Brianwongderlust

I’m Moving to Korea!

Posted on February 21, 2016 by brianwongderlust

So, I had planned to write this post way in advance but ended up putting off packing by watching TV and playing video games instead so here we go. I’m moving to Korea! Questions?

Who?
Me, silly!

What?

I’m moving to Korea to teach English. I don’t really know what grades I’m teaching or which school I’ll be placed at, but I’ll find out in about a week! When I touch down, I have a week-long orientation and then I get the news.

Where?

I do know that I’ll be in Seoul, though last time I was there on holiday it was a huge city.

When?

I leave in aboutttttt….45 minutes. Talk about a last minute post. I’m currently writing this from my gate at the San Francisco airport and I still haven’t taken my pre-departure bathroom break so I should wrap this up soon.

Why?

Lots of reasons, really. I want to make a difference in people’s lives, I want to learn skills that can help me serve a greater good, I want to learn about Korean culture and immerse myself, I really like Korean food. I can probably list hundreds of reasons why I wanted to do this, but the idea popped in my head over a year ago when I went on holiday to Korea for about ten days and wanted to return for a longer stay.

I’ve worked in a corporate job for three years and learned that money was not the end all be all of life goals, and I also learned that one of my favorite parts of my corporate stint was working as a community service lead for my department, giving back through hands on and pro bono projects. Taking on this opportunity in Korea not only allows me to touch young people’s lives, but also learn more about other cultures and perspectives on world issues and solving problems. I really just want to help people, and this is another step in a long journey or helping and learning at the same time.

There’s a lot more I could write about the why of this decision, so feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions!

How?

I applied to EPIK through Korvia Consulting and I got in! It’s a pretty big change from the past three years of corporate living, but I’m pretty excited to start this new life in a new place. I don’t know anyone at all and I have never taught English before, but I think I’m ready for this.

What Else?

If any of you have any other questions, feel free to post them in the comments – I started this post with 45 minutes until my flight and I’m ending it with about 15 minutes before boarding so I’ll try to answer as soon as I can!!!

Posted in Korea | Tagged epik, teaching, travel, wongderlust | Leave a comment

So Long, Sweet Philippines

Posted on January 20, 2016 by brianwongderlust

Before I left the All Hands Philippines base in Tacloban, I was given a chance to stand up in front of the group and say a few words about my experience. On the verge of bursting into tears, I ended up delivering a watery-eyed speech about how All Hands wasn’t just building structures, but building a future as well. Since I’ve returned to the States, I’ve had some time to reflect on my experiences and think about what I’ve learned from my month abroad. So, if I was coherent and had thought about what I wanted to say more, this might be what my goodbye speech could have sounded like:

When I signed up to volunteer with Project Leyte, I thought I was signing up to volunteer on a construction site for a month, doing hard physical labor for six days a week, but the reality is that All Hands does so much more than that. And that’s because the reality is that the devastation felt from natural disaster does not go away after a house is built. It doesn’t go away after we finish a school, a campus for an NGO, or an evacuation center. It takes more than just building structures to help the people of the Philippines, and the volunteers at Project Leyte are doing just that.

You’re building laughter. You’re building smiles. You’re building skills and careers for the local workers we train and work with every day. You’re building friendships and community. You’re showing up every day with a positive attitude in the pouring rain or the scorching sun, and you’re building trust. The community we work in trusts that we will show up six days a week and work our hardest, even when other organizations have left. It’s been over two years since Typhoon Yolanda struck, but All Hands is still here. Rather than throwing up a few buildings and leaving, we’ve become a part of the local community, and in return the community trusts us to work with them to make a difference.

