Mt. Pinatubo

So we've done a lot since I last posted but I just wanted to update you all with some new pictures from my trip to Mt. Pinatubo Volcano today! We had to wake up a 4am which was understandably really hard for me but we got to sleep in the car. When we got there we had to take jeeps for about an hour across this ashy mountain surface (kind of like how I would picture the moon) and then we started the 2 hour hike at about 930 and were up at the Crater Lake before noon. It was so worth it to get up early once we got to the top of the Volcano and saw the beautiful lake. Hopefully you can see what I mean through the pictures. We got to swim out all the way to the middle and just float there. It was so peaceful and relaxing after such a busy morning! 

View from the jeep

This was the jeep in from of ours. It was pretty rough terrain. 

The start of the trail!

Ray me Jill and Conor at the top!

Christina Teresa Me and Kyla after swimming

Praxis Weekend!

Ate Fay's niece Aliah made this sign to welcome us to her house!

This is a view of the field that Sito Payong is on. 

We were making a Merienda (a snack) and I was crushing the peanuts. The final product had  smashed bananas peanuts coconut and sugar. It was delicious!

This is me shredding the coconut. It was pretty hard.

So many kids came from the community came to the bonfire for our first night there! 

We had a meal on banana leaves that we shared with the whole community. You had to eat with your hands. 

Here's Ray eating.... and some people in the background eating chicken feet on sticks. I tried it.  It was like really boney and skin-y. And it looked like a foot. 

We had a dance party with some of the kids. They love Kesha music so we got along really well. 

We introduced some of the adults in the community to 'smores! They had never  had them before but they really enjoyed them! 

Sitio Payong

Here are some pictures from my walk to Sitio Payong. 

Meat market

Muslim community we pass on the way to praxis. You can see the top of the  Mosque in the distance. 

Most of these homes were underwater during the typhoon. They're across the river from Sitio Payong.

Fruit and Vegetable market

Entrance to Sitio Payong and the area where everyone in the community gets their water.

So its Monday afternoon here in Manila and I’m just hanging out at this really cool café called Cerealicious (Erin D you would love it.) They have these really cool desserts here with sweet frozen milk and all different cereal concoctions. I just had one with kit kats and cherry’s and coco flakes. It was so good! Anyways, yesterday we went to this gorgeous beach near Batangas at Eagle Point. We took a boat out to this island beach to go snorkeling.  Snorkeling was really cool but a lot scarier than I thought. You have to start swimming as soon as you can off the beach because the coral reef starts and you can’t stand on it because it is super sharp and also it’s a living thing so you’ll kill it if you stand on it.  So we all got our snorkeling gear and went out to explore the reef. We saw so many brightly colored tropical fish and starfish. And we saw an eel which made me super scared but it just stayed on the bottom and didn’t bother us.  Swimming in was a challenge though.  At some points the reef gets super shallow so instead of being like eight feet above it you are like 6 inches.  And the tops of the reef are covered in these spiny sea urchins that sting if you touch them, so you have to be careful to stay right on top of the water and not stand up as you swim in.  We also swam in this salt water pool with small sharks in it! It was such a fun day. The beach was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen and being able to hang out with everyone away from the city was so nice. Here are some pictures I took throughout the day! 

Christina, Me and Kyla

The water was so beautiful and clear!

This is the boat we took over to the island.

All of the girls in our group

1st day of praxis

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time… But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” –Lilla Watson

This is sort of the motto or idea of our Praxis sites. We had our first visits on Thursday and it was really different than I expected.  Even after all of our orientation and learning that we are accompanying not serving I was still expecting to be helping out the community that I was visiting but it was completely the opposite. Ate Faye is the coordinator for my site, Sitio Payong, an impoverished squatter community without water or electricity, and all day at praxis we sat and ate and talked with her. We listened to her story about her family and how she came to live here and be a host for us and she asked us about our lives and families.  We didn’t actually do anything. We just sat and talked and played with her nephew and talked with her niece when she got home from school. Her niece is attending Univeristy of the Philippines elementary school and was one of 14 out of thousands of applicants who was admitted based on academic examinations, to her class. Ate Faye was telling us how she is the only student there without electricity and it is hard for her to complete all of her school work without a computer or internet access at home so often she goes to internet cafés around her neighborhood to research.  At 12 years old it seems like she has pretty rigorous amounts of homework and her mom and aunt make sure that when she is not resting or studying she is learning to cook and do chores around the house. They expressed how while they are so happy that she excelling academically they still want to make sure she has proper domestic skills and can learn to independently cook, clean, and run a household.  Her niece seemed really excited to talk to us and she even played and sang a Taylor Swift song on guitar for us.  She has such a beautiful voice.   I’m so excited to learn more about their family by accompanying them and living in solidarity with them in the weeks to come. I’ll be staying there overnight next weekend! I’ll try to take some pictures soon to give you an idea of the kind of community they are living in.