Beers, some tears, and thank you’s

There’s a lot of things you can do during a 20 hour plane ride. You can watch 13 hour and a half long movies…you can try to sleep but inevitably wake up with neck pains…or maybe you can stare out the window for 20 hours (unless you’re unlucky like me and get assigned the middle seat of the middle row).

I spent most of my trip listening to music and processing the past 2 months. First trying to figure out, did they even happen? Of course they did, but how could 2 months already be over when it feels like I just arrived in the Philippines yesterday?

My very first day I arrived in the Philippines, I vividly remember thinking to myself, “what the hell am I doing here?”

My very last night in the Philippines, I spent hours hanging out and drinking beer with the people I became closest with and crying as we said goodbyes.

Me & my very cute twins

Although the two months flew by, I learned so much. A lot about Filipino culture, a lot about myself, and a lot about what I want in the future.

If anyone is on the fence about traveling abroad, participating in the IWU Freeman Asia Internship Program, or leaving their comfort zone in the slightest way, I highly suggest doing it.

Some of the GK/MAD interns

Micah, Emily, Tito Jun, me, and Tita Jenny

I made some incredible memories this summer with people I would have never met had it not been for this program, so I’m extremely happy with my decision to intern abroad.

 

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Despedidas

It has been a week full of despedidas! Despedida means farewell. Over the past week, 5 interns have left and 2 members from the management team moved locations. It’s quite sad! Two months ago I didn’t know these people existed and now it’s hard to say goodbye to them. In less than two weeks, it will be Emily, Micah and I’s own despedida. It still shocks me how fast time is going by here.

Above is a photo from the market we shop at. On Monday night, some of the other interns and I had a “tortilla” night. Each one of us made a dish to pass. Emily made guacamole, another girl made salsa, someone else made the tortillas (from scratch!), and another person prepared the chicken and beans. It was really nice! I helped make mango float, which is a very delicious dessert. All you need is mangoes, graham crackers, condensed milk, and cream. It’s not healthy at all, but very tasty.

My current projects with MAD Travel are focused on informing people about activities they can do at the Enchanted Farm. It’s been fun working on this project because I’ve spent a lot of time getting to do the activities. Examples of some of the things you can do at the Enchanted Farm is visiting the social businesses, helping the farmers plant and harvest, having dinner with a tita, and meeting the SEED students.

This photo is from a couple weeks ago at the GK community in Silver Heights.

And this is a photo of me & my fellow interns after farming with Kuya Cedric 🙂

 

randomness

I’m switching up my posts a bit so my 2 followers don’t get bored…enjoy!

 

I’ve decided to make a fun list compiled of random likes & dislikes.

Something that makes me happy: Spending time with people. Having conversations, learning their interests, being able to bond with people from completely different parts of the world.

Something that frustrates me: Only being able to speak one language. Nearly everyone I’ve encountered on this trip can speak more than one language.

Something I miss: Driving. Relying on others to get place to place is a hassle.

Something that I regret: Being shy. It’s hard to be outgoing around people that sometimes don’t understand the language you are speaking.

Something that I’m looking forward to: Eating at Chili’s and Outback Steakhouse when I get back to the US.

Something I dislike: Traffic. For some reason, there is always traffic in the Philippines. A city can be 60 miles away but it will take you 3 hours to get there.

Favorite Filipino food: Tortang talong. It’s like an eggplant omelet. Grilled eggplant is soaked in an egg mixture and then fried. It’s masarap! (masarap = delicious)

Favorite Tagalog phrase: Gutom na ako. It means I’m hungry. I usually say this phrase after every meal because I’m always hungry.

Favorite pastimes: 1. Farming and 2. Watching English movies with French subtitles with my French roommates. 1 is funny because at home I hate when my mom asks me to pull weeds. Here, I enjoy it. Farming, gardening, being outdoors…it’s relaxing.

Favorite place I’ve traveled to: San Felipe, Zambales. The Tribes & Treks tour was amazing.

If you’ve made it this far then you get to enjoy this photo of Emily Asselmeier eating  balut! Which is an aborted duck egg 🙂 Don’t worry, the duck inside is only partially developed.

Always something to do…

 

 

Week 5!

Something I don’t think I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts is that there is a university at the Enchanted Farm. SEED, which stands for School for Experiential and Entrepreneurial Development, is the name of the university.

