A Peace of Me: February Wrap-UP

Well the time has come to close out another month along my journey as a Peace Corps Volunteer. For starters I purchased my plane ticket home! Yes! I am out of here! For three weeks. The flight right now is Legazpi to Manila, Manila to Tokyo, Tokyo to Detroit (long flight), Detroit to Atlanta and finally Atlanta to Tallahassee. One good thing about this trip is the frequent flyer miles that I will get from Delta!

During the month of February I experienced many ups and downs and an array of emotions. It was also my busiest month thus far since being at site. I experienced joys, aggravations, accomplishments, and shared many laughs this month. February, a short month but deep. I'll start with mid month and it went a little something like this. Valentine's Day was among us at Haven the girls wanted a party and I wanted the girls to participate in One Billing Rising (The worldwide one-day celebration to raise awareness for Women’s Rights and a time for all women all over the world to take a stand against violence against women). So two weeks prior to V-day I did a session on Human Rights. The follow up week was supposed to be on Women’s Rights. I taught the girls a dance for our party/celebration and begin to organize the program when there was a message. While organizing this I received news, that one of the children of RSCC’s adoptive family was coming from America to get him and I had the responsibility of chaperoning them for the week. Hmm no problem I thought as I still continued to organize for the V-Day celebration as well as show the Americans hospitality. The days flew by and we never had the session but the girls had their wish and we celebrated Valentine’s Day.

We had spaghetti, cakes, egg pie, goodies, awesome prizes (bracelets, ray ban sun glasses) soda, singing, dancing, games and a good ol time. I told all the girls that I wanted them to enjoy themselves and that they were special to me. The houseparent’s played along with the games Pinoy Heno and we had a pie eating contest. It was great. All the hard work that went into the event paid off! And of course, the best Valentines gift was that little Jamer now had a permanent home with loving, and giving individuals. Marvie, my counterpart did a great job matching the couple with Jamer. Jamer had been at the agency since birth and was surrendered to the agency by his caregiver who was not able to care for him. It is a blessing that he was able to be matched with a family.

The next big thing on the agenda was a weeklong Language Camp in Legaspi but first Yara and I took a trip back to our training Site of Subic. There we visited our respective host families. Her host mother was having a birthday party for her 1 year old son and I visited my host family. My family seemed to have made home improvementsto the house with a flat screen TV mounted on the wall and a higher deck so that flood waters won't reach the house.I treated my host sister to a pedicure and we had lunch. Yara and I also went to Ihop before visiting the host family,

The only one in Asia located in Manila and we went! The restaurant opened a week prior to our visit and the food was great! We met a woman who is from South Carolina and had been in country for 6 weeks and was ready to go home.

Our week long language camp was held at an airport side resort where we could hear and see planes landing and taking off I chose to learn my local language of Bicol for two reasons. One was to get my ear in tuned with the local language used in my office and by the girls and to avoid being distracted. I had Elena, a LCF from my training site. It turned out to be a great choice as I know am more in the know of office talk or what the girls are saying to me. It was great seeing everyone in the Bicol area. I got to hang out with people I hadn't much in the past and learned some new games. On the eve of March 1st,

all of the March babies stayed up late and hung out until it turned March 1st to mark our month long celebration! It was fun! Hunter! you, Russ, Dan, and Wynne are the best!

Mark, adoptive father to Jamer and Marvie, my counterpart holding Jamer

House parent Belen guessing a famous movie star. The girls were excited.

Two of the girls signing a beautiful song for Valentines Day.

Pinoy Heno, the name is my Supervior aka the Center Head

Mama Del, houseparent and Ate Baby behind her.

The language camp crew. Our instructor Elena and we were playing Pinoy Heno, guessing the vocabulary that we learned. Our classroom space was a bahay kubo. kinda neat!