How The Philippines Has Already Stole My Heart

It’s now been the hundredth time I’ve sat down to write in my blog since I’ve been here and I can finally get my fingers to function on my keyboard. Talk about writer’s block to the max. I constantly have so much on my mind here. I think about how to explain to people back home what it’s like here and it really is an experience you have to live through to fully understand.

With that said, I’ll try and write it out best I can; excuse my jumbled thoughts ❤

For starters, my nutrition project has been the most crazy hard working but humbling experience I’ve had. I get off my jeepney ride to embracive arms from wide eyed, and smiling five year-olds eager to get fed and love and attention from myself and the two other volunteers with me. Words cannot explain the love I feel from these children who have grown up in such a poverty stricken village. They get excited at the sight of a game we have planned for them, or for hand washing before their meal, and chasing after the jeepney every day as we leave.

As an inexperienced twenty year-old, there are many days that are hard at my project, and many nights I’ve wept from the things I’ve seen. In these past three weeks, I’ve come to learn one of the hardest lessons of all. Simply put, we volunteers cannot change the world. We are here to make a difference. And having my standards set so high before I came here came in a downhill crashing spiral when I realized I needed to change my perspective.

Brilliant Martin Luther King Jr. says it best, “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

I’m inspired by this country. People here get up at 4am to go do Zumba before opening shop up for the day and working until the sun sets at 6pm. What a great and fulfilling way to live. In fact, it’s so inspiring to the point where I’ve gotten my ass up at 5 am (haven’t worked it down to 4 yet, too goddamn early) and gone on a run or worked out every day to see the sun rise over the ocean horizon. Absolutely gorgeous I tell ya.

It really is the simple things. I found a hole in the wall coffee shop the other day and I can’t tell you how excited I am because I come from the Starbucks on every corner back home in Seattle. I made a shoe string into a laundry line and secretly patted myself on the back because now I have a place to dry my clothes. I’ve learned to kill a cockroach the size of your palm with my foot. I look forward to pouring an icy cold bucket of water over myself after a sticky hot humid day. I haven’t worn makeup and my skin has never been better, it’s amazing.

I’ve come to learn that everyone has a story. When you wipe off the makeup, get rid of stereotypes, the fancy clothes, the “things” we all want but don’t really need, you get down the really natural gritty honest human self. You learn about what a person has gone through, their fails and accomplishments, their dreams and goals. And then you start to realize that there’s quite a common thing all us humans have in common… we’re all just here trying to survive.

No matter what happens in my next year of travels, I will never forget what this country has given me. It’s given me the chance to learn and grow, to open myself up, to see the amazing things people can do for each other in this world, and to enjoy the simple things in life.

I’m only just beginning to learn what it’s like to fall in love with the world; and I couldn’t be more excited about it.