I blog when I can ok....haha

Well we get to Palawan and the first night we are here Krystal and I find out that we can charter a boat to go whale shark snorkeling for 1,500 pesos. So what do you do the first week you are in Palawan....try and go whale shark snorkeling. I say try because it depends on the weather and whether (haha english is funny) the sharks are in the area or not. Also, the first night we were here some of the current PCVs made their way from their respective cities and towns to meet us and say hi. We went to dinner and then to a Tiki Bar for a drink and watch what I guess could be called a fire swinging competition. The current PCVs that came down were Ryan, Lia and Forrest and the new batch of PCVs includes Debra (CYF) Petra and Will (EDU) and of course Krystal and I.

We are living with a great host family near the center of the city and very close to a boardwalk which is beautiful. We have a host mom, uncle, and staff. The staff help out with cooking, cleaning and driving and they are very nice. The food is delicious! They also have KIDS, 5 at last count haha who like to wrestle and play everynight. Its alot of fun and I have acutally practiced some of games and activities that I learned during training with them, I also practice my Tagalog alot alot alot alot. Their names are Leon, Biboy, Jengjeng and yengyeng. I dont know if those are spelt right. I will include a picture of them with this blog.

So, my job. Well there was a previous PC volunteer named Jon at my site and he has semi-started several programs that I will hopefully build on with my counterpart Mark. Jon has created a six month work book for CICL which describes, in detail, activities that the Social workers, houseparents etc can do with the kids during their monthly meeting. How to do the activities, how to process them and what the goal is. However, many of these kids have cases that last years so they have already done all of the activities created by the previous volunteer. As a result, I will work to create more manuals for activities to hopefully stretch over a year. They only meet once a month so that is 12 sets of lessons. This manual would be filled with activities for men ages 18-24. I am not sure what areas I will focus on, I will need to work with my counterpart to find out what areas need to be addressed first, second etc. There is also a childrens street shelter that they want me to create a manual of activities for ages like 6-14 which will be fun to create because I have a large toolbox of easy childrens games that do not require much in the way of materials or time.

While I am working on this I know that my supervisor wants me to work with her on drafting proposals, design layouts and other ideas for an extension of the CICL center. She wants to eventually have a Girls home as well as a lifeskill/working/meeting area. However, the judges have required several changes/additions to the current CICL buildilng (which is not open yet) such building a guardhouse and raise the height of the current walls before we do anything else. It will be a 24 hr housing unit but I do not think that I would ever do overnights because that would be the job of the guards and/or houseparents. Another objective for the center as a whole is what has been termed a manual of operations. While I am not really sure what this entails I will be meeting with my supervisor and counterpart soon to find out. Well those are the major objectives for the first couple of months. That and meeting everyone, courtesy calls etc oh and some smaller weekend projects.

well im done for now, we have access to the internet at the city library and i may have more time on my hands now so hopefully i will write more frequently here are some pics