On Monday, the SEED students had to give presentations in English. I was asked to be apart of the judge panel to critique and give advice to the students. The teachers like having an English-speaking panel because it makes the students more nervous. Overall,, they did very well! Many of the students grew up speaking Tagalog and yet they can speak English very well.

There is always something to do on the farm. On Tuesday, I spent an hour helping stuff toys at Plush and Play. Plush and Play is a social enterprise at the farm. Mothers in the community create stuffed animals that they sell at certain stores throughout the Philippines. They had a deadline of stuffing 1,000 toys by Wednesday, so another intern and I wanted to help. Above is a photo of the keychains we stuffed 🙂

On Wednesday and Thursday morning, I farmed. We harvested cucumbers and worked with calamansi trees. Calamansi is a small fruit that looks like a lime. We cut the bark of the tree open and wrapped dirt around the branch; in two months, new roots should be sprouted and ready to be planted. The cucumbers we harvested were divided into two gardens: cucumbers grown organically, and cucumbers grown nonorganically. It will be interesting to compare the differences. I spent a few hours farming on Friday and Saturday as well.

Part of the work I am doing for my internship is promoting environmental concerns within the Philippines. The location I am focusing on are MAD Travel tour destinations. These destinations include places like Zambales, GK Enchanted Farm, and Silver Heights (Silver Heights is another Gawad Kalinga community). My first project was focused on Zambales.

In 1991, a volcanic eruption changed the lives of thousands of people in Zambales. To this day, those people are still recovering. MAD Travel is working to reforest 3,000 hectares of land in Zambales. So far, MAD and guests have been able to plant 26,000 trees, work with 10 families, and invest over 300,000 pesos. Around 3 million more trees need to be planted! Using information like this, I’ve been creating content to post on our social media outlets to get the word out. Many people in the Philippines know about the volcano in 1991, but some don’t realize that people are still affected daily because of it. My next project will focus on the GK Enchanted Farm.

 

Halfway

 

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been in the Philippines for one month! It’s even harder to believe that we only have one month remaining. Many of the interns I live with are here for six months, up to one year. Being a two-month intern is more unusual.

The other IWU interns and I have finally found ourselves a routine. We usually get our breakfast, do our internship work throughout the day, eat lunch at some point, and then eat dinner. We eat dinner either with families in the community or in Angat, the nearby town. I enjoy eating with the families. They all make delicious, authentic food. Spending time and getting to know the people here is very cool. When we eat with the families, it also provides extra income for them :).

Everyday, there are opportunities to farm. Students farm from 6-8am and 4-6pm. I’ve farmed during both time slots and think I prefer 4 pm.

This past weekend was very fun! Eight other interns and I spent the weekend in Baler, Aurora, a province on the east coast. It was about a six hour ride to get to Baler. We spent Saturday relaxing on the beach and cooking out. We made all of our meals on the grill. We cooked eggplant, tilapia, pork, squid, and peppers. We of course ate rice and mangos as well. We bought all the meat and fish from a fresh market nearby.

Sunday was our surfing day. Baler is a big surfing town. I had never surfed before. It was really neat–we each had our own instructor that told us what to do. The instructors did all the hard work, all I had to do was stand up when he told me to. It was easier than I thought it would be! But again, all I had to do was listen to my instructor. I definitely would recommend surfing! At first, it was a bit scary (I probably swallowed a gallon of salt water), but once I got the hang of it, it was really fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off The Beaten Path

 

 

Week three is in the books. Another eventful week; we spent most of our time in the farm. I finally met my tita this week! Our “tita” or aunt, is a mother from the community that acts like a mother to us while we’re away from home. We can visit our tita whenever we’d like; we also eat with them occasionally and they’ll do our laundry. My tita speaks little English and I speak little Tagalog, so we will be teaching each other!

When I wasn’t spending time in the community or visiting my tita, I was doing research for MAD. It can be a bit difficult doing research while at the farm because there isn’t Wi-Fi. This weeks focus again was looking for potential partners and preparing content to write posts for our social media outlets.

This past weekend was really exciting. We went on one of the MAD Travel tours that we’ve been promoting. The trip is called Tribes & Treks. The tour begins by trekking for two hours across volcanic ash. In 1991, a volcanic eruption destroyed most of the mountains and land that many people lived on. Once we complete the trek, we were ready t o plant trees! The damage done by the volcanic eruption still effects the Aetas Tribe today. Their mountains are lacking around 3 million trees; when MAD brings tour groups to Zambales, they spent an hour or two planting trees to help reforest the land. Our group was able to plant 347 seeds!

