I am in love! haha, no, only joking. But James is my new favourite person. He gave me cold medicine AND ........ earplugs!!! I've been looking for earplugs and had even put in a special request to Eden asking her to bring a pair for me from Manila. I was grumpy-mc-grump again this morning, I had really thought that Sunday would be the one day my neighbour wouldn't wake up at 4.15am and turn on his radio but I was wrong. So I am very excited about the possibility of not being woken up stupidly early tomorrow morning. Malcolm knows James from Korea, he studied alternative energy forms at uni and is here in Sugod for 3 weeks advising/consulting about the possibly of using either hydro or solar power for the school.

I'm having a nice chill-out day today just listening to music and working off my grumpiness. It's hard to stay grumpy when you listen to ABBA. I worked yesterday: taught two computer classes to the elementary school teachers and then traipsed around Cawayan and Long Beach with Eden all afternoon doing follow-up survey visits. We walked from Baha beach to Sugod (about an hour and half). It's about 200 steps up from Baha to the main road, we were pooped afterwards. It was the hottest day I've experienced so far; by the time we got home you could have wrung sweat out of my clothes. (hey, I'm just trying to keep it real here and tell you everything about living here! - on that note, I'll also tell you this: I am doing as the Filipinos do: no more toilet paper! I'll let you absorb that for a minute.) hee-hee, absorb.

Mmmm, i am snacking on ten pesos of biscuits and candy. Not bad for 32 NZ cents!

I will have to get a new visa again soon, my current one expires on July 15th. There is another immigration office in Kalibo so I will go there instead of Boracay. Ma'am Tess is also traveling to Kalibo to visit her son who is studying there, and Malcolm and Paul want to go there to visit successful mangrove plantations, so ..... ROADTRIP! (and my roadtrip I mean jeepney+tricycle+boat trip). It should happen just after Mitos from IRH in Manila visits us here to conduct SDM training for all the local barangay health care workers.
picture one: poster from Romblon Women's League conference held last weekend here in Sugod. The main speaker talked about gender sensitivity training (awesome, but it would have been better if more men had attended). I spoke about SDM and Cycle Beads.


picture two: kids returning to school after their lunch break.
pic three: all the volunteers and MV and CERV staff in front of the store in San Agustin. From top left: Malcolm, Eden, Vincent, Josh, Paul. Front row: me and Betsy. Look how brown I am!!
pic 4: students in their 2nd ever computer class. pic 5: my family does all their cooking on these outdoor fires.

pic 6: the unfinished health centre in Cabolutan. For the time being, they are using the barangay hall for all health centre business.