Woops! I did mean to update this more frequently, but we've had 3 powercuts in the last 2 days. As you may have gathered, I am now in Sugod, Tablas. We arrived here on Sunday morning at 3.30am after a 10 hour ferry ride. The ferry ride was way better than I had expected, very smooth and not many people. I was able to have 2 beds to myself.
The one most excellent thing about the ferry ride was that it was the only morning that I was not woken up by roosters crowing, not because there were no roosters on the boat, but because I was on the part on the boat where there were no roosters. (my rooster rant is coming later, just so that you are forewarned.)
Our trek from Manila to our villages was epic: there were four of us plus our personal luggage plys Rye school supplies, a printer, a scanner, 3 boxes of printer paper, bags of t-shirts, and 4 netbooks. After the ferry we packed onto a tricycle and left the port for our homestay families. There was something hysterically surreal about being driven around this green, underdeveloped island at 4am, packed into a tricycle, with Britney Spears' 'Womanizer' blasting through the tricycle's sound system. My homestay is at Ma'am Tess's house, in Sugod (pronounced 'so good' - which inevitably leads to many jokes about how x is so good in Sugod.) I arrived at Ma'am Tess's at about 4.30am, only to find that someone else was sleeping in my bed, and that Ma'am Tess was away in Manila. So I hung out with the neighbours, and later crashed for about 2 hours on a bed at their house. When I got about at 10am, I met the other volunteer who homestays at the same house (Melissa) and her friend who had been sleeping in my bed (Carolyn), and we all walked to Long Beach for a swim.
On Monday we did some project management and organisation stuff, yesterday we did testing at one of the schools, and today I'm again helping Malclm and Steve at the school doing testing. Hopefully I can get started with my project soon.
OK, description time:

The Island/Town
The island is mountainous and covered in dense bush and palm trees. Towns lie on the fringe between the mountains and the sea. The biggest town on the island is San Agustin in north. Cabulutan, Carmen, Sugud, and Long Beach are spaced in 15 min by tricycle intervals down the island. I'm in Sugod, Steve is in Cabulutan, and Carolyn and Malcolm live in Long Beach. THere are around 50 houses in Sugod, a church, school, and townhall. Many families own a sari-sari store which sells basic supplies. There are kids, chickens, cows, and goats everywhere.

The house:
The houses range from small straw shacks to bigger concrete block houses. Extended families lie together or very close by. Ma'am Tess lives in a cement block house with her husband, elderly incontinent aunt ( more on that later), 3 of her 4 kids, and Melissa and I. Her sister and family live next door, about 3 metres away. The house is bigger than most. It has no ceiling though, i.e the walls don't reach the top. Good for airflow and cashflow I guess, but terrible for privacy. You can hear each other talk, pee, eat etc. This is the hardest thing for me to get used to, and admittedly, I have been quite grumpy. The noise is CONSTANT. The family get up at 4.30am, children shouting, radio blaring, chickens crowing, dogs barking, all from 4.30am onwards, and there is no way of escaping it. The bathroom is very basic: no flush, concrete floors, hole in the floor for shower water to flow down into, bucket showers.
There are mosquitoes and ants everywhere. I am still trying to get used to ants on my bed, my computer, the kitchen counters, and the kitchen table.

Good things:
* friendly people everywhere!
* if you're in the vicinty of someone's house and it's lunch/dinner time, you're invited to eat with them
* the scenery is amazing, huge green mountains and clear sea.
* cute kids

Bad things:
( can i just say that this period of grumpiness will end, but for now I am really quite grumpy because I have been thrown well and truly out of my comfort zone, and it's going to take a while to adjust)
* the ants. everywhere. even in my bed.
* the fecking roosters. I HATE ROOSTERS SO MUCH. contrary to what I used to believe, roosters do not only crow to welcome the new day. hell no. the 5 or so roosters around our house start crowing AT 2AM. They start, then all the other roosters in the village chime in , and its constant crowing from then on. There are roosters right outside my room, so it's as if a roosters is crowing right into my ear. If I'm lucky, I can fall back asleep, only to woken up by the family at 4.30. I think I would be more understanding of the family having roosters if they served a useful purpose, but they don't, they're for cockfighting.
* the family waking up at 4.30am: if I have to get up early, I will, and I will be cheery. But if there is no reason for me to wake up because it's still dark and there is NOTHING TO DO, then I'm not happy to wake up that early. I always thought I could fall asleep anywhere, but roosters and the radio that gets swtiched on loudly at 4.30am and the screaming kids all mean no sleep.
* the heat. it's exhausting, and I feel sweaty and gross all the time.
* the fact that everyone in the house can hear you when you're on the toilet. Some noises to not need to be shared.

PS: i really want to upload pictures, but with this internet connection that keeps resetting, it's not going to happen until I visit a much bigger town.