We build this trust when a kid at Camansihay exchanges names with us, and then you remember their name the next time you meet. We build this trust at Streetlight when we talk to the local workers and hear their stories about the typhoon and then laugh as they joke about having five wives while asking how many girlfriends you have back home. We build this trust on Tuesdays and Thursdays when we bring a laptop and a projector to different areas and show a movie, giving a cinema experience to children who can’t go to the movies much or even at all. We build this trust when you visit a local worker in the hospital after a serious accident or attend a local’s birthday party on New Year’s Eve. The people in the community trust that All Hands doesn’t believe to be the whole solution, but we know that working with the locals, we can be a part of it.

That’s why we’ve designed an environmentally sustainable septic tank for the classroom we’re building. That’s why we hire and train those impacted by the typhoon to set them up with skills than can be used to support themselves even after we finish projects. That’s why we’re working with other nonprofits to create buildings that they can use to empower their organizations to provide their own aid to the community. We understand that response and recovery is a blanket term that means more than just building houses, and we’re prepared to do our part.

When I first came to Tacloban, I met a woman in the airport, and during our conversation I mentioned that I was volunteering with All Hands. Because of the work that the organization has done and the place it has taken in the community, she went out of her way to have her brother-in-law drive me from the airport to the mall to buy a mattress, walk through the mall to help me pick one out, and then drive me from the mall to the All Hands Base all on his own time. This community trusts All Hands, so remember that every time you put on that blue t-shirt in the morning, you are part of something incredible and impactful. After more than two years, #WeAreStillHere, and you are still here, so keep on doing what you’re doing, because it matters. The work you do matters, and it’s making an enormous difference.

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, service, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Finding Myself on Sambawan Island

Posted on January 11, 2016 by brianwongderlust

With four days off for Christmas, a few of the volunteers decided to take a trip to Sambawan, one of the nearby islands, with three of the local volunteers. So, while the rest of base was drinking punch, mulled wine, or Tanduay (or all of the above) as Christmas Day turned into night, we were preparing for the 4am wakeup call the next morning.

After asking a few volunteers to join the trip, our roster was stacked. We had:

Britt – from the Netherlands but living in Australia
Davide – from Italy but traveling indefinitely
Mustafa – from Egypt on his first trip out of the country
Patrick – from Germany and plays the guitar (yesssss)
Melissa – from Spain but Filipino
Nora – from France and impossible to find on Facebook (until recently)
Karina, Emily, and Cara – local Filipino volunteers
Me – serial blogger and feeling introverted at this point in my trip

Luckily for me, Patrick was part of this roster, because if he hadn’t stormed into my room at 4am calling my name, I may have missed the entire trip. Let’s say I’m not a morning person, even though that’s only partly true, but half-awake and dreary-eyed, I met the rest of the group on the road as we tried to hail a tricycle to get to the van terminal.

The plan was to take a van from Tacloban to Naval, where we would then catch a boat to Sambawan. Emily was already at the terminal saving us seats for the next available bus, and Melissa was already in Naval because her family lived there, so the rest of us caught two tricycles from Utap to downtown Tacloban to meet Emily at the terminal.

Davide ruining the candid photo…or everyone else ruining the posed photo

We bought tickets for the 5:30am van to Naval, which gave us just enough time to hit up McDonald’s for a fried chicken sandwich at five in the morning. Armed with greasy food, we boarded the van with a surprising amount of energy for the early hours of the morning.

Maccas, smiles, and Patrick’s right hand. Let’s gooo!

…and then I fell asleep for most of the ride.

I woke up when the van began to take twists and turns on the road, swaying back and forth in a nice nausea-inducing rhythm. I had brought motion sickness pills for this exact reason but forgot to take them in a McDonald’s-induced haze, but alas it was too late. Feeling dizzy and on the verge of throwing up over my friends, I was thankful when we finally arrived at our destination – a Prince supermarket in Naval.

Candid shot gone wrong

We stood in front of the supermarket for about two minutes trying to find Melissa before a man approached us asking if we were Melissa’s friends. We followed him to a house nearby where we met Melissa’s aunt and leaned that Melissa was at another market getting supplies for Sambawan, since there wouldn’t be much on the island that we could buy.

