I admit I have been quite bad at posting blogs…
That being said this is what has gone on in the past few months:
After IO, a small group of 15 Children Youth and Families (CYF) volunteers were placed in Olongapo City for training. We were placed in host family homes in the Barangays (neighborhoods) of New Cabalan and Old Cabalan. Olongapo City is an area along the western coast of the northern island of Luzon, in the province of Zambales. The city itself is pretty large and close by is Subic Bay, an old U.S. military base. We were a jeepney ride away from Olongapo, and another ride away from Subic. The villages that we lived in were great. I lived on Forestry Road in Old Cabalan with an amazing host family. Our barangays had everything you could need in them. There are many corner stores (Sari Saris) located in the front of people’s homes. Here they sell 1peso candies, single use pack shampoos and soaps, baked goods, cell phone load (100pesos for 100 texts) sodas and snacks. There was also a meat store, bakery, and multiple stands selling fresh fruit and veggies all on our street. It really makes sense here to not have a car, everything is close. To get the occasional things that you needed other than that or to go shopping, we took an 8peso (the cheapest cost based upon travel distance) jeepney into Olongapo. There we could find the public market, and a few large grocery stores. If we wanted cheese its or something that was imported we could travel into the duty free store in Subic. This was only to splurge. Everything in Subic was expensive for our budget. The prices are comparable on most things to the United States prices, but we are living on around $180 a month. So buying baby bell cheese for five dollars really isn’t a common thing. So far the living allowance is pretty tight but practical. The exchange rate is somewhere around 43 pesos to a dollar. Some commonly priced things are; jeepney ride-8pesos, soda-15pesos, a meal-somewhere around 50 pesos, haircut-75pesos, handmade crafts-100 pesos. There are of course things that we are used to getting that are insanely expensive here. A good example is cheese. People here eat cheese wiz, not real cheese here; most people just do not like it. Therefore it is insanely expensive whenever you can find it because it is often imported. So back to training…..Then we were split up into groups based (sort of) on where we were living for training. We had a group for language in the morning and another group for technical in the afternoon. There were three language teachers and two technical teachers. The focus of language was to teach us conversational Tagalog and to help us pass (score intermediate mid or higher) on our LPI (Language Proficiency Exam). My language group was composed of a total of four people. Chelsea, Trevor, Austin and I went to language every morning at a house that Erleen our Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF) was renting for the training time. Language time was generally great. Austin brought his a game of silly jokes and faces, Trevor brought his funny questions, and Chelsea brought her ability to always listen and share about our stresses. Oh and Ereleen was great! She was always in a great mood and had a ton of energy. She made us multiple extra study helpers like vocab flip books that helped me with the language a great deal. Technical was composed of learning and practicum of topics such as; Youth camp, Life Skills, V2 (volunteers teaching the youth to become volunteers), community project, and PACA. The group had seven PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) and one TCF (Technical and Culture Facilitator). Our LCF was new this year and we had many strong personalities in our group. This resulted in a few arguments and a struggle to settle on one idea for an event. This being said, I learned a great deal in technical and learned how to be more flexible (Peace Corps favorite quality) with my ideas. Then on September 17th we got sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers and we were sent off to our sites. I am placed in Legazpi City, Albay in the Bicol Region of the Island of Luzon. We are on the southernmost tail that goes off to the east. The city is in a bay that is out to the Pacific. Nearby is the beautiful almost perfectly shaped Mayon Volcano.
