Adventure Time with Keri!

Day 9-10

We finally got to sleep in!! Which meant that many of us read at our own leisure and lazed around. Book worms…what nerds. At some point a few of us got a massage in house, yes, house service! The lady left after first one b/c I don’t think she knew there were more of us that wanted one, so we had to call her to come back. We’re spoiled brats, haha. Since we had our own kitchen, that meant that we could cook! Thankfully the majority of us know how to cook. =) Worked on research design the rest of the night in my room since it was laid out differently than everyone else’s. 

 

Next morning Katie, Helen, Maggie, and I woke up super early to go on a boat ride. We got on a very small fishing boat with the Fishery Law Enforcement Team. We went to the middle of the ocean to see something…I’m not actually sure what we were looking at…then we went to go see the mangroves. Half-way there our boat engine gave out at sandbar (conveniently? lol). So we were stranded and had to call someone to rescue us. We were sweltering in the intense heat b/c the boat had no cover. The water looked too inviting so of course I had to jump in – fully clothed. It was probably the best decision I had made in a long time. Lol. To be fair, I was in board shorts and tank top already. After Katie looked longingly at me in the water she goes, “Will I regret it if I don’t jump in?” So Helen said, “ How hot are you?”  Katie: “Pretty hot.”  Helen: “Well, there’s your answer.”
So Katie jumped in fully clothed…t-shirt and jeans. No regrets. We carpe’d the crap out of that diem. Hahaha.
We got to swim around and hang off the boat for a very long time until the other boat came to pick us up. It was hilarious trying to get back in the boat since there was no ladder. The other boat towed our boat to nearby village on coast and we still got to see mangroves!
While we waited at the captain’s house they brought us fresh young coconuts to enjoy! We ate so many….haha.
We drove back in barangay’s SUV (barangay = village). It was a super bumpy ride…and I had to pee really bad, plus I was sleep, and still wet from jumping into the ocean – not a good combination. That definitely made for a very interesting ride!
This all happened before noon, even though it felt a lot longer for some reason. 

That afternoon we had a group meeting where we went to meet other two translators at some community place – AKA, where all the youth like to hang out. This was another meeting to go over things with everyone…Weanne finally arrived too!
After dinner we had one last meeting to finalize things before we put everything into motion the next day. We were trying to print all our guides out on the tiny printer Helen brought over with her….but the printer wouldn’t work. After trying fruitlessly for an hour, we finally went to sleep. Sigh. The struggle. 

Day 5-6

We woke up super early to go to Department of Health (DOH) in Manila, an hr away. Decided to stop by Jollibee for breakfast since we were early. So those of you who aren’t acquainted with Jollibee – It’s one of the most popular – or should I say most prevalent – fast food restaurant in the PI…and if I’m not mistaken, it’s a PI owned chain. I’ve never actually eaten there before despite walking past a handful of them last trip and this. But I was hungry….so I got food….it was ok for fast food, but that’s about the extent of it. Haha. 

After walking all over creation (again, being led astray by our instructors) around the DOH complex, we sat through an EXTREMELY long lecture. There were 66 slides – I’m not kidding you. We almost died. Thankfully there was a cooking show on TV in the next room and I could see them from where I was sitting. That was the only thing that kept me sane.  #shotswerefired at last part of presentation. Lol, you should ask Monique about that…hahahaha. Tears literally came out of her eyes when she realized the presentation was still going on. Lololol.It was a very detailed presentation, that had a lot of good information....but my attention span couldn't handle it. Sigh.

We proceeded  to Save the Children Philippines headquarters and sat in on more presentations. Unlike the previous lecture, these were really interesting. I really love what they’re doing. Afterward we took a short ride to a sketchier area of town and learned about the BALUTI project which is an organization that educates youth on reproductive health, STIs, and empowers youth to be leaders (http://www.unicef.org/philippines/reallives_15284.html). Really cool what they’re doing. One of the founders who used to be a druggie presented and you could tell he was really passionate about it. It’s all led and run by volunteers and there is one doctor that serves 78,000 people! Crazy stuff.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to work more on the project, especially the research design and methodology framework with AIIAS students, Maggie, and Helen. Thankfully we were productive and got a lot done. After finalizing our info we worked on our presentation to stakeholders. We thought our presentation went fairly well but got questioned a lot by stakeholders. There might have been communication barrier, plus we may have not articulated our method well. Other group stole our picture idea (#shotsfired). After the presentation we got reprimanded by Helen, mainly because we didn’t clearly state our methodology that we had worked on all morning. Right after that we worked nonstop on our Key Informant Interview (KII), Focus Group Discussion (FGD), and Case Study guides for the rest of the night. The other group left for Manila for their really early flight to Roxas while we slaved away through the night.