Waiting for Melissa at her aunt’s house

When Melissa returned with fish, vegetables, charcoal, and other supplies, I took this picture of Melissa and her aunt looking at someone else as they took a picture.

Quality nice

We ate breakfast (toast, papaya, boiled bananas, eggs), gathered some snacks from the Prince supermarket, bought 30 liters of water, and purchased the one bottle of Tanduay for the weekend (we’re the tame bunch). Soon, we were on the road, headed to the dock to catch our boat to paradise island.

I love taking these types of pictures for some reason

Me carrying 10 liters of water by the dock. Turns out I’d’ been here before and left a mark

Mustafa taking a photo of Davide

After taking some photos of the dock and the breathtaking views of islands we would never actually visit, we loaded up the boat with our food and bags, I optimistically took my motion-sickness pills, and we piled in for a 30-minute ride to paradise.

All aboard the teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy sea sickness machine…I mean boat

Onwards and outwards!

View of Sambawan, our little slice of paradise, from the boat

When we finally landed on Sambawan after what seemed like an eternity, especially since my motion-sickness pills were working questionably, I stumbled off of the boat to the safety of land.

View of the beach after getting off of the boat

Welcome to Sambawan!

After weighing the pros and cons between getting a cottage and a hut, we ended up paying for a cottage, which was a good idea since we were staying the night and a private toilet and shower ended up being useful. And enclosed walls. And beds. If we didn’t have enclosed walls, we would have been in a bit of trouble the next day when we had strong wind and rain.

Our home for the next day. Fancy, no?

With our housing situation figured out and our bags safe and sound within enclosed walls (reaaaally wanted those enclosed walls), everyone decided to hit the beach and go swimming…except for me. Part of it was that I always like exploring the beach, part of it was that I didn’t pack a swimming suit, part of it was that everyone was coming out of the water with bleeding feet because of the sharp rocks, and part of it was I didn’t want to get sticky(er) from the salt water.

But I suspect the real reason was that I was going through the phase I hinted at in my last post where I was closing off and becoming even more introverted than normal (which is definitely saying something) because I was quickly realizing that everyone I was meeting would soon leave and I might never hear from them again. The fact that I myself would be leaving the Philippines in less than a week from this island trip didn’t really help much either.

I thought about how all of the energy I had spent trying to meet new people and how exhausted it had made me. And now that a lot of friends had left, was that exhaustion really for nothing? Rather than face these hard questions with the new friends I had on this island, I decided to experience Sambawan through the filter of my camera lens on my own, which ended up producing some pretty sweet pictures but not many answers to my anxieties.

First stop on Brian’s adventure alone on Sambawan – welcome hut with the map of the island

Large boat with a large family having some sort of day celebration arriving on the island. Love the colors on this boat

Beautiful view of the South side of the island

Essentially, I found the island was separated into three sections – the South section, which I couldn’t get to without venturing into the water and swimming around because of the high tide, the middle section, where our cottage resided, and the North section, which I would try to venture to later. After discovering that the Southern section would be difficult to get to without a swimsuit and with Converse, I decided to walk up to the watch tower at the top of the middle section to get a better view of the island.

Stairs up to the watch tower

So…close….

View from the steps of the North part of the island

View from the watch tower of the North part of the island

View from the watch tower of the South part of the island

After going for the South and middle section of the island, I decided to see if I could get to the North part of Sambawan. Everyone else was still swimming/snorkeling/sleeping, so I walked past our cottage and made my way North, towards the rocks.

Climbing over rocks, one of my favorite parts of going to the beach, said no one except Brian

More rocks everywhere!

I made it fairly far on the rocks but ended up in a bit of a pickle where the tide was coming in over all of the rocks I needed to get to the Northern part of the island. So, after about 20 minutes of clinging on to a ledge watching the tide come in and deciding there was no rock I could safely jump to, I headed back to the cottage to take more pictures and catch up with everyone else.

