The Further Adventures of Aaron

Pinoy Summer

Posted on May 16th, 2007 by Aaron.
Categories: PeaceCorps, Photos.

I was on the road for the first half of pinoy summer (April-May).

In Baguio, I helped out at at ‘FLOW’ camp. FLOW is ‘Future Leaders of Our World’– its a summer camp for late-teens that gets into leadership skills, self-awareness, and environment/community. I was part of the environment teachers. There were games and contests, and we tried to keep things light even during the classes. It was a lot of fun.

Then it was on to Cebu, where we had Tudlo Mindanao, a big teacher training. We’re not allowed to go to the island of Mindanao (about one third of the country) because of terrorist groups (like Abu Sayyaf). As a compromise, during the summer Peace Corps and USAID team up to bring Mindanao teachers to nearby Cebu (where we can go) and have teacher training classes for two weeks. The big focus this year was on English language proficiency (DepEd is re-prioritizing on English across its schools). As an ICT volunteer, I was there to help out, keep the computers working, and help produce a CD-ROM that the teachers could take home with them.

Once I got back to site, the Philippine elections were really starting to heat up. While there were reports of lots of election-related violence (mostly in Mindanao and Masbate), things were quite calm here, despite a contentious mayoral election in my town. Mostly I kept my head down, stayed away from political rallies, and waited for it to end.

Maybe now that my summer traveling is over, and the elections are done, things will get back to normal…

Nah.

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