Vacation time over

So I am finally back at site. I just arrive two days ago, Tuesday. I had such a warm welcome. Towards the end of my trip I was feeling anxious to go back, tired of living out of a suitcase and having to eat out for every meal. I knew it would be nice to be back but I didn’t realize how much I missed everything. The minute I came home I was so happy, all smiles and excited to say see my family and tell them about my trip. I even missed the dogs! The following day I went to the school and all the children came and gave me big hugs. They seemed surprised to see me and excited to have me back. What a great feeling.
So let me tell you all about my trip ( I just wrote about most of it but I accidentally deleted it – hopefully ill tell it just as well if not better).
I left three weeks ago – Wednesday, September 6th - so hard to believe I was gone nearly a month!!! This was the first big trip I have taken since I came here so I was very excited to go. I was nearly packed by Sunday! (Not really a big surprise) Mama zonya made sure that I had everything and even slipped me some money for my trip! Very sweet. That Wednesday I took the bus to Banaue and stayed at Adam’s. In the morning I got the bus to Baguio at 630 am. It is supposed to take about 9 hours to get there during the day. My trip took about 11 because the bus broke down about an hour outside of the city. What luck! We stopped at a rest stop about 330 and were there about an hour while they tinkered around at the end of the bus with some sticks they found. After they poked and prodded around the conductor just said ok lets go. And we were off. I arrived in baguio around 530 sweaty, stiff, and ready to eat something more than candy and crackers. I met up with Jill who had been in Saytan visiting, Brian who came from his site in Narvican, and Kelly and Lina who live together in Baguio. We hung out at their place that night – watched a movie and cooked spaghetti – our style – no sugar or cream added! They have a really nice apartment. Tv, dvd, tiled floors, hot showers plus having access to all the things a big city has to offer – movies, malls, coffee shops, real restaurants! I definitely took advantage of it all. Friday I spent the day shopping for my class. I thought that Baguio would have a lot of supplies but as it turned out there is a very limited selection and most of it is really expensive. I did manage to find some things like games, books, beads, and school supplies. However, I only made a small dent in the money they gave me. I also did some shopping for myself. Baguio is full of thrift stores – they call them wag wagans and they have everything. And lots of clothes in really good condition. You can buy a shirt for around 20-100 pesos and bottoms for about 80-200 pesos. I didn’t manage to see a movie while I was there but I did eat out a lot. I ate a real salad on the first day – real lettuce greens! And a real fruit smoothie with yogurt! I went to the public market and was awestruck. They have every kind of food you could imagine – broccoli, lettuce, oranges, apples, all the exotic fruits. It’s a colder climate there so they can grow a lot of things we can’t here. And because it is such a big city, they import a lot more. But I have been warned that a lot of the beautiful bright fruits and vegetables are grown with a lot of pesticides and fertilizers – chemicals so strong that they wouldn’t pass US regulations. The rule of thumb people go by here is buy only produce with a bit of nibbling. The pretty stuff is usually covered in chemicals. While I was there I also went to a gym! Kelly volunteers at two gyms. She was an aerobics instructor in the states. So I went to two of her classes. It was so nice to break a sweat from exercise again!
Oh and exciting news too! I was on TV Saturday morning. They showed me eating at the binakle festival in kiangan! It showed me twice and once adam and once peyton – shoving food in my face of course! And when I came back to site I found out that I was in the newspaper willowing the native rice. Too bad they messed up my name calling me ‘Kristine Jergenstein’ – not sure where they got that one.
Saturday night we got on a night bus around midnight to go to cavite for training. The trip is about 6 hours long. I got a window seat and bought a blanket cos they turn the aircon on so high that everyone freezes. And before I boarded I was lucky enough to find Smallville – all seasons – at a street vendor – only 200 pesos – hours of entertainment to come. Sad to say, but I am addicted – cant get enough of that clark kent. He’s a hottie what can I say and even better he’s a super hero. Thank you Aaron. I loaned my season one dvds to adam and hes also hooked. Hes anxious for me to watch the new ones so I can pass them on to him. See what boredom gets you here?
So training….8 days in the same place. We had sessions every day from 8 am until 6 pm with a break for lunch. Really, it was mind numbing. They tried to cram way too much information into a small period of time. We needed more breaks. The site was nice – very shady, nice two person rooms with showers, roads to jog or walk, a swimming pool – but not any time to enjoy it all. The best part of training was definitely seeing everyone. I saw people I hadn’t seen since the first week we were here. During swearing in, I felt really anxious about seeing everyone and actually dreaded it a bit. Our group from Northern Luzon clung to each other a bit because we knew each other well and interacting with the other volunteers was draining and hard to get past simple small talk. This time around everyone was more relaxed and very comfortable with each other. I loved it. It was also great cos there were so many people from the Midwest. It may sound a bit silly but I can really tell when people are from that area. They are more easy going and down to earth and its great. I feel right at home with them.