Swing tied to a tree by the cottage

Davide on swing with sun glare take one

Davide on swing with sun glare take two

As the sun began to set on our paradise island, Melissa suggested we go to the lookout tower to see the island as the sun set and also take about 380912849321 pictures, so we obliged. Lucky for you, I’ll only post the best ones.

North Sambawan lit by the setting sun

South Sambawan lit by the setting sun, featuring strangers who might actually want this photo if I could ever get in touch with them

Sunset over the water

Me, trying to do a silhouette picture but failing? I think?

After watching the sun set from the lookout tower, we headed back to the cottage to eat dinner in the dark. Luckily, Melissa’s water bottle was actually a torch, so we had a little light, and the dinner was delicious! I’d post pictures, but it was dark, so…yeah.

After dinner we decided to walk as a group to the Southern part of the island, since most of the group didn’t take an existential solo journey over there during the day. With the help of Melissa’s water bottle/torch/solar-powered thing, we made our way to the Southern area and plopped down on the sand/mostly rocks and shells to admire the ocean at night.

Because I was smart and brought the Tanduay with us, we decided to play a game of “Never have I ever.” Like I said, we were the tame group, so our questions dealt more with travel and experiences than relationships and sex, but we still did learn a fair bit about each other.

As we sat under the moonlit beach with the waves creeping closer with every crash, I realized something that night. My worry before about spending energy to get to know people and then immediately losing them was a completely valid phenomenon, but was no excuse to completely avoid talking to new people. Because part of the joys of traveling and seeing the world is the process of getting to know new people and new perspectives, and these are things that can stick with you even after the actual person is far away on another adventure. And who knows, there are special people you meet that you might end up staying in touch with and seeing again in the future. But for the time being, getting lost in the moments, enjoying the present, and enjoying the company of the people around me was what mattered most. As we finished the bottle of Tanduay and walked back to our cottage, I was happy to be with these wonderful people, in this wonderful place, having a wonderful time.

The next morning, we woke up just before sunrise to try and see the island through the light of the first sun, but when we got to the top of the lookout tower, we were surprised to see the sun behind clouds. It was still a nice view though!

North part of the island during sunrise

Converse 😀

Three friends probably gossiping like the gossipy gossipers they are. Maybe they saw a black kangaroo and were keeping it a secret.

Breakfast of champions (tuna paella and sky flakes crackers)

While most of the group decided to do one last scuba trip before coming back to pack up for our noon departure on the sea-sicky boat of doom, a few of us stayed back to guard the cottage. And by “guard the cottage,” I definitely mean “party hard and drink a bunch of coconut wine, or ‘tuba.'”

Tuba! Tastes kind of musky

Picture of a boat I took while “guarding the cottage”

And by “drinking all the tuba” I definitely mean “sleeping a few extra hours after wake up for the sunrise.” We ended up sleeping a bit, resting a bit, and saving everyone’s stuff from the torrential downpour and heavy rain a bit. When the death boat came at noon, I had already taken a few motion sickness pills and strapped in for the ride back to the mainland.

Everyone sleepy on the boat of doom

Surprisingly, the motion-sickness pills either worked or I became temporarily immune to motion-sickness, and when we docked I threw up over everyone. Just kidding, I had no motion sickness at all, a Christmas Miracle!

With a few hours before our van back to Tacloban, we decided to go see a nearby waterfall before going to the van terminal. So we hopped into the back of a truck and headed out!

I’m pretty sure the drivers of the truck had some relation to Melissa? Or we just found a random truck and jumped in, but the first one seems more likely.

Did I mention I take a lot of these kinds of pictures?

Davide standing up on the back of the truck and peering over the front

Sunny day calls for skin coverage. But sleepy volunteers calls for creepy photo.

