It's official

Well after completing our community project (environmental education) and taking our language proficiency exam we were allowed to take part in the swearing in ceremony and become official US Peace Corps volunteers. Rebeka had one of the highest language scores in our batch and gave a speech in Tagalog at the US embassy. Our swearing in ceremony was at the US embassy and was surreal. We've spent the last three months adjusting to Filipino life style only to be swept back into a brief sense of Americana. We drank unsweetened ice tea (rare here), ate meatballs and cream puffs in a courtyard but before too long we were back on the streets of Manilla where at every corner someone is begging for money and you get to walk bye families living on the sidewalk. This is all next too multi-million dollar malls and hotels. If the Philippines is one thing it is a place of amazing contrast. So after inhaling a life time supply of air pollution in two days we left Manila and made the four hour, 100 mile journey to our site. I have spent the last four days meeting more people than I can remember and sitting in on a WWF meeting (world wildlife fund). Rebeka bounced around for the week and doesn't have a concrete schedule. We've been here for three months but are just starting to be truly exposed to how things work here. Our new host family lives in a fishing village about 100 meters from the coast but we really haven't had any time to enjoy it, maybe tomorrow. The daily schedule here is from about 5 am to 9pm which makes perfect sense since its too hot to function from 10am to 4 pm. We woke up at about 415 this morning and it was only about 79 degrees and it stayed beautiful until about 8 am. The early mornings are definitely the best part of the days here. You can watch the sun rise over the rice fields and their is a hint of something in the air that brings a temporary peace to your mind before the hustle of the day starts and all you hear is vehicles without exhaust systems. Now we have less than two years to try to make a difference here so here we go!