Day 7-8

We traversed in the early morning to the province of Quezon, which is where we were conducting our research. It took us about 3 hours to get to the capital (at least I think it was the capital of the province), Lucena. There, we checked into the Queen Margarette Hotel  (where we stayed one night) and then we scarfed down some lunch at Pizza Hut (freaking Monique and her trifling ways…lol, I love you, Monique) and then we were off to the Provincial office to conduct a few Key Informant Interviews (KII). But first, we needed to make a courtesy call to the Governor of Quezon. We met Gov. David “Jay-Jay” Suarez who turned out to be quite charming. We had a very enlightening conversation with him about who we were, our research project, other things pertaining to public health. He made us drink some of this ginger-turmeric tea that is supposedly good for you (probably is), and then even arranged dinner for us at this really cool place. 

 

We were then supposed to interview six different people from different offices in the area for our project…but we ended up only interviewing one officer, as he was head of the agriculture and nutrition office. This was our first assessment of the trip and we were all a bit nervous, but excited. Monique and I facilitated the interview while Katie, Mayra, and Bhakti took notes. As I said earlier, we were trying to link climate change and how it affected food security and nutrition in the area. The night before, we had decided to take a different approach to the questions per the suggestion of our project coordinator, Maggie. Unfortunately, by doing so, it kind of threw a wrench into our hypothesis. Although he did think that climate change was linked with food security and nutrition, he focused more on the fact that there is a shift to westernization and lack of education in dealing with the changes in nutrition. Even though we were a little disappointed by our initial findings with him, Helen commended us on a job well done despite the fact and told us this was still good information. After debriefing and figuring out what we needed to change and what else we needed to do we headed out for dinner at the place the governor had reserved for us. 

We ended up in this very idyllic area where the tables were little open huts on a raft-looking thing on water. Food was ordered and a feast was had. I just have to say that the tuna was AMAZING and a half. We had fun stuffing our faces while being serenaded by a roving band and keeping the cat away from Monique. If you hadn’t caught on, Monique is NOT very fond of animals of any sort. The cat had actually caught a fish from the pond…it was kind of neat, actually. Lol. 

Katie knows how I feel about live music. Haha.

SO much good food!

The gang

The next morning, after breakfast, we conducted two more KIIs with key people, which turned out a lot better once we changed the formatting of our guide. After that, we went over to another town, Sariaya, where we met the head of the tourism department who took us on a mini tour of the town. Passed by some really cool looking historical buildings and then drove to the coastal area to a resort which also had a facility that trains Navy militants and other people how to work on ships of all types. It was pretty cool despite the fact that it was BLAZING hot outside. We got a full tour of the area and took lots of pictures, as you can see below.

Spanish influence

Team Awesome!!

The "Ship"

They had a pool to practice abandoning ship in a life raft or submarine

We all live in an orange submarine....

We had to wear hardhats

Up high in the sky

The captains view

Land ahoy!

Katie taking a selfie!

Monique found the AC...haha, JK.

With the birthday girl!!!

We headed back to the mall to get a quick lunch and buy some supplies for the house we were going to stay at. Two hours and four bags of groceries later, we headed out for the last leg of our journey to the municipal where we would be collecting the rest of our data. After some crazy (but safe) driving (thanks to our awesome driver, Francis) and lots of traffic, we finally made it to our destination. The girls were holding their breaths because we had been told we would be staying in the middle of nowhere – pretty much in the boonies. We were pleasantly surprised when they opened the door and we found a very pretty and modern inside. Some of it is still under construction, but for the most part, it is 100x better than what we were prepared for, thanks to Helen and Maggie. Goes to show you, you can’t always judge a book by its cover, especially when someone makes you lower your expectations to the ground. 

Someone spelled my name right on their first try.

Mayra's bday cake....hahaha.

After unloading everything we explored the house and got things squared away with the house owner. While sitting in the kitchen and talking, Helen demanded that we go put our stuff away into our respective rooms…mainly because she wanted to put candles into the cake for Mayra, since today was her 25^th birthday! Haha. That was some yummy chocolate sponge cake, lemme tell ya.