When we got to the waterfall, I went back to my normal introverted self and sat on the rocks, listening to the water flow into the pool below while most of the group dove into the water. There was something calming about the sound of the water washing over itself that made me feel at peace. I felt glad that I was with friends who didn’t make me feel like I had to join them in every water adventure (because really, I’m not usually a fan of water with sharp rocks in it), but were nice and kind enough to take me on this adventure with them and make sure I wasn’t completely slipping off the radar. I think it was at this point when I decided to write the “here’s to” of my last post, and end the post on a note that I hoped to see some of the people in the future, because the people on this trip are definitely ones who fall into that category.

River at the bottom of the waterfall

Pool at the bottom of the waterfall

So calm, so serene

Biiiiig waterfall. Much bigger than the one from the other beach post

And the water was much colder I hear too. That’s not me in this picture. I’m actually not sure who it is

For those of you who have known me for a long time, here’s the classic “Brian behind a big leaf” picture I’ve taken in most countries

Davide looking at the road after leaving the waterfall

We ended up making our van on time and getting back to Tacloban in time to eat a group dinner at Dream Cafe, the signature cafe where you could always count on seeing someone from All Hands sitting at its tables. When we returned to base late that night, we all went our separate ways, most of us heading straight to the showers to clean up and get ready for a big day of work the next morning.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I am so incredibly grateful that Patrick came into my room that Saturday morning to wake me up, because without that I may have completely missed out on this amazing experience. Not only did I get to see a beautiful island, but I also came out of this trip feeling like I finally had friends that I had actually gotten to know a little deeper than the usual people on Base. I’d still grown close to people who didn’t go on this trip, but as I said in my previous post, this was the point in the trip where I came out of that quiet zone of Brian talks to no one and began to feel at home. And three days before my departure date no less, but honestly I think I had to go through those motions to truly appreciate what had happened. To repeat a bit from last post:

The first week I was in the Philippines, I was anxious to meet new people, mostly focusing on remembering names and quirks and less on actually getting to know others. The second week I started meeting and caring for everyone a whole lot, being talkative (for me at least) and social. The third week, a bunch of my newfound friends left for more adventures and I had that existential crisis, but by the fourth week I had met some great people who showed me that worrying about what might happen in the future does very little good for the present. In a traveling world, people come and go, but experiences stick with you, so have experiences, and maybe the people will stick with you in your heart.

…But I still expect to see some of you in person in the future!!!

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, beach, island, philippines, sambawan, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Saying Goodbye to Traveling Friends

Posted on January 6, 2016 by brianwongderlust

During the month I spent in the Philippines, I’ve caught a glimpse of one of the most common hardships for travelers: having to say constant goodbyes to friends as they continued their journeys elsewhere. I’ve talked to some of the habitual travelers on base, and they said they’ve gotten used to saying goodbye, that they’ve gotten numb to the pains of fleeting friends and broken promises of keeping in touch. But I’m still so new at this travel thing that it’s a very strange sensation for me.

The first week I was in the Philippines, I was nervous and anxious about making friends. I met over 50 people in a day and I was mostly worried about trying to remember everyone’s names. By my second week, I had met a few people and came out of my shell a little. I remembered names and I was talkative and I met a lot of people from all over the world that I considered friends and inspirations. The third week I was here, a lot of people left and I started spending a lot of time alone. It was a pretty reflective week and when I decided to write up a lot of this post. The last week I was here I finally had met a group of people I could call friends, but only had a few days left to spend with them.

I’ve been told that I may never see these people again, and that this is the natural way that things work out for a traveler. I’m a fairly quiet person who doesn’t normally make friends very easily, so the ones that do stick matter a lot, but it sounds like a nomadic life ends up being a lonely one. Though I’ve since come to terms with this, it doesn’t mean I won’t still try to keep the ones that matter close.

The cost of seeing the world and learning new perspectives is perhaps becoming a loner in the process.

So here’s to the ones we may never see again, but also the ones we still hope to reunite with some day. Here’s to the woman who saved me from diarrhea-induced dehydration and the first person I felt comfortable with on base. Here’s to the guy who was only on project for a few days and had to leave because of a back injury, but headed straight to Manila to volunteer with another organization helping children. Here’s to the team lead who made me fall in love with Streetlight, and then to the lead who converted me back to a Camansihay loyal right afterwards.

Here’s to the guy who was a Malaysian theater celebrity as a child, and here’s to his wife who smiled through injury and infection, both of whom extended their stay until the school is finished. Here’s to the girl teaching in Thailand who took her week-long break to volunteer with us. Here’s to the guy with the amazing singing voice who raised over $900 in a day for the cause, and here’s to the two women who dug a septic tank hole deeper than themselves.

Here’s to the guy who peed in my room at 3am.

Here’s to the staff member who resigned to be back in the field, and here’s to the couple who left to go see Star Wars in Manila. Here’s to the girl behind the camera who doesn’t like to sing or dance and the guy behind the camera who led up the charge to cook Christmas dinner. Here’s to the guy who never knows if he’s leaving or staying, and here’s to the local university professor who volunteers on his days off. Here’s to the French woman I can’t find on Facebook – if any of you find her, let me know will ya? Here’s to the woman who came to the Philippines to find lost family members, learn the language, give back, and ended up doing all three.

Here’s to the swimmer who has lived in countless countries and wants to work in disaster relief after university. Here’s to the four inseparable local volunteers who show up twice a week despite being actively engaged in their university studies, and here’s to black kangaroos. Here’s to the guy who goes to sleep after work and then wakes up later to study when base is a little bit more quiet. Here’s to the guy who talked to me for forty-five minutes about a septic tank. Twice.

Here’s to the one guy who drank during the game of never-have-I-ever when the topic of threesomes came up, and here’s to the guy who now has a lighter burn he can brag about. Here’s to the girl who gave me the courage to join in when she started singing in the shower stall next to me. Here’s to the guy who dances every time Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” comes on, and here’s to the writer who has been traveling for seven years and journaling for eleven. Here’s to the girl who got bed bugs, cement burns, and flesh eating bacteria during her first three days on site, but still extended her stay to volunteer longer anyway.

And here’s to the rest of you crazy wonderful lot, waking up early to carry bags of cement and gravel through the scorching sun and the pouring rain. It’s amazing to know that there are so many people like you who continue to give your time and energy to helping others. I know we might not all end up staying in touch, but thank you for being part of such an incredibly memory.

I still hope we cross paths again one day.

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, tacloban, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Beach Break

Posted on January 4, 2016 by brianwongderlust

Every volunteer needs a break every once in a while, so on the Sunday before Christmas, we went to Tulaan, a beach nearby. All volunteers work six days a week (Monday – Saturday) with a two-day weekend once a month, so the Sunday agenda is pretty vital to relax after a hard week of work. We woke up around 9:00am and piled into Melvin’s jeepney, eager for the beach day to help us unwind.

Everyone packed into Melvin’s Jeepney for a fun day at the beach!

Obligatory “out the window” shot of us driving. There will be more of these

Armed with three bottles of Tanduay and not much else, we cruised the open road, singing along to Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” like we were jumping in the hoopty hoopty hoop. We decided that since there wouldn’t be much food at the beach, we’d stop by a market and buy a bunch of food to barbecue for lunch. I took the opportunity to get some coconut buns and a bottle of C2, which is an apple-flavoured green tea and is absolutely amazing.

Stingrays we saw at the market where we got food for lunch. We didn’t buy these, but we did end up getting a bunch of veggies, fish, chicken, and pork

View from the market

After leaving the market with three more bottles of Tanduay and our food, it was only a short while until we arrived at Tulaan. Melvin parked the jeepney and we made our way out of the parking lot and down to the water.

The beach! We rented out this hut to store everyone’s stuff and hang out when we weren’t exploring the beach or in the water

Me trying to be artsy fartsy

Shot of the whole beach from our hut

While everyone else put on sunscreen and decided to go into the water, I wanted to explore the beach a bit. Call it a fear of getting cuts on rocks in the water and then having to work in E. Coli water or my lack of foresight in forgetting to pack a bathing suit, but I hadn’t gone on a walk by myself or climbed over rocks in a while so that’s exactly what I decided to do.