After our planting, we headed to the Yangil Village where the mothers prepared us a very delicious lunch. After lunch, it was time to learn native archery. Believe it or not, the Aetas still use archery today! When we were finished with that, the children taught us native dances. It was all around a great day! Sadly, it quickly came to an end — we finished the wonderful trip by swimming in the ocean and watching the sun set over the water.

Settling In

 

 

Another week has flown by here in the Philippines. This week was quite different from last. Last week, a majority of our time was spent at the GK Enchanted Farm. This week, we ventured to Manila for 6 days. While in Manila, we visited one of our MAD Travel offices and proceeded to work in the city.

My job title is international marketing intern. In short, what that entails is promoting our organization, looking for similar organizations to partner with, and creating content. Most of this past week was spent promoting MAD Travel and MAD’s trips. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, MAD Travel is a social tourism organization that aims at creating meaningful and purposeful travel. Planting trees, meeting families in the community, and making peanut butter from scratch are a few examples of the authentic experiences we incorporate in our trips. Travel has the power to change people’s perspectives and that’s why immersive experiences can be so fulfilling.

In unrelated news, being in the city meant having access to many different food options. It’s interesting to see chain restaurants like McDonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut in another country. These chain restaurants can be misleading though…in addition to their regular menu items, both McDonald’s and KFC serve spaghetti and rice. We’ve been eating mostly authentic foods, but I am curious to see if McDonald’s spaghetti is any good.

The first photo above taken from our hostel’s rooftop. Staying in a hostel was fun, it’s pretty similar to living in a college dorm—you get assigned a bunk and you have strangers as roommates. Our first night staying at the hostel I had 5 male roommates. Luckily, by the last night there was another girl in my room.

The second and third photos are of our MAD Travel booth and the event we attended! Monday-Thursday we had our booth set up at the hostel we were staying at. We informed guests of our organization and our travel opportunities. Then on Friday, we attended a large event called the Techtonic Summit. The event had many startups, like us, many corporations, as well as investors. It was a great networking opportunity.

Not totally sure what is in store for this upcoming week, but I’m sure it will be exciting as usual.

Adventure Awaits

 

Hello all! Nicole here–it has been an eventful past week of travel and today officially marks one full week of being in the Philippines! It’s been an exhilarating and exhausting experience so far.

Our trip began in Chicago. Fast forward through a 14 hour flight, a layover in South Korea, and another 4 hour flight, and we finally arrived in Manila. Once we arrived at our residence hall, we spent the remainder of the evening getting some much needed rest.

We spent the next day having an orientation. At this orientation we learned about the Filipino culture and a little bit of the language they speak–Tagalog. Tagalog has a few words that are similar to Spanish, but most are completely different. Luckily for us, many Filipinos also speak English.

Once we completed our orientation, we had one final night at our residence hall before we would all separate and head to our specified locations! It was both exciting and nerve-racking.

The organization I am interning for is Make a Difference Travel (MAD Travel). MAD is a social enterprise that works with less fortunate communities within the Philippines to create authentic and meaningful travel experiences through sustainable social tourism—tourism that does more good than bad. Instead of your typical tourist travel experience, MAD wants its travelers to create connections and meaningful experiences with others. One of MAD’s slogans is “Adventure That Matters”.

The two other Wesleyan students and I are living in dorms at a farm. This farm is located in a rural area, about three hours from the city Manila. The name of the farm is Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm. Gawad Kalinga (which means “to give care” in Tagalog) is a community building organization that’s goal is to end poverty for 5 million families by 2024. They help build homes and offer entrepreneur opportunities in less fortunate communities. Often these communities have nothing and Gawad Kalinga is able to provide shelter for them and help them to create jobs for themselves. GK has many locations throughout the Philippines and we are located at the Bulacan location.

A very popular type of transportation here in the Philippines is by tricycle. A tricycle is just a motorbike with a little cart attached to it. A tricycle can comfortably fit about 3 people, but we somehow fit 6 people! It wasn’t the most comfortable ride, but we made it work.

The photos attached above are from a few of the adventures we’ve had so far. The first is a restaurant all of the interns ate at while we were still together in Los Baños. The restaurant was very cool, the tables float on the water. The second photo is of children playing on a playground at a Gawad Kalinga community. The final photo is of Treasure Mountain, a mountain we hiked in Tanay, Rizal.

As our first week concludes, I am starting to feel much more comfortable here. I look forward to the coming weeks!