
We told Mother, and she went out look at the chicken.
“That chicken,” she said, “is a binabae. It is a rooster that looks like a hen.”
That should have ended the argument. But Father also went out to see the chicken, and he said, “Have you been drinking again?” Mother asked.
“No,” Father answered.
“Then what makes you say that that is a hen? Have you ever seen a hen with feathers like that?”
“Listen. I have handled fighting cocks since I was a boy, and you cannot tell me that that thing is a rooster.”
Before Kiko and I realized what had happened, Father and Mother were arguing about the chicken by themselves. Soon Mother was crying. She
always cried when she argued with Father.
“You know very well that that is a rooster,” she said. “You are just being mean and stubborn.”
“I am sorry,” Father said. “But I know a hen when I see one.”
“I know who can settle this question,” my brother said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The teniente del Barrio, chief of the village.”
The chief was the oldest man in the village. That did not mean that he was the wisest, but anything always carried more weight if it is said by a man
with gray hair. So my brother untied the chicken and we took it to the chief.
“Is this a male or a female chicken?” Kiko asked.
“That is a question that should concern only another chicken,” the chief replied.
“My brother and I happen to have a special interest in this particular chicken. Please give us an answer. Just say yes or no. Is this a rooster?”
“It does not look like any rooster I have ever seen,” the chief said.
“Is it a hen, then?” I asked.
“It does not look like any hen I have ever seen. No, that could not be a chicken. I have never seen like that. It must be a bird of some other kind.”
“Oh, what’s the use!” Kiko said, and we walked away.
“Well, what shall we do now?” I said.
“I know that,” my brother said. “Let’s go to town and see Mr. Cruz. He would know.”
Mr. Eduardo Cruz lived in a nearby town of Katubusan. He had studied poultry raising in the University of the Philippines. He owned and operated
the largest poultry business in town. We took the chicken to his office.
“Mr. Cruz,” Kiko said, “is this a hen or a rooster?”
Mr. Cruz looked at the bird curiously and then said:
“Hmmm. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell in one look. I have never run across a chicken like this before.”
“Well, is there any way you can tell?”
“Why, sure. Look at the feathers on its back. If the feathers are round, then it’s a hen. If they are pointed, it’s a rooster.”
The three of us examined the feathers closely. It had both.
“Hmmm. Very peculiar,” said Mr. Cruz.
“Is there any other way you can tell?”
“I could kill it and examined its insides.”
“No. I do not want it killed,” my brother said.
I took the rooster in my arms and we walked back to the barrio.
Kiko was silent most of the way. Then he said:
“I know how I can prove to you that this is a rooster.”
“How?” I asked.
“Would you agree that this is a rooster if I make it fight in the cockpit and it wins?”
“If this hen of yours can beat a gamecock, I will believe anything,” I said.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll take it to the cockpit this Sunday.”
So that Sunday we took the chicken to the cockpit. Kiko looked around for a suitable opponent. He finally picked a red rooster.
“Don’t match your hen against that red rooster.” I told him. “That red rooster is not a native chicken. It is from Texas.”
“I don’t care where it came from,” my brother said. “My rooster will kill it.”
“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “That red rooster is a killer. It has killed more chickens than the fox. There is no rooster in this town that can stand against
it. Pick a lesser rooster.”
My brother would not listen. The match was made and the birds were readied for the killing. Sharp steel gaffs were tied to their left legs. Everyone
wanted to bet on the red gamecock.
The fight was brief. Both birds were released in the centre of the arena. They circled around once and then faced each other. I expected our
chicken to die of fright. Instead, a strange thing happened. A lovesick expression came into the red rooster’s eyes. Then it did a love dance. That
was all our chicken needed. It rushed at the red rooster with its neck feathers flaring. In one lunge, it buried its spurs into its opponent’s chest. The
fight was over.
“Tiope! Tiope! Fixed fight!” the crowd shouted.
Then a riot broke out. People tore bamboo benches apart and used them as clubs. My brother and I had to leave through the back way. I had the
chicken under my arm. We ran toward the coconut groves and kept running till we lost the mob. As soon as we were safe, my brother said:
“Do you believe it is a rooster now?”
“Yes,” I answered.
I was glad the whole argument was over.
Just then the chicken began to quiver. It stood up in my arms and cackled with laughter. Something warm and round dropped into my hand. It was
an egg.

Give the following:

1. Characters

2. Setting

3. Point of View

4. Conflict

5. Theme

ACTIVITY 2

The Silence of Snow

[Excerpt from Snow]

By Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt
inside him the silence of snow.

