We have completed the seminar and certificate is added to our list of paperwork it was an interesting day The seminar was 8.30- 4.30 with an hour for lunch and conducted almost exclusively in Cebuano. 14 couples of which 3 had children and 2 more visiably pregnant attended The morning covered the questionaire and basicly was 3.5 hours of non-stop talk by a 62 year old Lady who had been widowed 35 years ago and had prayed not to ever have another Husband (sucsessfully by her report lol) I think the irony was not generaly appreciated. After lunch we had first a mid-wife who told us how to concieve but advised not to have "to many" and a health worker who described with diagrams various birth control meythods and suggested a 18 month gap between births was a good idea, She failed to mention that condoms could prevent STD,s though.Positively i.u.d.,s are free as of December Vasectomies too so you might want to get that info out if you know any one it may help. The 4th and only guy talked about budjeting and saving for disasters and all of the lectures sugested fighting with your in-laws was bad. As to why the P.I. requires guys to attend something they wont understand or even why this is not taught in high school to make sure that everyone has this information go figuer , it was free. Outside of the relevance of the content, this was the most time i have been submerged in Cebuano for some time and I was pleased to discover I could understand most of the context whilst of course missing the detail and little jokes. This course for language students here could be treated as a resource as it takes your chance for comprehension out of the daily shopping and local chatter and into a more formal /interactive setting I may go again the local folk seemed to like the little extra imput and some enjoyable conversations took place at break times
When we applied for the marriage licence, there was a brief mention of a "seminar" by the lady dealing with our paperwork, but then in the same breath she announced that there wasn't really much need, or any at all, for it as I had been married before, and Jet had a child already.... So we didn't have to waste any shopping or "getting to know each other better" time, to attend a useless exercise... Personally, I am of the opinion that it is a form of revenue to create jobs, or keep some useless people in some kind of gainful but pointless employment... Just like non-jobs and labour cronies in the Uk....
Well as it was free it didnt generate much revenue except incidentily in the local ale hostelry at lunchtime
