Photos From Swearing In

These are photos from our counterparts' conference and swearing in ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Manila. Very fancy!

Photos From Bataan

From the bottom: two pictures from my birthday party, which was our first day with our new training host families, two pictures from the memorial on top of Mt. Samat in Bataan to commemorate those who died during the Bataan Death March in World War II, one of me holding up an alien Christmas tree like object on the beach, one of our cluster pretending to be album cover art, and one of a little boy blowing flour out of a cup so that he can get to a coin at the bottom at our community project.

Photos From Site Visit

From the top: Mt. Mayon from the airplane (amazing!), my high school, the beach five minutes away from our school, and my principal and her family.

Photos From Despedida in Tarlac

These photos are from about six weeks ago at our original training site when our host families threw a despedida or goodbye party for us. These are all pictures of our host families. The last one is of me with my first ever Filipina host mom.

Arrival at Site!

I had high hopes of being able to publish lots of my photos on the blog today, but alas, technical difficulties will prevent me from doing so until next time. Anyway, here is a picture of me, M, A, and W at the airport with Mt Mayon during site visit. Yeah, I know, I'm staring at the ground for some reason. And here is the volcano next to Legazpi City. Ain't she a beaut?

I arrived here in my town about two weeks ago. Catching my attention right from the beginning, I was surprised to find that the bedroom I had used during my site visit had been redecorated during my absence. Now the walls are painted pink and I have a new table, curtains, pillows, and lots more storage space in the closet for all of my stuff. How lovely!

Yes, my host family is very sweet. We live in a house that's part of a compound with maybe six or seven houses total. There are a lot of people coming and going around the house all day, and I need to ask my host sister to help me create a family tree, but the main cast of characters in my life thus far seems to be:
Helga, technically my host mom, although she's too young to really be my mom at only 38. So instead I call her ate (older sister).
Leo, Helga's husband, my host dad who I call kuya (older brother)
Lala - Helga's youngest sister, 20 years old, in her final year of college and my go-to for any questions I have about life here
Helga's three sons, two teenagers and one six year old, who have all been very shy to talk to me thus far but who are showing signs of warming up the more I do myself
Isabelle & Altea, girls who are three and two, respectively, adorable, and fight each other for the right to sit on my lap. Altea is infinitely mischievous while Isabelle is usually sweet and quiet. Isabelle is Helga's daughter and Altea is her niece.
Kate, an eight year old girl who has a beautiful smile
Helga's mother, father, aunts, and another one of her sisters who are infinitely helpful and patient with my broken and monstrous Bicol-Tagalog-Spanish-English hybrid language
Jojo & Melee, a young man and young woman who help out around the house - doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, taking care of all the kids, etc.

Last Saturday, I also met some of Helga's sisters who live in Manila when we had fiesta for our barangay (neighborhood). The Filipino fiesta is a tradition where a family will prepare a large amount of food at their house, lay it out, and entertain guests. Then people walk throughout the neighborhood all afternoon, visiting other houses and eating other people's food. I became a die hard fan immediately. Anything that involves eating and socializing and walking is awesome in my book. I visited three houses this year - not very many by Filipino standards, but I was full enough after each place! People kept asking me if we have fiestas in the U.S., and the closest thing I could think of was when I went to ten high school graduation parties in one day. So, it's like that, but it happens for Filipinos a few times a year, not just once when you graduate.

After all of the eating was over, we sang lots and lots of videoke! I think I sang six songs, all good music to digest to. Videoke is very popular in the Philippines - you have to make quite an effort if you want to avoid hearing it once darkness falls.

Things are going well at my job, too. I'm co-teaching second and first year high school students with two different teachers in four English classes a day. Teaching is still not something I'm totally comfortable with yet, but I think that that will change as time goes by. Anyway, I feel really good about the teachers at my school, especially my counterparts, and my principal. It's just the process of adjustment. All in all, I feel very happy and lucky to have such a great life right now.

Hope all of you are doing well, wherever you are in the world.

Swearing In

Last Friday we swore in and now we are officially full-fledged U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers. Woohoo!

The ceremony took place at the U.S. Embassy and was quite a formal affair. The American ambassador to the Philippines swore us in and we got all dressed up and had a reception afterwards.

Since then, my buddies and I have been enjoying the weekend in Manila. We've been eating lots of fancy food and seeing some of the sites. The first day we went to the nearest shopping center. Malls in Manila are plentiful, busy, and much larger than my needs call for, but they provided me with a good place to eat things like hard scoop ice cream, brewed coffee, pizza, and fancy sandwiches. Yum.

It was a good idea to go exploring too. We went to Intramuros, the old city, which is walled in and contains the oldest stone church in the Philippines. If you go walking there, guys on horse-drawn carriages will follow you around and insist that you pay them for a ride. Rizal Park is beautifully kept and the site of where the national hero was executed for inciting revolution.

It's been nice to get a chance to relax and eat good food and spend time with other volunteers before we all depart for our sites. Tomorrow I am getting on a plane to move to Albay province, and then it really begins! Although right now I am excited to finally plant my feet on the ground and get all settled in, I think I will be in for quite a shock. With no other Americans just a few doors down the street, it will be completely different from the last three months in a way that I don't think has really sunk in yet. I'm sure it will be hard, especially at the very beginning, but I'm a tough cookie and I'm up for the challenge. I suppose I remain excited to settle in to my new home.

Site Visit

Two Sundays ago (goodness time is flying by!) we had one of the most important days in the Peace Corps experience - finding out where our permanent sites will be, that is, where we'll be living and working for the next two years of our lives. A rather big deal. The energy levels and excitement amongst us Trainees were running high that day for sure.

Well, I found out that I'll be going to a smaller coastal town in Albay province, in the Bicol region. This part of the Philippines is known for its spicy food, use of coconut milk in cooking, and the Mt. Mayon volcano. With its name derived from the Bicol word for "beautiful" (magayon), this "perfect cone" is one of the most active, most famous volcanoes in the world. Stepping off the plane at the Legazpi airport, and seeing it towering over us with plumes of smoke coming out the top was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

My school and host family are really great too. I'll be working at a high school on the outskirts of town, where it's nice and quiet. The school has about 1500 students, average sized, and lots of programs and project ideas for me to work with, like a newspaper, remedial reading program, and an English club. I'll also be co-teaching in English classes for 20 hours a week, and my principal and counterpart teachers were very welcoming and excited about working with me.

My host family's house is right across the street from the school, and I really like it there. They make good food and everyone is sweet. The first night I was there, we had a brownout (common in the Philippines, especially in this area after the November 30th super-typhoon Reming destroyed much of the electrical and communication infrastructure), and my teenage host brothers played guitar and sang by candlelight until the power came back on late at night. Even though I was thoroughly sweaty since we were without electric fan, it was a beautiful experience.

After site visit, we moved to our new training site in Bataan province. We'll be here for the last three weeks of training before swearing in. I guess the move has been a bit hard on me, especially since we came here on my birthday, but I'm trying to stay positive and take care of myself. My birthday turned out to be pretty good. The people in my cluster are really happy, because the town we're in has lots of coffeeshops, restaurants, and christmas lights on the trees that line the sidewalk - pretty atypical for the Philippines. Also, it's good to be here for language learning, since everyone here speaks Tagalog, we get so much more practice. I guess we're getting spoiled a little bit, but that's ok, right?

All in all, a good site visit. I was one of the lucky ones who came back feeling super-excited about her site. Now I just have to hang in there for the last month of training, and it'll be time to swear in and go be a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer.