Saying Goodbyes and Hellos

Well the last week and half have been quite intense.  First I had to say goodbye to my first host family.  It is amazing how close you get to complete strangers in only 2 months time.  We hosted a Halad for them which is a type of "Thank you for having us party." My last night there I also got them a cake and some other little gifts, and we had a huge meal and a couple ol' Sam Migs.  It wasn't all that bad, i'm going to be returning later this month for 3 days to go to the twon fiesta, so i'm all ready looking foward to that.  Below is a piture of me and my host fam the last night I was there.  The left two are my host brothers, Dino and Jesse, then Nanay Lankit, and of course me.

After leaving my host family all the trainees met up and headed to Iloilo for our swearing in ceremony.  This was also a bittersweet event.  It was great to have the intensity of 6-7 days a week of training come to an end and know we would be actual volunteers, yet we all know there will be larger challanges to overcome in the future.  Also besides getting close with all our first host familys, we have as a group gotten very close with one another.  With the start of service we won't be seeing eachother on the regular basis that we have for the past 2 months.  Needless to say we all had a great time in Iloilo celebrating our swearing in.  Below is a piture of the 15 people in my training hub.  The piture below that is of myslef and Ana, my LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator).  She is the person who put up with me 6 days a week, 4 hours a day, teaching me illonggo, she is a saint and a great teacher and I don't know what I would have done without her.

Before I went to my perm. site, myself and a couple friends decided to take a little time away. The resoning was to gather our thoughts, from training and before work starts, and relax.  We found a gorgeous little resort on an Island off of Panay and went there for 3 days.  It was very quite, and had beutiful little nippas for rent.  Below is the sunset on the 2nd night from our balcony. 

The picture below is during the day of our balcony, from inside the Nippa.  It was on a cliff about 40 ft above the water and if you were to walk out on it and look around you would see 3 or 4 small secluded white sand beachs.  Across the water you can see one in this picture.

The below picture is of the moon.  It is an observation that my friend Lindsey made that seems so obvious but once it was pointed out I found it facinating to look at.  Back home we were used to seeing the moon cresant on the left and right.  Here they are on the top and bottom.


The below two pictures are of some of my companions on my little vaction, the top one is of Erin (left) and Karen (right).  I sent most of you their picture links to look at.  The bottom one was taken on the first night there, it is Me, Lindsey, Erin, and Karen.






Once again I hope this finds everyone well.  I'm posting this blogg on my first day of work during my lunch break.  I must admit I was very nervious about today up until now, it has gone pretty well so far.  First thing this morning I had to get up during the flag ceremony (held on the first work day of each week) and introduce myself to over 100 people in Illonggo.  That was fun, I wasn't told I would be doing it either so it was free lance style.  My job still seems a bit overwelming, at the very least intimidating, but one day at a time I guess.  Nagkato ko diri kay man gusto ko mga challange,  Halong! (I came here because I like challanges, take care)

Last week of Training

Hello all, well I have less than a week of training left.  I swear in next Tuesday and then I will be off to my site.  I must say i'm excited, I wish i knew the language better, but i'm not bad.  I guess I really wouldn't be happy no matter how well i knew it, there is only so much you can learn in 2 months.  My training cluster mate and I had to implament a small community activity for the end of our training and we did an environmental poster contest with a local church group, the one from the previous blogg pictures.  It went over well but still was a great learning experiance.  It took place in the Barangay hall, which is kinda like a town hall.  We had prizes and candy for the participants as well as a snack for everyone.  The following four pictures are from the activity, the first two are of the group and the second two are just ones i really like of two super cute kids (K.K. those are mostly for you), anyways enjoy. 

The next three picture are from a religous celebration that my clustermate and I went to (she is obviously the white girl below).  It was quite interesting and really fun.  The day began with us being introduced to everyone, and the men getting me to sit for a while and partake in a bit of "Tuba" drinking.  It is the local coconut wine.  It is basically the sap from a coconut tree, and when they tap it out of the tree it is all ready fermented and ready to drink.  After a bit of that they all piled in this small room and sang songs in Illonggo while an older lady played guitar.  We than ate a huge lunch, and then, as it seems to be the time of year, it rained and rained. They then brought in the Videoke equipment and we all rocked out for a while, Nicole and I did a killer version of Hotel California. For those of you who don't know videoke is the number 1 passtime here, everyone loves it, and someone in the barangay always has the equipment.  The third picture is of all the men, mostly the ones who were roping me into drinking the Tuba, like it was that hard, oh and a bit of Tanduay (local rum, runs about 80cents for a liter).

The below picture is of my hub training group while we were touring a coffee farm, learning the basic methods of coffee farming and harvesting.

This picture is of a production I went to about 1 month ago, it was in the town of Sigma, in the plaza.  It is a local out of school youth theater group.  The performance was accompanied by a band of all local bamboo insturments.  It sounded amazing.