It's been way too long, I know

For Grandma and everyone else:

Okay- it’s been a minute since I posted a blog, I’m aware of that. So, on November 12, 2010 I swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. SO- this is where the two year mark begins.

After the swearing in process, I stayed in Manila for an extra night before flying back “home” to Palo. Manila is HUGE. Seriously, it’s intense. I stayed in a little tiny corner of the city and only saw that tiny corner. However, that did include really big malls with lots of food choices which is exactly why I stayed in Manila for an extra night. Yes, my life revolves around food. I’d say 50% of my thoughts on a given day could easily be food related... or maybe I’m just hungry right now. I don’t know.


I’m not sure if I have explained trikes or not but a picture says a thousand words? I borrowed this from the internet, it’s not me. Trikes are a popular mode of transportation around my hood in the ‘pines. I ride one nearly every day for many reasons. 1. They are a practical form of transportation. In other words, they get me from point A to point B in a very timely fashion 2. They are relatively cheap. A trike can manage to get me all the way to school for the low price of 10 php** (** sometimes, this requires arguing with the trike drivers... on one occasion very recently I even argued in Waray Waray, accusing him of charging me more because I am an American. That was fun). 3. They are a brief escape from the weather: rain or sun.

Even though, they seem like the perfect form of transportation, I dread getting into a trike. I always have, what’s the word... An experience? And by experience, I do mean near death experience. Trikes make me feel close to death....
One time I was on a trike that nearly ran over a man. We were cruising down the highway on the way to school and that means swerving in and out of many modes of transportation: cement trucks, jeepneys, petty cabs, bikers, motorcycles, walkers, etc. and all of a sudden a biker falls off of his bike into the highway right in front of us. Right. In. Front. Of. Us. So I did the most logical thing I could think of in that moment- I closed my eyes, which I can’t say for sure since my eyes were closed but I’m pretty sure that my trike driver did the same thing. He screamed, I screamed, he swerved, I screamed again, and then I finally opened my eyes to realize that we did not hit a man. I really don’t know how. But God bless.

Another time, I was riding home on a trike with another volunteer, who lives right down the street from me. It was a very short trike ride- maybe half a mile. So, whenever you get to your destination you just tell the trike driver “dinhi la” meaning just here, and he will pull over and let you get out. So I see my house, and I politely say “dinhi la” like I always do and he looks at me with a look that says “oh, sige” or okay, and starts slowing down to what I think is to pull over. I gather my belongings and his money to hop on out. After that I’m not sure what happened. Somehow, we were off the road, trailing through puddles and rocks, and gravel, and heading towards this dirt road across from my house. I banged into the side of the trike a few times, and then after hearing us shout “para” or stop, he bust out laughing and stopped the trike. I still don’t get what happened. Why didn’t he just stop? Eh, the mysteries of trikes. Anyway- I was sporting a few bruises on my right arm from that lovely trike ride.

Okay- one more short trike story. This happened yesterday. My battle wound is still sore. I get a trike to go to school (this will most likely be the start of every trike story I tell) and it appears that it is going to be a very safe and normal day. There wasn’t too much traffic, there wasn’t any rain, there weren’t any weird people falling onto the highway, nothing. We get to the market near my school and he stops and looks at me, so I remind him that I want to go to the high school. He takes off again, and this time it’s like he’s in a hurry. It’s only a few blocks but he decides to take these blocks really fast. I’m trying to hold on a little but I failed to notice the speed bump coming up in front of us. I’m going to just go ahead and assume that the trike driver didn’t notice it either, so yes, we went flying over it. At this point, my entire body lifts from my seat and I smash into the metal top of the trike. It. Hurt. I have a cute goose egg on my head too. I’m still a little bitter from this injury. I know he saw that speed bump... Bastos.

