Massive Update! Part 1: April

Ok, so once again, I have failed as a blogger. Forgive me. I've been busy. So now I'm going to hit you with a massive five-part update on what I've been up to, where I've been and where I'm going as I come up on the 1-year mark here in the Philippines! We'll pick up where the last post left off... April, aka Summer Vacation!

BOAC, GASAN & BUENAVISTA, MARINDUQUE 

I kicked off the vacation with a trip to the small island of Marinduque for the Holy Week Moriones Festival. Definitely the most cultural thing I've been a part of here in the Philippines. I traveled with Carlotta, another education volunteer from Mindoro (and my training-mate), and together we spent 3 hours in a van, stayed overnight in the port town and then spent 3 hours on a boat with no seats on our way to the "Heart of the Philippines." My friends Jessi and Shea, education volunteers placed on the island, served as tour guides/hostesses for the trip. And then another volunteer came down just for the weekend. Marinduque is such a small island (only 4.5 hours to drive all the way around it) so we were able to go bounce between Boac, Gasan and Buenavista each day to see the different events happening. 

Everywhere you look there are people dressed up in the Morion costumes roaming the streets! The costumes are all relatively the same but they are made of all different materials, depending on the person. Some were plastic, some made of coconuts, some were jeweled or leopard print... really, anything they could come up with. They were fantastic! We saw street dancing, elementary students playing musical sticks (can't remember the name), the reenactment of the Stations of the Cross through town, and a nightly street party with music, food, drinking and dancing. 

The week was capped off by the Easter parade and cultural dance competition in the town of Gasan. All 8 barangays were part of a parade through town that led to the plaza where they each performed a longer dance number in elaborate costumes with drumming and props. It was a great way to experience Holy Week in the Philippines! 

PUERTO GALERA, MINDORO 

The weekend after Holy Week was another three-day weekend so I headed out of town again to visit another volunteer up in the northern part of Mindoro. Huff was nice enough to let me come crash with her at site for a few days even though we didn't really know each other very well. So glad she did! We had a great time getting to know each other and enjoying her beautiful site! Puerto Galera is a popular resort town similar to Boracay (where I spent New Years). Bec lives in a great cabin at her site that is just across the street from the beach. The best part is that her site is just down the road from White Beach, one of the most popular party spots in town. We were just far enough out of the way that the beach was nearly empty all day. But we were still within walking distance to go out and enjoy the music and people watching at White Beach at night. It's also tradition to head down to the beach for sunset every night since it goes down directly out in front of where Huff lives. I'm slightly obsessed with the sunsets here (I try not to get up early enough to see the sunrises) so I have a ridiculous number of sunset pictures from my week-long stay. This is one of my favorites! 

ANILAO, BATANGAS
From Puerto Galera, I took the early morning boat to Batangas to meet up with another volunteer, Kris, so that we could get scuba certified! Getting to Anilao took us longer than we expected so we spent the first afternoon watching the videos all about diving (the gear, the skills, safety instructions, etc.) and taking quizzes on each one. 

Day two was when we actually got into the gear (getting into a wet suit is as awkward and difficult as it looks!) and into the pool to start learning how to breathe underwater. It definitely takes some getting used to. I had to stand up and breathe normally for a minute or two just to calm myself down after my first attempt under the surface. But once I relaxed and just started breathing normally I was fine. So we spent the morning in the pool where we did two different "dives" to work on skills like clearing water out of your mask, swimming and breathing without your mask on (so tough!) and how to make an emergency ascent on just one breath of air (if you run out of air). I better hope that never happens to me. I will drown. My lung capacity is crap apparently! 

After lunch we went out into the ocean in front of out hotel to dive in the "house reef." This time I ran into some trouble. I wasn't able to clear my ears to make it down to the bottom right away. Just like when you fly and your ears pop, the same thing happens when you go underwater. But this time you're not in a pressurized cabin so you have to equalize your ears to release the pressure or you can seriously injure yourself. My instructor was great and worked with me, moving me into shallower water, until I was finally able to get to the bottom to work on some more skills. One of those skills was getting to the top while using the secondary air supply of your partner. Unfortunately, after we got to the top, I had the same ear problem again and wasn't able to get back down to the bottom for our fun swim around. I was still able to explore the shallower parts and see some amazing sea life but it was disappointing and made me very nervous for our last two dives the next day. 

 

Fortunately, I had no problems on our last day. I was able to figure out how to yawn with the regulator in my mouth (again, not so easy) to clear my ears. So I did get to experience the full scope of our two final dives. The first dive site was Twin Rocks which has a capsized barge and great coral and fish to see. The highlight of the dive was the sea turtle (!!!) that was swimming right with us, surfaced for a few minutes, and then came back down to swim with us a little more. Our instructor had his underwater camera with him and took a ton of video and pictures on our dives and burned us a CD of all the images before we left. I need to get a case for my camera so I can get pictures like this on my future dives! 

The second dive of the day was at The Cathedral, a site with a small cement cross on the sea floor that was put there by former president Ramos in honor of the wedding of his daughter, a diver. Here we were able to feed the fish out of our hands. Such a crazy feeling to have the fish nibbling on your hands! I had a great time watching all the fish swim by and I got so excited every time I saw one that I remembered seeing when Mom and I went to the aquarium in San Francisco before I left. The exhibit was the Philippine Coral Reef and it was my inspiration for wanting to get dive certified while I was here. It was so worth it! I can't wait to get back underwater again and see all the other amazing sea life that exists here in the Philippines!

SILONAY, CALAPAN, MINDORO
On my way back from diving I stopped by Calapan to visit Brandon and Monique and spend some time island hopping in their beautiful barangay. Carlotta came up for the weekend too and the four of us went along with some of Monique's local friends out to a small island for a nice day on the beach. We had a great grilled fish lunch and time to snorkel and enjoy the sun. The whole day I just kept looking around and thinking "I could be in Bulgaria right now!" (no offense to Bulgaria, Amanda!) Instead, I'm spending my time scuba diving, snorkeling, laying out on the beach in April! It was a great relaxing weekend before heading back to site. Really, April was just one long relaxing weekend. This one just happened to actually take place on a weekend!

BACK TO BULALACAO
After being away for about three weeks, I finally made it back to site! It was good to be home, sleep in my own bed and sleep in (a little). Just a few days after I got home it was time to help out with a teacher training that Dom had organized for all of the science teachers in our municipality. Dom did a ton of work planning and finding grant money to bring in Palawan Conservation Corps to facilitate the environmental training and to have books and resources available for all of the teachers (there were about 100!). PCC did an amazing job as facilitators and Dom and I, along with two other volunteers who came down, were really just errand runners for them. It was really interesting to listen to the conversations and debates that were sparked between the participants and the facilitators about different aspects of the environment and conservation and what each individual person could do to help. These were all conversations that would not have happened with a group of Americans leading the discussion. Plus, it was good for me to see the steps needed to put together a training like this. It's something I hope to do again in the future. I had a good time hosting Steph and Beth too. Rebecca was out of town for the week so we didn't quite have a full house, but it was a lot of fun to have visitors!

So there it is... the month of April! For more pictures of what I've been up to for the last year, check out my photo site which I update it a little more often than this blog! I'll try to get through May and June while I'm here at training this week. Obviously, no promises!