Gap Year Journey Winds Down in Philippines; New Job Begins

Holy cow! I can't believe I've been home in Nebraska for over a week now. It's hardly been enough time to even process the amazing experience that I had in the Philippines. We arrived in Manila after a very very long travel day out of my hometown, North Platte, Nebraska. It was really hard to leave my family again, but I knew that I was going to love Manila. Anyway, I ended up being hosted at Ateneo de Manila University… in the dorms. That was an experience! The girls whose room I shared had completely different hours than me so they were asleep when I woke up to leave and asleep when I came home after our busy days. I felt horrible that I never really got to connect with them, but at the same time it was kind of nice having that freedom to roam around the city with the 6 other Up with People students who were hosted there.

I had complete and utter culture shock my first morning when I arrived at the breakfast hall expecting cold cereal and milk but receiving fried rice and a whole fish (complete with head and eyes). The food was the biggest difference I noticed. I've never had rice for every meal, or served instead of fries at fast food restaurants. By the end of my time in the Philippines I just stopped asking what kind of meat I was eating because I really knew I didn't want to know. It all tasted fine, so why bother with formalities? I had a unique experience in Manila because I was on what we called the Flex Crew. I had a different Community Impact site for each of the 10 days. I got to move around to different sites and do several mini shows at the famous malls in Manila. It was awesome because the Flex Crew had to work so hard to make our impact because we only had a few hours with the students we worked with. We got to spend two days with some high school age students at ERDA Tech. They were some of the brightest kids I've worked with so far! They were totally willing to participate in everything, even discussions, and to top it off English wasn't even their first language. On our second day, they did a show for us to let us know how much they appreciated us.

That weekend we did nine mini shows at three different malls in Manila. It was awesome! Our show manager told us that during our performance day, over 2 million people went through the Mall of Asia. It was such an honor to be selected to be part of that crew. We did two shows in Manila… both of which had great audiences. The first show was special for me because it was a free show for the people we worked with all week. We had students from ERDA Tech there and families from the sites the rest of the cast worked with. It was inspiring because we knew that many of these families would probably never have the chance to see a show like this because of the cost. They were so excited and really gave us great energy.

After Manila we went to our last city of the tour, Subic Bay. I was so excited to be with an actual family this week. I totally lucked out as families went too, because I’m sure I had the best one. I stayed in Olongopo City with a woman and her three children. Her brother and his son also lived there. They were such an incredible family. Every day she took me to a new house to meet another member of her family and every night her kids came up with something fun for us to do. I loved staying with families with kids because it made me feel like I had brothers and sisters.

My Community Impact in Subic was the best by far! I got to start the day with a 30 minute bus ride, then an hour long hike that, I kid you not, was uphill both ways through the jungle until we reached a mountain top village where our task was to paint their kindergarten and elementary school. One group focused on the elementary school as it was three large buildings and five of us stayed at the kindergarten and focused on painting a mural on each wall. My friend Javier was the designer and he realized he'd only designed enough mural for three walls so he put me in charge of painting the fourth. This was a total challenge for me because I've never considered myself a very artistic person, but Javier put his faith in me so I decided to give it a shot. In the end I think we had an awesome building! This Community Impact left me feeling totally proud of what we'd accomplished. The children kept coming around while we were painting and telling us how beautiful their school was and how excited they were to go there once we were done. On the last day we ended early and decided that we'd do something kind of crazy to end our Community Impact program. We climbed down a different hill and found a nice bank by a river and all jumped in with our clothes on. It was a nice refreshing swim, but none of us brought other clothes so we had to spend the rest of the day sopping wet. It was totally worth it.

Our final show was emotional for most people because it was a definite reminder that we would all be going home very soon. We took our time to cry before the show and I actually made it through the whole show without shedding a tear. I have never been so proud of our cast. It was really a meaningful and awesome show. We were all together for our final banquet where we shed more tears and said goodbye to the Europeans. It was really hard to say goodbye to the people I'd been so close to for the past six months, but in the end I knew that it wasn't forever. Those people who are meant to stay in my life, will. On January 4th I start my new job with Up with People as a Field Marketing and Operations Manager. I'm really excited to see where this adventure takes me. Thanks everyone who has been reading my blog. I hope it gave you an inside view into life with Up with People! Who’s ready to take the leap too?

It’s your turn for a journey…!