Please don’t let any trike stories discourage you from wanting to ride in them. They are perfectly safe modes of transportation sometimes. And you can cram a lot of people inside of them. I’ve even fallen asleep in a one! Maybe next blog I’ll write about all the different modes of transportation that I’ve slept on in the Philippines.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I missed you all. However, my Thanksgiving was awesome. On Thursday (the real Thanksgiving) I came home from a typical day at work, relaxed for a few minutes, and then began making chocolate chip cookies. The recipe came from Maggie (thanks, again), however I am not Maggie. Maggie can so easily turn flour, eggs, chocolate, and probably toy trains, into delicious, beautiful cookies. So I tried. I followed her instruction kinda. I say kinda because I know you are supposed to measure everything and do exactly what it says but I’m not that patient. Anyway, the dough was superb. I ate a lot of it. I’m going to guess that I ate at least 4-10 cookies worth of raw cookie dough. It was delicious. However, the final product did not turn out pretty. My chocolate chips were melted before they even touched the oven; the cookies were very much so lacking my sister’s touch. The good news is that PCV’s are extremely easy to please and they gobbled up my cookies before we actually had our Thanksgiving dinner. Win Win for everyone! So Friday, I traveled 7ish hours to San Antonio, which is an island in Northern Samar along with about 30 other volunteers. We stayed in a cute little resort that let us prepare our Thanksgiving feast (on Saturday) there. Some of the volunteers worked really hard and prepared a feast for the rest of us. Yeah, while they were cooking, I was swimming in crystal clear water, snorkeling out on the reefs, lying around in hammocks, snacking, etc. Perfect day. The dinner was all Thanksgivingesque food and it couldn’t have been better. I would obviously like to be with my family for the holidays, but having to spend it away, I can’t think of a better way to do it.

Okay- I had several more stories lined up, but I am losing steam.

Miss you and love you!

Remember Me??

Once upon a time there was a girl named Celia who joined the Peace Corps and promised her friends and family she would keep a regular blog .... then she fell off the planet and nobody heard from her ever again. The end.

Okay fine, that's not really the end. In fact, a LOT has happened since I last blogged way back in August.

So- I arrived in the Philippines. I had a week of orientation in a fun little resort called Island Cove with about 145 other kids who decided they wanted to be Peace Corps Volunteers. There, we found out where we would be training until November. The drum rolled, and I was placed in Leyte! The crowd went wild! (tiny exaggeration) So then I hopped on a plane with 15 other volunteers and moved to Leyte for training. So, in Leyte, I’m staying in a sweet little historical beach town known as Palo. You should look it up so you can see it on a map and stuff. My house is literally a five minute walk from the ocean and that’s going at the pace of a 90 year old woman with only one leg.

I live with a host family. A really really big host family. And by big I do not mean fat, however it is obvious nobody goes hungry in my family. Seriously, there is nanay and tatay (mom and dad), they have 6 girls, three of whom live at the house (25, 17, 12), and then the 25 yr old has two kids (5,2) and then there is another 5 yr old who is the daughter of one of the grownup sisters not at the house. THEN there are three young people who are the nieces and nephew of my nanay? Young people in that sentence means somewhere between the ages of 16-23 but they have only recently started talking to me. And then there is a 15 yr old hired as house help because her parents couldn’t afford for her to be in school anymore. And then there’s me, the clumsy, awkward, but loveable American. Oh yeah, the house is nice! Nanay and Tatay’s room and the 25 yr old’s room both have aircon. Yes, that indeed means I go into their bedrooms, lay down on their beds and sleep. They love me that much. We also have wifi and HBO. So basically having HBO is an upgrade to my life in Atlanta. Thank.you. Peace. Corps.



Alright so that’s my family. What else you wanna know? What I do? So during our 12 training, I have language class in the morning from 8 until 11:30ish where I attempt to learn Waray Waray. Then we have lunch at home with our families. Katapos, we have technical training from 1-4ish on MWF and that’s basically just teaching us how to teach and then on TTH we go to Palo National High School and actually practice teaching classes. After classes, I just do normal stuff. I hang out with the family or other volunteers, I eat snacks, I watch tv, eh, not much exciting going on during the week. Over the weekend we have fun though. Honestly, I never know what a weekend is going to look like. Sometimes we sing videoke (karaoke but with amazing videos displaying nature scenes or girls in bikinis playing behind the words), sometimes we drink San Miguel all day, sometimes we bbq, sometimes we go to the beach, sometimes we go to Tacloban (well, once), you get the idea right?

