I'm not sure I have much to say at this point, not too much has happened. After we got back from our site visit it's been a lot more paperwork and general laying around. Actually right now we're in the middle of our end of training community project, so that's taking up most of our time. Half of our barangay doesn't get trash service since the road there is supposed to be too small, so we're working with the local women's and youth groups to get trash barrels placed around that part of town, and we'll be doing a sanitation "seminar" and a coastal clean up. We have a meeting with the mayor on Sunday to try and get him to bring the truck down there, otherwise we have the funds to buy a little peddle tricycle with a side basket to be used to collect the trash on a weekly basis. I wish I had pictures so you could see the trash, but it's a huge and very unsanitary problem, and we've been lucky to get a lot of community support.
Also, Abby and I were recently in a parade. It was in the barangay of our host sister's mother-in-law, and it was the Santacruzan parade, which might have something to do with saints. In the case of the parade it was just a bunch of girls in ball gowns with lots of makeup walking all over town (in a typhoon). Did I mention we were hit by a typhoon? It was only signal 1 (the weakest) so all we had were 60 kmh winds and lot of rain, and an angry sea. It still flooded the low lying part of town, and apparently trashed our future host site. They had flooding, trees knocked down, etc. Nothing terribly severe, but it still caused a lot of damage. Abby and I are thinking we might geta 2nd story apartment. Haha. Anyway, the parade was really interesting, Abby was taken to a beauty parlor where they poofed and sprayed her hair mercilessly and covered her in makeup. They wanted to put makeup on me too, but I was able to avoid that. "Just a little lip shine!" they would say. No thanks.
So other than our project, we also have our barangay fiesta coming up, which involves a lot of videoke and eating, from what I understand. Everyone in town just makes a ton of food and then you walk to all of the houses of the people you know, and you eat and socialize. It sounds gut-bustalicious.
This is a picture of our island from the outrigger ferry boat. As you can see, it is an awesome island.
The girls in Santacruzan were anywhere from 6 to 18 or so. Here's Abby being peppered with questions.
Here's Abby in front of Tamaraw Falls on the way to Puerto Galera. It falls in a series of 7 different steps.
Here's Abby in the river, eating papaya and beans from the can. This was an outting with our host family.