As times pass by, we have marked the Day 6 of our trip!!
Which means that it was the last day of us staying in the small and peaceful village of Nantangalan..
Nevertheless, our homestay families decided to jio (invite) everyone in their neighbourhood (sidenote: Yes! The villagers know each other very well and each of us even crashed other household for midnight chatting session haha) for a super early breakfast by the river.. AT 6 AM!!!
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| Heading off to the river with tatay Ricky's tricycle! |
No regrets. It was really worth it to wake up sooo early in the morning as the scenery by the river was really beautiful. The sky was already bright and well lit, with green hills standing magnificently in the background.
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| Beautiful view in the morning! No wonder Filipinos greet us magandang umaga which translates to 'beautiful morning' in Tagalog. |
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| Adeng Bonie is smiling :) |
Kids were playing around and swimming in the cool river water. Honestly, we had a great, beautiful-morning-kinda vibes because everything is so laid-back! We sat in small huts by the river and chit-chatted with the locals - it was great to lepak (chill) with them and we got to know more about the culture and lifestyle of the Filipinos.
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| Homestay sisters!! :) |
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| Kopitiam aunties and uncles spotted by the river |
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| Le logistics and welfare officer is being well-fed |
Our nanays and tatays were so generous and we enjoyed eating rice with fried eggs and fish, small buns, coffee and of course, the OH-SO-DELICIOUS TURONS! Out of all Filipino food we've tried, this sinful concoction of fried banana rolls made almost everyone fell head over heels!!! In fact, there is one COR member who admitted she had over 8 turons in a day. We won't disclose who though.. :P
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| Sweet, tart Filipino bananas in their crunchy golden popiah skin-like wrappers. Greasy but highly addictive! |
After the hearty breakfast, we went back to the school and carried on our usual chores - teaching the kids and doing construction of the canteen. Around late afternoon, we began our feeding program! Huge thanks to the cooking team for churning out hot and tasty porridge for the kids.
Also, our Business Managers earned their hard work! The kids were so delighted to receive new pens from one of our main sponsors - Pilot Pen Singapore!! They can use it for their new semester of school, which is going to be commenced in middle of June, right after the last day of our trip (12th June).
It was already late evening after the feeding programme. Then we began to prepare for our finale - a short skit for COR's cultural performance!!! To all the homestay families, villagers and elementary school staff in Nantangalan!
At around 8pm, the official closing ceremony was commenced. A lighting ritual was conducted as followed in the traditions of YMCA Pangasinan. It was a very interesting experience for us indeed, as we could see our home stay families (our hosts) passing the flame of the candle one by one with all of them standing in a triangle.
The symbolic meaning of the whole ritual is said to be guiding us (student guests) from the darkness to the light. It was quite similar to the Torch Relay of Olympics! In the end, the last flame were lit unto a bonfire, creating massive flames to mark the start of our closing ceremony.
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| Our Chairperson, Steph amongst the home stay hosts! |
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| Huge bonfire! This is an OCIP afterall :) |
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| Our YMCA Filipino volunteers were the two emcees of the night - Veil and Pamela! |
Speeches were given by the home stay hosts and COR Chairperson - Stephanie. Overall, we were very honored to be working with the local community in Nantangalan, Pozzorubio and it was indeed a good cultural exchange between us and the locals. We were absolutely thankful for the super nice treatment from our gracious hosts!
After that, the YMCA Pangasinan volunteers performed a dance for all of us! It was a fast and catchy song and we were, and still amazed at how good their dancing skills are!
Next, *drumrolls!!!* it was our Singapore cultural performance. It was a short skit about the origins of Red Hill.
Sidenote: the PnP will upload the whole recording of the skit soon!! Editing in process ;)
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| Casts of Redhill |
Glad that the audiences were enjoying our performance as we often hear bursts of laughter from the crowd!! After that, the organizers and COR HQs gave certificates to all the participants of our COR'16 Trip in The Philippines.
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| Special thanks to my home stay mom - nanay Rose! :) |
We parted with our home stay families after some light refreshments..and making promises that we will be back to Nantangalan again, soon! It was an emotional night, and you can the familial bond created between everyone despite three nights of home stay.. To be honest, alongside with my buddy, Ee Wun, I was really glad to know more about our home stay hosts - the Fermato family. It was really great talking with my host dad and mom - we talked almost everything! Lifestyle, politics, education, culture etc.. They were such kind hosts and I was really amazed to find out that the first little girl (out of dozens of kids!) whose photo were taken by me on the first day we arrived in Nantangalan, was actually my host sister! It was indeed, fate!
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| My first photo upon our arrival in Nantangalan Elementary School - it's Bonie Jean! |
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| From left - Bonie, nanay Rose, Ee Wun & me |
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| My another adeng - Mikylla! |
A special huge thanks to our assigned Filipino volunteer, Nicole!!! Glad to meet her and we were really thankful to have such awesome and friendly guide! Really happy that we can have long conversations and thank you for your effort in learning how to sign! Your fingerspell is awesome! :)
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| Nicole, Ee Wun & Bonie |
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| All of us - thanks for creating the best memories! |
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| Happy faces - we won't forget everyone!!! |
That's all for Day 6! Stay tuned for our Day 7, 8 & 9 blog posts!
Signing off,
- Ee Va
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