I’m inpatient. I wanted to be extremely sequential about this blog but I give up already. I went to Manila last week for Supervisor’s Conference (a conference where we meet the supervisor’s of our school and find out what our permanent sites are) and I found out I am staying at Palo National High School. Holla! So- yeah. All the details I just wrote above. That’s gonna be my real life Peace Corps experience.

Swell.

At first I was maybe a little disappointed. I don’t get to move to a new city. All the people here already know me and the other volunteers. The kids at my school have met so many volunteers so, I’m not special. However, now that I’ve had time to process what this really means.. . I am SOO excited. I went to the high school and met all the teachers today and they really took me in. They were so sweet, they already introduced me to all the single male teachers, invited me to go to church with them, told me they would show me how to make my favorite dish, Sweet and Sour fish, gave me an extra juice pouch, and basically just showed me that they are there for me and promised they would take care of me and not sexually harass me since that violates Peace Corps policy.

That’s all I got for now. I hope that in some way sums up what’s been up the last six weeks. If you want to know any specific questions, ask me and I’ll make sure to
enlighten you.

I miss you and love you!

I'm Here!!

Okay- I'm going to make this one quick... not nearly as long as my airplane post but I wanted to at least write SOMETHING for you guys :)

Anyway, it's hot. lol- duh. .. but surprisingly, not THAT bad. It's just the normal heat. It feels like Georgia. Have I mentioned there are quite a few Georgia volunteers here? 4+!

We just finished our first day of IO (Initial Orientation) and tomorrow I get to have my first round of shots.. Yahh. I got my phone number today! I am going to post this on Facebook. I'm pretty sure but not positive if you call me I can receive it and it will just charge you and not me. For now this is the only option since it is only loaded with texts. Otherwise, Skype is the best option for this week.

I will be here until Friday morning.

Anyway- so there is an animal park here, I'm going to try and check it out really fast. I promise I'll post more soon :)

Airplane Airplane

So I’m not sure if you could guess this from the title, but I am actually writing this from the North Pole! (Side note for Amanda and Dalton- I am obviously listening to B.O.B for inspiration). Okay, technically I haven’t looked out the windows to determine my exact coordinates but I’m just going to guess I’m somewhere in the Artic…. I would know exactly where I was if our stupidly large airplane had the fancy trackers you can watch your plane on a map between movies. But it doesn’t. I still can’t get over that. Every Delta flight I’ve been on this summer has had those! Not Asia.

So I’m going to tell you about yesterday and stuff but first I know you are going to ask me what they served on the airplane ( well, at least Maggie is). Dinner/Lunch/First meal was interesting. We received a menu at the beginning of the flight telling us what it was. Hold on- let me grab it. Okay- yeah, the “appetizer” was shrimp cocktail, “salad” was “seasonal green salad with cucumbers,” literally exactly that served with Ken’s Lite Ranch Dressing like at Johnny’s. The entrée choices were: “Sliced beef served with Thai coconut sauce” or “Asian soy chicken breast with carrots and steamed rice.” I really wanted sliced beef. But I was handed chicken. Apparently they were just kidding about my choice. I think I somehow was the last row served in the plane even though I’m sitting in the middle of the plane. Unfortunately, I’m too perfectly centered so they started behind me and all the way in the front of me. Oh well. The chicken was okay, the salad was fine, and the shrimp cocktail was pretty good. Now, I’m waiting for my “mid-flight snack.” I’m starving for some reason. Oh, guess what. The wait is over. I just got my snack. You may think that I am just typing this to humor you but I literally just got my snack. It’s an apple, a slider size sandwich with who knows what in it (I haven’t checked yet) and Milano cookies. Okay- for breakfast/dinner/last meal on this flight before we land in Tokyo we get seasonal fresh fruit, bread and butter, orange juice and a choice between: a pepper jack cheese omelet, roasted potatoes, and a pork sausage link OR shrimp fried rice! In case we can’t decide which is more appealing after sleeping/watching movies/reading/writing blogs on a 12+ hour plane ride.

