It's Great to be Home!

This post starts out on September 18th at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.  It was a very smoggy morning as you can see, but I'm told that's the average morning in Manila.  Ali, Grace, and myself all traveled together with our supervisors to Bohol.  We made sure to eat at Cinnabon and get a burrito before leaving for our new home.

This is the part of Manila that you can see from the airport terminal.... that smog though...

This is in the airplane... notice the moisture coming from the air vents. It's so humid here than when the plane is on the ground the inside of the plane is humid.

Island

Undersea Life

The Tagbilaran Airport and the Cebu Pacific Air plane we were on. 

A tourism ad for one of the most popular attractions in Bohol, the Chocolate Hills.

So after less than a week here I got to go to a two day conference in the capitol with my counterpart, Alex; Ali and his counterpart, Ralph, were also there.  It was a cool conference because half of the people in the room were PNP (Philippine National Police) officers.  You usually don't see local law enforcement at environmentally angled conferences in the US, and that was encouraging to see.

First conference while at site!  This one was pretty cool, and an interesting gathering of people.

Meeting of CLEC (Coastal Law Enforcement Council) for area 2.  We're cool if you can't tell.

A banner for one of the sponsors of the summit, ECOFISH.  It's a program funded by USAID. 

Waiting on the bus... just an average scenery, right? 

Everyone really does love fried chicken...

This was my adventure for yesterday.  Alex and I went to the BFAR Fish Farm and picked up about 100,000 tilapia fingerlings.  It was less than 400 pesos (less than 10 USD) for the 100,000... I call that a good deal.

BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) Fish Farm

Fish

Colorful Fish

What we came for!  100,000 tilapia fingerlings! 

There they are, all bagged up and ready to go!

First you sit the bags in the water so the temperature in the bag will be closer to that of the lake.  That way, fewer will die from the shock of hitting the cooler lake water. 

This is one of the two lakes we put the tilapia into.  The lake is there to irrigate rice fields, and it wasn't till recently that they began stocking them with tilapia.  Now the water for rice is more nutrient rich, and results in a better rice yield.  The lake is now also a source of income from the tilapia that can be caught and sold.

The dam for the lake.