In the Philippines!

I’m in the Philippines!!!!!!!!!!  So much has happened in a short time.  I feel like I’ve been here for weeks already and it’s only been a couple of days!

Here a scratch of the surface, some info:

I came over with 72 other volunteers, which being about the size of my high school class; it was a bit overwhelming for me at first.  But there are so many people with interesting backgrounds and everyone’s so friendly, I feel like I can go up and talk to anyone (which I do all the time).  It’s pretty noncliquish which I love because I’m so bad with cliques.

Here we are after we got off the plane in Manila on the US Embassy Website:
http://kelly2thephilippines.blogspot.com/2013/07/2-monthes-in-townsite-limay-bataan.html

Jetlag is subsiding for the most part and I’ve surprisingly turned into a morning person (crazy I know!).  Don’t know how long that will last for, but I now understand morning person behavior and it’s amazing! I’ve been missing out

It’s rrrrrreeeeeaaaallllyyyy hot here and I guess it’s the rainy season, but no rain so far just thunder and lightning is seen every day.  But the surroundings are beautiful, bright colors and pineapple fields.

I’ve had little free time so far.  My day is filled with sessions of training where I learn policies and things about the Filipino culture and soon the language.  Yesterday I saw the biggest toad I have ever seen in my life.  Ants and flies regularly crawl on me, which makes me understand why animals have tails.

The city I’m in now is near Manila.  We’re at like a campground like facility called the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction or 11RR.  We’ll stay here for a total of two weeks and then I move to my training site where I will be for about two months, which I recently found out will be in Limay, Bataan!!!!!!!!!!!  I go there with four other people, but we all live with separate host families.  Meeting my host family will be so exciting and I think everyone was all very excited to find out where there training site was.  Right now we haven’t seen much of the community; we’re kind of secluded which I think is because they want to gradually introduce us into the culture and our surroundings.

My time difference from back home is 11 hours behind me here so I’m still trying to figure out when good times are to contact home.  I miss home already!!!!!!!  But I just get a great feeling about my future work here that hopefully will continue!!

Side note:

Sad story – I broke my phone I received here on the first day.... Yes I am that person out of the 72!  Supposedly our phones issued were indestructibly, but I would be that person that left my water bottle open in my bag, drowned it, and now it no longer turns on.  It’ll be okay though, I can purchase a new one soon!  Then as soon as I get a phone card I can start calling home!!!!!!!!!!! Woot woot!!!