I don't know if anyone really reads this blog, or cares really, but last week, Seth and I were assigned to fly to Negros Island to conduct interviews with ACE academy alumni. We were gone for a week and wandered all over the island to do interviews. It was quite the adventure! We first went to Bacolod, where I got extremely sick, and I won't go into the details. It was just scary. Anyway, one of the alumni that we interviewed earlier in the day happened to be a doctor, so Seth called her up and she came over in the middle of the night to give me some shots, and stayed with me until they kicked in. Her name was Marti and she was the nicest lady I've ever met, and I owe her big time. She even invited us over the next day for a home cooked dinner, something that I miss incredibly. It was one of the best dinners I've ever had; with marinated steak and rice, with home-grown vegetables and local Filipino fruit. She also made us homemade pineapple pie, which was absolutely amazing. We remembered to get a picture before we left:
She's actually getting married in the Laie temple this November, so we get to see her again. Yay!
After we finished up there we caught a nasty bus all the way down to Dumaguete. It took 7 and a half hours to get there on this bus.....and we're not talking a greyhound bus! The ride was very scenic and gorgeous.
There were no taxis in Dumaguete, just scooter trikes!...
It was an interesting experience to lug around my giant duffle bag in these things.
We finished up our interviews at the church, and had a few hours to look around the city. I really liked it there, and the members were extremely kind and helpful. Something that you don't find in the US.
We decided to go to Apo Island, which was a 30 min boat ride from Zoboanguita. First we had to lug our stuff down a long street! I'm telling you, that pink bag I'm carrying was so heavy and was it awful to walk down the streets carrying it.
Someone told us we were taking out a pump boat, and I had no idea what that was to be honest, but I thought it would be big, since we were going far off coast! But this was what the boat was:
Our "crew." They laughed at me for taking a picture of them. The guy in the back cracked me up because he was able to stand on the end the entire time through all of the waves. I was sitting and clinging on for my life and this guy had no problem at all!
It ended up being a lot of fun! We got drenched though, because the waves were bigger than the boat! Apo was gorgeous.
This is where we stayed the night:
There was no electricity, and no plumbing. Lovely. Good thing it was only one night! We had a lot of fun exploring the caves on the beach and climbing all of the rock formations. I found some amazing shells I've never seen before and I'm going to add them to my collection when I get home. We took the same boat back to the mainland, and then a jeepney over to Sibulan, where we caught a ferry back to Cebu.
....and then another 4 hour bus ride back to Cebu City. It feels so good to be home now! Well, almost home. We still have a lot to do with our project writeup. Seth and I are working on the interview text analyses and we should be done in the next few days. Oh yeah, Elder Bednar is speaking at the Cebu church on friday, so we're excited to see him speak. Happy to finally be finishing up our days here!....it's been two months of turkey sandwich withdrawls...
