Friday, July 8, 2011

The Zen will continue

Recently energy around the camp has picked up because all the volunteers were told our training sites which will influence our permanent sites. I am part of the group that will be heading north to the mountainous region of Benguet. My cluster which includes 3 other volunteers will be living and training hard in La Trinidad for the next two and a half months.

From what my sources have said, this is the cooler part of the Philippines where the famous rice and vegetable terraces are, as well as lots of streams, rivers, valleys and volcanoes. It is the strawberry capital and the thrift store capital of the world. I can forget all about Tagalog; I immediately started language training in Ilokano, which is the predominant language in the region, and the third most spoken in the Philippines.

While it may not be the beach, which is what some people were hoping for, the coast is only a couple of hours away and it sounds like there is plenty of interesting things to see. I’ll be counting down the days until I get to meet my host family and get introduced to the education system. Until then, I'll be busy continuing technical training here at the camp.


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