February has been a relatively quiet month with the occasional random Peace Corps project happening around Sorsogon City. I’ve continued my work with scholars at Sorsogon State College, and in the beginning of the month around 20 of them participated in the international Peace Corps competition, “Write On.” Write On is a competition that promotes creative writing among school-aged participants in Peace Corps countries. Participants have one hour to respond to a prompt specific to their grade level and write the best story they can think of. It’s cool because they aren’t graded on grammar or spelling, but rather their ability to be original and creative. After the session, I chose three of the entries to compete against others chosen from around the Philippines. If any of them move on from there, they will compete internationally.

 We’ve also continued our Youth Development Sessions (YDS) with topics such as healthy relationships and HIV and STI prevention. HIV rates in the Philippines have recently been growing at an alarming rate, and in response the Children, Youth and Families sector of the Peace Corps has made prevention and education a part of their focus. Looking ahead to the time that I have left working with the college scholars, I’d really like to focus on topics like these.

 Later in the month, we had a chance to visit the school of our new education volunteer, Marcelino. Panlayaan Vocational school is on the outskirts of the city in a very small, rural barangay. All three of us Peace Corps volunteers from the city got together to help with their annual environment awareness camp, in which we lead a session about trash disposal and recycling. The school was beautiful and the staff was a lot of fun to work with. The highlight for me was hiking through the forest surrounding the school and relaxing on a hill drinking out of coconuts afterwards (I’m really going to miss that about the Philippines).

 Marcelino also had a barbeque! He cooked food traditional to the American west as a kind of cultural exchange with his coworkers. Then we hooked his speaker system to his laptop and sang karaoke (known as videoke here in the Philippines) from YouTube videos.

And this is our friend Forest with a chicken on his head:

Yup, that's about it. More next month. Peace!