A Visit from the Ambassador and Lots of Pretty Flower Pictures

It's been a while blog viewing world! I haven't posted in over 3 months... sorry..., but I'm back with a post of things I did in February!  So check out the story in pictures below!

Toward the beginning of February Bohol got a visit from U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg.  As the Peace Corps Volunteers on the island, we were invited to the nice reception for him at the Bohol Tropics Hotel.  He was here to witness the signing of a new initiative and to look at the ongoing recovery from last year's earthquake.

ECOFish is a joint program between USAID and the Department of Agriculture.  It works quite a bit with organizations and local governments to help protect the Danajon Bank.

And there's the bank!

ECOFish people are cool.  Who just want's to see a triboard?  No one does.  They built a boat display for the ambassador's visit.

Another display at this event was a local chocolate maker.  Miss Dalareich does make some really, really good chocolates, and here is a box of her tableya.  

This is the day after the welcome party.  One of the ambassador's activities was a snorkeling trip with the ECOFish group.  In this picture Ali and Grace are talking to one of the guys from USAID about something... This is why blog posts should be more timely... then I could explain what was so important.

This is the group that was on the boat.  The picture contains the ECOFish admins, two fisherman from Ubay, a couple of people from USAID, a Philippine National Police Maritime officer, a Philippine Coast Guard member, the three Peace Corps Volunteers on the island, and the Ambassador Goldberg (the guy between me and Ali). 

February was a very busy month.  I spent the last two weeks of the month at In Service Training in Cavite.  Here are some pictures from IST.

On our free day we went to the University of the Philippines at Los Baños.  One thing there is a natural history museum.  It had some cool and slightly creepy things inside.

This is a shell catalog.  It was really neat and impressive.  as you can see, there are lots of shells in the Philippines!

This is a monkey... there were human fetuses too, but I'll spare you all that.

Creepiest thing there.  I think it's a civet, but the decomposing face makes it quite creepy.

The school also has a large botanical garden.  The pretty picture below are from there.

                       

Selfiestick... 

I really don't know how I ended up here...but it was kinda cool.

For Diana! 

What a way to end the trip than with buko pie!  Buko pie is made from young coconut (which is called buko).

This was at the end of the first week which is called Language Camp.  We were all had classes in the languages we speak now, and had to take another language interview to prove our efficiency in the language.

The next week was a Project Design and Management workshop.  All of our Filipino counterparts traveled to Cavite, and we spent a few days working on creating a mock project and presenting it to a small group.