Weekend in the Philippines

Even here I love weekends – a chance to start out slow, do something different and to explore. Saturday I took a bus (35 pesos = about 80 cents) the 18 miles into Legaspi. I imagine the locals find this boring, it’s like 1 ½ hour trip, but for me it was great fun – with big open bus windows – we drove though lots of small barangay’s (towns) past rice fields and lava fields, with views of Mayon Volcano at a variety of angles and glimpses of the water and mountains in the distance. Legaspi is the nearest large town – it is where I flew into the airport on June 29, but this was a chance to spend a little time there. Legaspi has two distinct parts the old town with City Hall and the new town area with a mall, cinema, small businesses and markets. I spent the day with Dr Tess and she drove me around starting with a trip just to the outskirts of town to an area called Daraga where we had a lovely lunch in an old restored home filled with natural wood and artifacts. We then went to an area along the Albay Gulf called Embarcadero which is a revitalized port area with shops, a grocery store and zip lines across the gulf to seduce both locals and tourists to take that step off into thin air. Nice day and fun to see something new.

Sunday got up early to join a few PCV’s at the 3K & 5 K race – a fundraiser for Children’s International Hospital. Things started at 5:30 in the morning – which I thought was ridiculously early until one realizes how hot it gets in the morning as the sun comes up. It was great to walk though town and to have a chance to talk to some of the other locals along the route. Given I had such an early start a few hours later I went back to the center and took a 3 hour nap. I love Sunday’s – only thing missing was the Sunday newspaper. So now I’ve got the bug and hope to start taking more trips on the weekends to explore the surrounding areas of Albay.

Meanwhile back to the ‘work’ week – the good thing is stuff is picking up and I can see where my project fits in a little more and am beginning to be asked to do things – like social work staff asking me to develop a seminar on counseling and case management and help with developing forms for their case files. So patience pays off ….