Well, I don't have many interesting things to say today since it's only been two days since my last blog entry, but since I have access to reasonably fast internet this morning I figured I would say hello anyway!
Friday night about 12 of us went out to a videoke bar, where we were encouraged to pour our own drinks. The only mix available was iced tea, and there were only a couple of kinds of liquor behind the counter, but after paying 80 pesos per drink ($2) I was able to pour a literal glass of rum with a splash of iced tea and spend almost nothing the whole night! Karaoke is slightly more fun when drinking and when all the terrible singing is coming from your friends...we then headed off to La Fideral, a club downtown, where we proceeded to dance HARD until 2am without a rest. The music was awesome and we made many friends there, it felt so good to dance because it's been so long for me! My knees were actually sore all of yesterday because I was dancing so hard!
Saturday morning, Ethel and I finished working on our 45-slide powerpoint presentation about women's health and hygiene. It was fun to put together because the social worker at the shelter told us that they learn most of these topics in school, but they would love to learn more and to go over everything again. This allowed us to include topics on contraception and family planning, HIV and safe sex (including safe anal sex, primarily mentioned for the transgender women who sleep with men...wow, wasn't expecting to be able to mention something like that in a country of 80% Catholics!), so I feel really happy about the presentation!
Sadly, right before we left to present to them yesterday there was a medical emergency at the shelter so we've postponed the presentation until Tuesday to give the girl time to recover. I'm hoping that everything is okay and am sending her healthy vibes <3
We've decided that, even though Ethel leaves on Thursday, today we will put together a presentation on healthy relationships and boundary-setting, and likely present that on Tuesday as well. Hoping to put together some handouts for self-esteem and whatnot that we can complete as a group to make it more interesting. I'm pretty excited to say the least- I love this stuff so much!
Yesterday after finishing presentation #1, I went with a fellow volunteer to see the "big ship" of Tacloban since it was our day off. We hopped a jeepney and then a tricycle to a small barangay/community outside of downtown...It is literally a MASSIVE oceanliner ship that was forced onto land during Yolanda, where it has remained about 20 meters away from the ocean in the middle of a neighbourhood. It actually crushed part of the road it got so far up. Pics to come soon, hopefully! Immediately after the typhoon, so many people had lost their homes that they began putting ramshackle homes around the ship's base, and it is now a full-on neighbourhood. There is now no way to remove the ship due to the number of homes around it that would need to be destroyed, so it is thought that the ship will remain there! An interesting reminder of the strength of nature, and an interesting tourist sight!
Anyway, I'm off to revel in the internet speed right now and possibly just spend a few minutes surfing the net *because I can*!!! :D Have a wonderful day, everyone!
