My adventures in the Philippines: November 2010

I had one of those moments where my heart was torn in two!
I spent the day volunteering for the children's rights festival, a festival that two of my friends (fellow volunteers) had been working on. It was an amazing day, a day I will forever remember.
The fesitval was a celebration of the 21st birthday of the National Convention of the rights of the child and saw many small NGOs, local governments and schools come together to celebrate.
There were approx. 3000 children from all walks off life and backgrounds that had registered for the event and another 100 if not more that came off the street.
Yeah I spent the day mainly pouring cups of water for children and handing out food but I did get to spend sometime interacting with some of the children including children from shelters and homeless children.
But one story that will forever stick in my head is the little boy who wanted a kite!
I had just finished my lunch and was sitting with a friend in the media tent when I was interacting with three of the street children and one little boy from a shelter. He was a lovely boy who instanly connected with me - he was being rather cheeky and kept poking me and running away! We started to play and he grabbed my hand and started pulling me away from the event - he kept running accross the oval, I followed him intrigued to see where he was going and what he wanted. We finally reached the end of the oval and he pointed towards a small cart with kites and balloons - he said in broken english: "I want a kite"
Thinking wow how am I going to say no to this one so I asked the man how much, he told me 40 pesos, 40 pesos thats 1 australian dollars, 1 australian dollar what difference was that going to make so I thought if I could make one boy smile then a kite it would be!
So together we counted out the last couple of coins I had and he took the 40 pesos to the man and bought himself a kite. His face just lit up and he run off with the kite in the air, he came running back and said "You made me happy" and then he ran off again - around and around he went whilst I held back tears.
He kept coming back throughout the day to give me a big cuddle. For the whole afternoon I kept seeing this little boy helding tightly onto his kite so he could keep a close eye on it.
I spent the afternoon wondering if I was going to end up with 3000 children from the festival also wanting a kite, thankfully word didn't get out! :-)
It was that small thing that I did for that little boy, it only cost me $1 but I know that I made a difference to that boys day!
It was a powerful day, with so many smiles on these children's faces over the simplist things. The volunteers that worked hard to get the event up and running did one amazing job!

And it will certainly be a day I will never forget!
Love Zoe

The boy with his kite!

Well what an amazing two weeks I have had!
I finally have had the opportunity to spend some of my time being a 'tourist' around the Philippines.
I spent my first weekend away with two friends in Malapascua Island where we spent diving, relaxing, swimming and sight seeing! Malapascua is a three hour bus ride north of Cebu and then a boat trip across. I did three dives here and have now completed ten dives! For the first time I dived with 7 white tip reef sharks, they were amazing! I enjoyed watching sun rise and taking many photographs! We had a beach side little hut where on the first night we were attacked by mosquittos! One morning, I was up at the crack of dawn to enjoy a walk around the island, I wondered through the village and watched pigs being slaughtered, which was pretty yucky but part of life here in the Philippines! They were being slaughtered for a celebration dinner for All Saints Day. A day where families come together to spend the night at the cemetry remembering love ones.
After spending three days in Malapascua we headed back to Cebu City to catch a ferry across to Bohol. We stayed in the city centre for the night before hiring a trike for three hours to go from the tasiers (little monkeys) to the Chocolate hills before finishing up at Danao. Three hours on the trike was extremely painful! At one stage we didn't think we were going to make it Danao, as the place we were heading to was off the beaten track and the driver had to keep asking people where the park was. We arrived with a couple of daylight hours left so we checked in and went on the suislide, similar to zipline but lying down. We were like superman crossing the valley! We spent the night at the adventure park and got up early to enjoy a caving and tubing. After we finished our small tour at the adventure park we caught a motorbike to the Danao to catch the bus back to city centre, much cheaper way than hiring a trike!
After Bohol it was off to Manila for me as I had to attend a teacher congress in Taygaytay, an hour trip out of Manila. Taygaytay has the smallest volcano in the world Mt Taal. The hotel we stayed in has stunning views of the volcano so atleast I got to see some views of the volcano. The congress was good, I was able to gain some information regarding working with visual impaired students. It was hard to get use to the fact that I had to share a double bed with a filipino teacher, I just meet! I found it really hard with the Filipino's shyness, as many times they would sit next to me during the conference and not say anything to me until the end to simply ask for my cell phone number, if I had Facebook and/or if they could have a photo of me!
After the congress it was off to Antipolo to welcome the next lot of volunteers - it was good to meet some like-minded people adventuring into their own personal journey but also to catch up with everyone else living in the Philippines and reflect on how far we've come!
After spending a week with the volunteers a group of us decided to trek to Mt Pinatubo, a volcano that last erupted in 1991 and the crater has formed a crystal blue/green lake. The next 24 hours was one crazy story! We decided that we would bus up to Capas, a small town near Angeles. Angeles is known for its sex bars and hotels, which we soon learnt also occurs in Capas! We arrived when it was dark and got dropped off in the main town. We had recieved a text from the trekking company to try the eco lodge so we organised with two trike drivers to take us to this eco lodge. The trike drivers were happy to take us there but they had no idea where they were going and had to stop to ask a couple of times! We finally found the place and one of the girls walked in to check out the place and the owner made a passing comment "Oh three girls and a guy!" We looked in the room and I had never seen anything like it (I wish I had my camera for this!), it had just a small double bed that looked extremly unclean and a toilet in the bathroom (nothing else). You could tell what this room was used for. We decided that no this wasn't going to be the place for us so the trike drivers continued up the road and we found a resort. Strange resort - had garage doors and again wasn't the best place but better than the first. After a small discussion and deciding that it was getting late, we needed to make a decision fast so we decided to stay there organised for the trikes to pick us up at 4.30am the next morning to take us up to the start of the trek to Mt Pinutubo. Two of us took a trike into town to get Maccas for dinner before heading back and crashing ready for our hike!
The trike picked us up the next morning, we arrived at 6am to sign for the trek to discover the place wasn't open (even when she said we had to be there at 6am!) We hadn't had breakfast and there wasn't much in town to eat! Finally the place opened, we organised food etc and got onto the 4wd to start the trek. We crossed over volcanic ash, rivers and lots of rocks to get to our starting point. We treked up for two hours, finally arriving at the lake, which was amazing! It was so pretty and so worth the trip up. We dipper our feet into the lake before trekking the two hours back to the 4wd drive. After refreashing and enjoying a filipino lunch we paid money to get into a 4wd to get to the main town to head back home to Manila. Arrived fairly late and pretty much slept!
I headed back home on the Sunday and am now facing reality, as I head back to work and re-focus on my assignment.
I hope everyone is doing well back home!
Love Zoe