Also for Maggie- the movies so far: The Joneses, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Ghost Writer. I know, not one of those was ones I mentioned from my list.

Anyway, yesterday ended up being a pretty good day. After getting on the airplane in Atlanta I felt pretty okay. I had a window seat and even though I said goodbye to everyone and I was really sad I didn’t feel like crying. And then I made a huge mistake. Like an idiot, I opened that journal. And then I started blubbering all over myself in seat 12A. I literally had to stop. I couldn’t see anymore and I had snot running down my face without a tissue. Graphic? Maybe. But at least you didn’t have to experience it. At least when I closed that book I was able to close the emotions. I stopped crying, wiped snot on my pants, cleaned my glasses, and put my seat forward for landing. I made it alive and there was no point in crying about anything in Philly. After all, I was only a thirty-minute car ride and a two-hour plane ride from home and I am very used to being that far away. So, I gathered my luggage from the luggage carousel by myself. I carried it all the way to the taxi area and got to the hotel no problem. I take that back, the taxi cost 40 dollars with tip and I didn’t have cash so it was almost a problem. So then there was staging and Peace Corps stuff. It was basically a two hour registration (hard core though, apparently if you didn’t have your paperwork filled out properly you got sent to the back of the line, no that did not happen to me! Jeez) followed by a five-hour meeting on why we are all there. It was okay. They split us up in two groups of about 40 or so and I got a chance to talk to most of the people in that group. I also got a chance to bond and meet some really great people so far. It’s funny how long yet fast 12 hours can be when you are meeting people for the first time. So by the end of the day I was sitting with two girls sharing a meal, realizing that I’m going to be just fine. (the sandwich was turkey).

I miss you all and love you and will write soon J

Am I the only one who hasn't packed?

Is it really already August? I guess I have no choice but to start packing. As my departure date quickly approaches, I am realizing how much work I still have left to do: rummage through clothes and decide which outfits are deserving enough to join me for the next 27 months, figure out what else will fit in my suitcase after clothes, organize my life into two small suitcases to not exceed 80 total lbs... I think I have my work cut out for me! After skimming through other volunteer's blogs, I have come to the realization that I might be behind on this whole packing thing. Some people are packed and just counting down the days until we get on those airplanes! Am I the only one who hasn't packed? Even right now, I am sitting on my bed with my big ol' grey cat, Goose, sitting on my lap, staring out into the corners of my bedroom knowing I need to be making decisions. And instead I am writing.

I am writing yet I have no idea what I am even supposed to be writing about. I have been biding my time spending precious days with the people that I'm not going to get to be around for the next few years and am wondering where are my emotions? And let me tell you, writing emotionless can be difficult. I have already said goodbyes to some people and am only days away from saying goodbye to most of the people that love and support me and I haven't shed a tear. I don't know if I am in denial or if I am more excited than sad, or if I am just oblivious to the fact that this is goodbye for two years. I'm sure my emotions are going to catch up with me eventually, most likely with the force of a monsoon, but in the mean time I'm just thankful. I guess its time to get on that packing. Grrrr

P.S. I've added my address for the next three months while I am a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT). So be sure to send me mail :)

P.P.S. This really shouldn't be a P.S. note since it is rather important, but I assume most people reading this already know. Staging (staging is my orientation for the Peace Corps) is not out of California like I originally expected. Instead, I will be flying to Philly on August 19th at 8 something in the morning and go straight to a hotel where we have meetings from 12-7. Then, on August 20th, we wake up at 5 am (enough said) and take a bus to JFK. And guess where from there? That's right. The Philippines. So Manila should be expecting 140 or so of us Peace Corps Trainees at 10:30 p.m on August 21st. Hopefully, the excitement of FINALLY arriving will outweigh our crankiness from 18 or so hours of flying!

Do you think anyone will care if my cat, Turtles, comes with me??

Introductions

Generally, the beginning of a story is my least favorite. Characters and settings have to be developed, which is crucial. Without the beginning, we'd be lost in the middle and never make it to the end. So here is my intro. . .

I'm Celia. I recently graduated from Georgia State University and am counting down the days before I leave for the Philippines. There, I plan to teach English as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let the tale begin.