He'd boarded the bus from Erzurum to Kars with only seconds to spare. He'd just come into the station on a bus from Istanbul—a snowy, stormy,
two-day journey—and was rushing up and down the dirty wet corridors with his bag in tow, looking for his connection, when someone told him the
bus for Kars was leaving immediately.
He'd managed to find it, an ancient Magirus, but the conductor had just shut the luggage compartment and, being "in a hurry," refused to open it
again. That's why our traveler had taken his bag on board with him; the big dark-red Bally valise was now wedged between his legs. He was sitting
next to the window and wearing a thick charcoal coat he'd bought at a Frankfurt Kaufhof five years earlier. We should note straightaway that this
soft, downy beauty of a coat would cause him shame and disquiet during the days he was to spend in Kars, while also furnishing a sense of security.

As soon as the bus set off, our traveler glued his eyes to the window next to him; perhaps hoping to see something new, he peered into the
wretched little shops and bakeries and broken-down coffeehouses that lined the streets of Erzurum's outlying suburbs, and as he did it began to
snow. It was heavier and thicker than the snow he'd seen between Istanbul and Erzurum. If he hadn't been so tired, if he'd paid a bit more
attention to the snowflakes swirling out of the sky like feathers, he might have realized that he was traveling straight into a blizzard; he might have
seen at the start that he was setting out on a journey that would change his life forever and chosen to turn back.

But the thought didn't even cross his mind. As evening fell, he lost himself in the light still lingering in the sky above; in the snowflakes whirling ever
more wildly in the wind he saw nothing of the impending blizzard but rather a promise, a sign pointing the way back to the happiness and purity he
had known, once, as a child. Our traveler had spent his years of happiness and childhood in Istanbul; he'd returned a week ago, for the first time in
twelve years, to attend his mother's funeral, and having stayed there four days he decided to take this trip to Kars. Years later, he would still recall
the extraordinary beauty of the snow that night; the happiness it brought him was far greater than any he'd known in Istanbul. He was a poet and,
as he himself had written—in an early poem still largely unknown to Turkish readers—it snows only once in our dreams.

As he watched the snow fall outside his window, as slowly and silently as the snow in a dream, the traveler fell into a long-desired, long-awaited
reverie; cleansed by memories of innocence and childhood, he succumbed to optimism and dared to believe himself at home in this world. Soon
afterward, he felt something else that he had not known for quite a long time and fell asleep in his seat.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:

1. When you found out that the story came from Turkey, what were your expectations? Were your expectations fulfilled? Why or why not?

2. How is the snow described?

3. The protagonist owns a coat. Where did he buy it? What does it tell about the protagonist?

4. What does the coat symbolizes? Is the color of the coat important? Why?

5. Do you ever want to experience snow? Why or why not?

ACTIVITY 3

The Good Body

[Excerpt]

By Eve Ensler (USA)

My body will be mine when I’m thin. I will eat a little at a time, small bites. I will vanquish ice cream. I will purge with green juices. I will see
chocolate as poison and pasta as a form of self-punishment. I will work not to feel full again. Always moving toward full, approaching full but never
really full. I will embrace my emptiness, I will ride it into holy zones. Let me be hungry. Let me starve. Please.

Bread is Satan. I stop eating bread. This is the same as not eating food. Four days in, a scrawny actress friend tells me, “Eve, your stomach has
nothing to do with diet.” What? “It’s the change of life,” she says. “All you need is some testosterone.” I try to imagine what I would be like, totally
bread deprived and shot up with testosterone. “Serial killer” comes to mind.

I’m walking—actually, I’m limping—down a New York City street, and I catch a glimpse of this blond, pointy-breasted, raisin-a-day-stomached
smiling girl on the cover of Cosmo magazine. She is there every minute, somewhere in the world, smiling down on me, on all of us. She’s
omnipresent. She’s the American Dream, my personal nightmare. Pumped straight from the publishing power plant into the bloodstream of our
culture and neurosis. She is multiplying on every cover. She was passed through my mother’s milk and so I don’t even know that I’m contaminated.
 I just want to be like her. I want to be Barbie. And it doesn’t matter that if I were anatomically structured like Barbie I would be unable to walk and
would be forced to crawl on all fours. Don’t get me wrong, I’m my own perpetrator, I’m my own victim. I pick up the magazines. No, no, no. It’s the
possibility of being skinny good that keeps me buying. Oh, God, I discover a Starbucks maple walnut scone expanding in me, creeping out. Flabby
age leaking through the cracks. Big Macs, French fries, Pizza Land, four helpings, can’t stop. My stomach is chicken wings, dipping butter, fried
shrimp, fried zucchini, fried ice cream, fried dumplings, fried anything, fried right. My stomach is America. I want to drown in the cement. There’s
obviously something I’m just not getting. I am going to go and find the woman who thought this up. Maybe if I listen carefully, she’ll reveal the
secret.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:

1. Can you relate t the narrator? Why or why not?

2. How does the narrator feel about her body? Why does the narrator feel that way about her body?

3. What is Cosmo? What does Cosmo symbolize?

4. Explain the line,”She’s the American Dream, my personal nightmare.”

5. Do you think that this body shaming is only applicable to women? Is it also applicable to men?

6. Are her concerns similar to yours? Is this a problem in the Philippines, too?

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.