Besides seeing everyone I did learn a bit from the training. The main thing that I took away from this training – I had the chance to brainstorm about my job here. I really took some time to think about what was working, what wasn’t working, what I needed to improve and how I was going to do it. So I left training with ideas and support of other volunteers and also a new motivation to work on my project. I have also realized a lot about myself lately. I have the tendency to be passive and way too nice. I have been making progress at my job doing fundraising, courtesy calls, organizing, making home made materials – but these are all things that I did well before. I avoid any confrontation or difficult situations, I dread going to class, I avoid teaching, I sit in the back and just take a back seat to it all. Really I just avoid stressful situations and am so grateful for any excuse that gets me out of them. What I need to do now is suck it up and be more assertive, step up and take charge. Here, I can be afraid to hurt people’s feelings or cause any waves. I talked with my regional manager, Nellie, and the country director, Karl, during training. Nellie agreed that there is a big block between my counterpart and I – coming from her direction – she feels it to when she is talking with her. I think that she feels intimidated. So what I need to do is give her some control over all of this. I talked with Karl about the situation too and he said that I should set a deadline for improvement – if nothing changes by that time then I should consider a different project or doing something drastic about the situation. Good idea. I also decided that now that I am back at site I am going to spend the next week or so developing a proposal for how to improve the class. I want structure and rules and methods for how to teach each subject. I could use an entire month to do all this but starting out with a week. Ideally we would have spent the first two months doing this but that’s not how it worked out. So wish me luck this next week. I might need it!
Also at training I went to visit an elementary school with 4 sped classes – one blind, two deaf, and one for MR and Down’s syndrome. The teachers were amazing! So warm and welcoming and passionate about their jobs. Sure they had way too many students and no supplies but their attitudes were still great. Now I know there are definite issues with my counterpart. After training, our whole group took a day trip to Taal Volcano. It’s a big lake with an island in the middle. You hike up this mountain and get to another lake that is on top of a volcano. Its gorgeous. After that, Lina and I left for our scuba trip. We first got a van to Batangas where you can get the ferry to Mindoro. It was too late Sunday night so we stayed in Batangas overnight. The only hotel we could find was a pension that you could rent for 3, 12, or 24 hours…if that gives you any idea of what it was like. We got it for 12 and were out first thing in the morning and caught the ferry to Sabang Beach. We spent 4 nights and 5 days there. The place is gorgeous. A small little town on the coast. A very small beach lined with dive operators. The cool thing is that behind the beach is a really cool little town with little walkways that wind and turn like a little maze with little shops and restaurants. We got lucky and found a nice place with a view of the sea, balcony, hammock, hot shower, fridge for only 525 pesos for both of us. Lina wasn’t going to do the scuba class at first. She wanted to wait until march for her brother to come and they were going to do it together. But I convinced her. So we spent the week doing our open water dive course. It combines book work, videos, tests, homework…but the fun part is of course the diving. We got all geared up in wet suits and everything and went first in the pool to get used to it and then had 4 sessions in the sea. It is truly the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s a whole different world down there that you cant see any other way. I cant wait to do it again. It cost 250 dollars and was worth every penny. I recommend it for everyone. We saw so much coral and fish. We saw huge turtles and got to feed these giant fish that swarmed all around us. We even saw some small sunken boats. We had a great instructor. A german man about 45 who has lived all over the world, living in sabang for the past two years living with a Filipino and teaching the dive courses. His name was Ecksy. The dive course took most of our time. But in the evenings we would walk along the beaches – 3 right in a row you could walk along, eat out, and have a couple of drinks. We ate some amazing food – lots of Italian – real feta cheese and mozzarella! Lina had her first hamburger ever – didn’t eat meat in the states. It was delicious!!! Friday after we were done with our course we went to White Beach – known for white sand and laying on the beach. It turned out not as nice as sabang. It was pretty but it is a vacation spot for Filipinos. We liked sabang because we felt at home again being around so many westerners – its packed with Europeans, Australians, and Americans, working at the restaurants and dive shops. On white beach we felt like outsiders again. We stayed in a nice hut on the beach, had outdoor massages, and ate fresh crab and fish. We went on a little snorkeling adventure – rented a boat for the morning to see coral gardens. We got there and the operator handed us life jackets that looked like they came off an old lake boat, water socks, and fins….we were meant to hang on the boat with our faces in the water and he would drive us around – had to be there to get the picture. Most of the coral in this spot was dying so not much to see. It was really sad. Hmmm….what else…oh at night the beach is lined up with tables from all the restaurants so you can sit there and eat by candle light. Very romantic for the two of us J By Sunday we were ready to go. We were happy to have seen the ocean, the diving was amazing, but we were anxious to stop living out of a suitcase. We traveled back to Manila. Lina headed back to Baguio and I stayed two nights there buying supplies for my class and groceries from a real grocery store – I found bran flakes and parmesan cheese! I also went to visit Dustin who just had his appendix removed and is recovering in manila. He missed the entire training because he had to be rushed into surgery. How scary!!!! And I met adam on Monday. He had been in training in Iloilo and then went to boracay – white sandy beaches – one of the best vacation spots in the Philippines. He also went diving – he already took his class in central America a couple years ago. Now we are both certified so will be able to take trips together. I tried to get jill to do it but she is just not that interested. I may convince her yet. Anyways, we met up and took the bus back to ifugao together. It was great company. Sure beat my trip to Baguio alone. Now I am back at site, back to work. My auntie here just got internet at her shop so I only have to go next door now. Its great. Ok. Im beat. Hope I covered it all. Miss you all. Write you again soon.