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!