#batch 274

[peacelovephilippines]

Some pictures from the last two weeks! 

[jedibinkstravel]

First Days (better late than never)

Friday, July 3 My first day of being an official Peace Corps Trainee (PCT), I said goodbye to my family in LA and began staging at noon. Saying goodbye was difficult but I know this is the right decision for me and I am so thankful for how supportive my family is. While I was in line for registering, I meet another girl named Charli and two MI students from the University of Michigan. What are the chances? And just to make things confusing, Charli and I have the same initials and we are in the same sector (CYF). After registering, a group of us went up to the hotel restaurant to wait for staging to begin and to start getting to know each other. At 1pm it was time to start staging. During staging, we discussed logistics, went over Peace Corps (PC) expectations, and questions. I also found out the total number of people in my batch (Batch 274): 88. We are divided up among three sectors: Children, Youth, and Family (CYF), Coastal Resource Management (CRM), and Education. CYF has the most people with 31 trainees. After finishing staging, we went to our rooms and then headed down to another one of the hotel's restaurants. PC gave us money for food, tips, and travel expenses on a debit card which we then had to withdraw from. The hotel only had two ATMs and we emptied out one of them. After dinner, everyone headed to bed to get up early the next morning for our flight.

Saturday July 4 – Sunday July 5 I can't think of a better way to spend my Fourth of July than beginning my journey serving my country. The day started early when we all had to meet in the hotel lobby by 6am so we could ride a bus to the airport (a five minute drive). We took up two buses and had a ton of luggage (some had to be put on the bus with us since there was no room in the storage area). We got dropped off at the airport and thus began the long game of waiting to check in and go through security. Since we had special plane tickets and there were so many of us, we had to go through a separate desk to check our luggage. Unfortunately, there were only two desk people helping us, so the line took a couple of hours. Thankfully I was in the middle of the line, so I didn't have to wait the entire time. Going through security was fairly quick and painless. Once we made it past security, it was time to get our last American meals. Most places by our gate were sit-down restaurants, but we didn't have that much time before our flight. I found a market with different offerings and decided to get some chilequiles verde and watermelon agua fresca. It was delicious and I am really going to miss all of the food at home. We started boarding the plane around 11am since we were scheduled to take off at 12pm. My seat ended up being an aisle seat in the third row from the back. It was quite amusing to see everyone playing Tetris with the carry-on luggage. My seat-mate, Jimmy, opened one of the overhead compartments and a bag of pads fell onto a man sitting nearby (we then told Jimmy that at least they weren't used pads). As we were taxi-ing onto the runway, we watched the most confusing and hilarious safety video I have ever seen for a flight. It used internet memes and at first we all thought we were going crazy but then we realized it was supposed to be like that. We finally took off and began our 11 hour flight to Tokyo. Shortly after taking off, the flight attendants began drink service. By talking with other trainees, we discovered that we could get complimentary drinks, including some alcohol. We also discovered the schedules of our meals, snacks, and beverages. All of them sounded delicious. Our group either watched movies, played games, or listened to music on our individual monitors while others tried to sleep during the flight with occasional breaks to stretch. I ended up watching Whiplash, Boyhood, and Interstellar since I could not fall asleep. My whole body was confused by the time and I felt like it was afternoon the entire time even though all of the windows were closed and the lights were turned off during our normal “evening”. We landed in Tokyo at the Narita Airport ahead of schedule, so we had about an extra hour for our layover. I was so excited to not only be in a different country for the first time but to be in Japan! I have wanted to visit Japan ever since I can remember and I was finally there, even if it was only the airport. We had to go through security again and it too was fairly quick. It is interesting to see the differences between the US security and Japanese security. Everything went into baskets, even backpacks, and we didn't have to remove our shoes. After security, a group of us got a little lost trying to find our gate, but we eventually found it and slowly everyone started to find their own space (mostly near outlets to charge electronics or a spot to nap). I went to get some food and had my first real udon with shrimp tempura. I only had the US dollars from PC but was able to use it and get some change back in yen (that I will now keep forever). The udon was delicious. After eating, I discovered that our terminal had a Kabuki museum and origami museum. I found a small group of people to go with and ended up at the origami museum. Everything was beautiful and so intricate. They had a wide variety of origami and different scenes. Unfortunately, I could not find the Kabuki museum and had to go back so I could change into business casual attire for when we got to Manila. We boarded our plane around 6pm (Japan time) so we could take off at 7pm. My seat was towards the back again. We sat in the plane for about an hour and a half before we took off due to some technical issues that had to be resolved. It was hot on the plane and people tried to sleep. We took off sometime around 8pm. This flight was only four hours. We received meals and drinks again. Everything was delicious. I tried to take a nap and was able to get around an hour of sleep. Towards the end of the flight, we received more paperwork for immigration and health clearance. We landed in Manila around 11pm. Once we got off the plane, PC staff were waiting for us with signs and leis, ushering us to the side so the other passengers could go to baggage claim ahead of us. The leis were beautiful yellow tuber roses that smelled wonderful. We then made our way to hand off our health paperwork and go through immigration so we could grab our bags. Airport staff were handing out individually wrapped Mentos to our group as we claimed our bags. Once we got our bags, we put them in a section for hired staff to put into trucks to take to our site. We then got together to take a group picture with all of the trainees and staff. After the picture, we were ushered onto one of two buses and were given apples and water bottles. We left the airport around midnight (Manila time) and started our drive to Cavite (about an hour south). I tried again to sleep on the bus, but was only able to rest my eyes. Around 1am, we arrived to our home for the next two weeks: IIRR (or as we refereed to it, 11RR). As we got off the bus, we were greeted by music and PC staff (both American and Filipino) cheering for us. They directed us the main hall for cookies, crackers, water, coffee, and tea. We sat down in seats as our Program Manager (PM) Boni and Country Directer (CD) Jean briefly welcomed us. Around 1:30am, we left to receive our room keys, get our bags, and go to our rooms. The IIRR staff were very helpful with some taking our bags to our rooms and others either holding or handing our umbrellas to us since it was raining. My roommate, Kelly, and I were to stay in the GAA hostel. Our room was simple with two twin beds, two closets, one desk and chair, and a bathroom. We quickly got ready for bed so we could get up to begin our first day of PCIT.