End of IO

I thought I would be typing this blog post from my PST (Pre-Service Training) site, but our friend Glenda (the Filipino name for typhoon Rammasun) thought otherwise.  The category 3 typhoon had downgraded to a category 2 by the time it made it to Cavite, but it was still a strong and destructive force to be reckon with.  We received texts and emails from Peace Corps about twice a day leading up to the typhoon.  I woke up about 4 a.m. as the typhoon wind was howling though our room, yet it was really peaceful.  It took me a few minutes to realize that the peacefulness was because the power (and subsequently the fan) was out.  The eye of the storm was at about 6:30 so we all ventured out to the canteen to eat.  During breakfast Boni, the training manager, informed us that we would all stay together in the main hall to ride out the rest of the storm.

After the storm was over at about 10 a.m. we all got out to assist the IIRR staff in the cleanup.  All in all it was a really impressive effort to clean the roads and removed the trees from the power lines inside the IIRR area.  I am always amazed at what can be accomplished by a machete in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.  The lines were up and functioning by 8 p.m. at IIRR.  Now about a week later we are still running on generator power, but I think water has been restored.  We were on our local water tank for a couple of days, and bucket baths for the past few days.  The typhoon also gave some serious problems to our PST sites in Bataan.  They too were without water and electricity so we stayed at IIRR three extra days as to not be a burden to our host communities. 

The last week has largely been language classes and technical classes.  In language class we have learned quite a bit.  I can now introduce myself in Tagalog (name, age, job, place of origin, place of residence); we have learned quite a bit about the basics of coastal environments as well.  Much of that is new to me.  Many of our lectures have been from current PCVs.  They are called Resource Volunteers in this role; our first two PCVs gave us lots of information on the community development side of our job, and the current two have been much more technical.  They also showed us the video below at the end of class today.

On another fun note, the day before the typhoon all the CRM (coastal resource management) trainees got to go snorkeling.  It was my first time snorkeling in open water so it was really, really neat.  I now understand why people say that you should bring an underwater camera with you.  The corals and fish were all sorts of bright colors; we also got to go look around in the mangroves.  Over the next few months we will be trained to do coral reef, sea grass, and mangrove assessments.  Another fun experience this week was playing some Filipino parlor games.  They were just as awkward as you would imagine.  My favorite was one where you had an eggplant tied around your waist on a string that allowed it to dangle to your ankles.  There is a hardboiled egg on the ground, and your objective is to get that egg from one end of the room to your partner on the other side.  Then your partner has to return the egg to the starting position in the same manner.  Some were even more awkward, but you just had to be here to understand. 

Finally, the big news of the week was us learning where we would be going for PST.  We all knew what province and municipality we would be in, but no one knew exactly where they would be placed.  All volunteers are in Bataan (as I am sure you have all heard of for some quite negative reasons), and specifically I will be in Barangay Poblacion, Morong, Bataan.  A barangay is the smallest governmental unit in the Philippines and a municipality is made up of multiple barangays.  Bataan is the province that Morong is in.  If you are looking at a map then look to the south, south west of Manila.