Debrief

I came not really prepared. Uncertain of my emotions and reflection was so bleak. I don't consider it as mostly good experience cause most of it often entailed realization and understanding on other people. Which means easing the negative perception I have with them. I am neither happy nor sad, maybe because I still haven't completely analyzed my own experience.

But as for my co-volunteers, I know that I will miss them after this. They gave me a lot of things to think about and helped strengthen my knowledge about myself. There will be a time that I can use this experience effectively, hopefully. :D

Team Sharing

(Late Post- Volunteering Experience)

Monday was team meeting day. Sometimes I hate the sharing part for normally I would prefer not to speak and just listen to what everyone's gonna say. But didn't I say I want to gain confidence to speak in my personal goal? Which means pushing my self more to appreciate team sharing.

I've never been good at opening up to people I've never been for a very long time (I mean for years) so  I tend to keep the grudge and problems to myself. But the best thing about this programme is being able to identify your own weaknesses and being able to face it. So let all the fears set aside and voice out everything worth saying. And I did it. Getting a long with British people is getting better than I thought. :D

Jokes

I've never been good at jokes. So, don't bother joking at me cause I might take it seriously. But jokes that goes way out of the line is not nice and funny at all. Where could I get people who have the same thinking as me? Oh God!! Where are those people, I just miss people who can relate to what I'm saying.

I still love to be on my own. Really...

DjANGO Unchained

I have never seen movies pertaining to black slaves before but this movie gave me an overview of how brutal they were treated in history. I have known few stories about slavery but haven't really paid much attention in all of them. Maybe because when I hear and know something, I tend to forget it eventually. I can’t imagine that selling people is a means of being rich. That people can hold your own freedom and all the things you want can't all be yours. People's greediness and inhumane doing are the main reason of uprising and rebel. The reason why people search for equality and freedom. And that equality and freedom is what we have now.

So if you ask yourself why we pay tribute to heroes and some people in history, always remember that without them we won't be having anything that we have now -may it material, spiritual and emotional satisfaction.

 Having seen this movie also  made me realize some point in history that we need to always remember- never discriminate. 

SPW: With the Carood Girls

I wasn't able to do a story about this due to the fact that I don't feel like writing. But I regret that I didn’t write about it right after it was done because the feeling of happiness and accomplishment would have been overflowing so I could've written a story better than this. Well, since it's been weeks now I think I'll just try to remember the things that happened and what we felt about it.

Strategic planning workshop is one of our deliverables. The plan was actually from our VPS which is part of her action project after having visited Nepal for a month as an observer. She was tasked to apply those things that she have learned and so she come up with the strategic planning workshop. She vaguely mentioned to us the purpose of the workshop but I believe that it is for strengthening the Union of Carood Youth Organization (UCYO). The key outputs of the workshop are a crafted Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives (VMGO); Constitutional by Laws; and Action Plan. I'm not gonna mention the process how we come up with those outputs since it can be quite technical. Anyway, it was quite a blow to us having a really bad weather, few participants than expected, and a facilitator who wasn't able to come due to miscommunication. Those were the unexpected things actually but we still went on hoping for it to be successful.

I thought that it could be a very messed up workshop considering the problems that we had. Yet it turned out that our participants were able to appreciate our efforts during the evaluation. I've also known few people in my place which I'm not familiar with. See how anti-social I am that even  people living meters away from our house are unknown to me. Maybe this is an implication of my lack of effort to be an active youth in our place I should've participated in lots of youth activities and organization. The workshop just made me realize that it is a lot of fun being with the people my age.

In the end, we went home really satisfied. I just hope that we should have done activities like this more than once. Well, there could be a next time for them of course but it will be with the another set of volunteers. 

A day with the VPS

I'm a very thrifty person so highclass and expensive restaurants are not my type unless someone who is generous enough will take me to eat in those kind of places.

When we were in Tagbilaran to buy stuff for the strategic planning, me and our VPS stopped by a restaurant in ICM mall to eat. I was really hesitant at first and kept on saying I wouldn't eat on my own in this kind of place. But she paid my lunch which was so much relieving.

We went to this Bee Farm Restaurant were all foods are served with honey in it. They use honey as an ingredient to everything. They also have this cookies with honey (which I wasn't able to try unfortunately). I had the chicken-honey glazed which was really delicious (wasn't able to take a picure of it :( ). And for dessert I ordered "Halo-halo" in durian ice cream flavor. That was a really large bowl of Halo-halo that eating it all was really hard for me so I ended up with left-overs. There were a lot of ice cream flavors you can choose from but the unique ones for me were durian and ginger. Probably, I'll try the ginger flavor when I get back.

This was a free food courtesy of the restaurant.. the cream on the side was really good.. :D

Well then, eating in expensive restaurants is nice sometimes. I might consider eating to some places I've never been. :D

GCD on Eskaya

We did a Global Citizenship Day for the Eskaya Tribe last week. This was organized by Pilar volunteers fitting it to the celebration of World Indigenous Day for the month of August.

We head off to Pilar early in the morning and had a bumpy dump truck ride to Lundag where the Eskaya tribe resides. They were not an uncivilized tribe wearing their cultural dresses which you might first think they are but a tribe already influenced by modernization and acquire the same privileges from our government.

The GCD gave us a chance to know their culture, history and language. And at the same time for them to know the UK culture. There was a long exchange of thoughts regarding the practice of divorce in the UK, the process of courtship in the Eskaya tribe and religious beliefs. The exchange of cultural information has lead them to understand each others differences.

I'm glad enough to be given a chance to be the translator. It wasn't really an easy task but I hope I delivered the message in the same context to people and to my co-volunteers. 

Coastal Clean-up (CAD)

We had a packed schedule last weekend, aside from doing the GCD on Eskaya Tribe we also had a Coastal Clean-up in Guindulman as one of our Community Action Day (CAD). 

We organized a talk about environment and Solid Waste Management to the local people. While adults were listening to the speaker, some of us also facilitated fun and games involving small kids. I enjoyed being with the kids and playing with them. Bet they enjoyed the whole activity too. :D