So walking down the beach I found this cool spot where I ended up taking tons of pictures. This is the first of many

…aaaand this is the second of many. Check out that sky reflection and the person passing by right in the middle of the frame. Trying to be artsy fartsy again

Same part of the beach as above but taken from the point of view of the person passing by

Pretty beachhhhh

Picture of the beach after I walked pretty far from our hut on my own by the rocks

An endless supply of rocks to walk over and explore

Found a hut and table further down the beach after the rocks

Kasia also exploring the rocky area of the beach and taking some pictures from the water

I love this place

I met up with Kasia who also seemed to be wandering the beach and taking heaps of pictures, but I ran out of water pretty quickly after so I headed back to the hut to fill up. When I got back, Melvin was getting ready to cook the pork, fish, chicken, veggies, and squid that we picked up at the market so I stayed for a bit and watched the master on the barbecue.

Melvin cooking lunch for the group on the barbecue

Remember when I said I found this cool spot and took a bunch of pictures? Well I went back and got a color one

Ash got drunk so Josh made sure he stayed hydrated

Oh yeah, we also had squid for lunch

After we finished eating everything off of banana leaves that Melissa found, the group decided to walk to a waterfall that was supposedly 100 meters from the beach. It was probably actually more like 800 meters, but no one was really able to explain the metric system to the folks who didn’t use it, and we ended up just walking anyway.

After lunch, the group takes a walk to a waterfall nearby

Walking to the waterfall

After walking on the muddy path for a bit, we arrived at the waterfall! Everyone jumped into the pool at the bottom of the falls while I scampered around taking pictures of everything from the safety of the rocks around the water.

We made it to the waterfall!

Everyone enjoying the pool at the bottom of the falls

View downstream

As close as I could get without getting my camera wet

Mustafa standing in the falls

Melvin letting the water wash over him

Pretty picture of the road

Pretty picture of the road the other way

After walking back from the waterfall, I made my way down the less rocky side of the beach. It was great to see the locals hanging out in their huts with homecooked meals on a lazy Sunday, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I got some pretty great pictures on this side of the beach too!

After the waterfall, I walked down the other end of the beach to find this dock

And more huts

Boat tied to a tree down the beach. This is my second favorite picture I took this day. The favorite is…

Stunning.

Me probably thinking about something

We stayed at the beach until sunset, when we packed up our bags and headed back to the jeepney to make the trip back to base.

Was able to catch this boat on the water with the sunset in the background right before we left

With the hard work we do during the week and the constant feeling of being exhausted, I’m really glad a group of us put in the extra energy to wake up and see the island a bit on our day off. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we all deserve a break from time to time, and even though the work we are doing requires us to be present during the entire week plus Saturday, a trip to the beach is sometimes necessary. After all, staying at base and blogging/sleeping/eating isn’t the only way to feel refreshed for the work week ahead!

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Streetlight Site Overview

Posted on January 3, 2016 by brianwongderlust

Streetlight is the name of the All Hands Philippines construction site where we are building a dormitory, office, study center, and clinic for an organization called Streetlight. This organization works with children living on the streets of Tacloban, Philippines and helps them create a better future for themselves. The dormitory will be used as a shelter for children living on the streets either due to homelessness or unhealthy family life, and the office will be used by the organization for administrative purposes. The study center will help the children develop skills to sustain themselves, and the clinic is needed because of need for medical care that many of these children experience coming from the streets.

Streetlight focuses on developing five aspects of a child’s life: social, emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual. The goal of the organization is for the children it takes in to be able to return to society as productive members of the community with skills to sustain themselves.

While I’ve only been at this site for a few days (most of my time here was spent working at Camansihay), the work we are doing here is incredible. With this construction site, we are also working with about 70 local carpenters, masons, steelmen, and laborers from around the area. Each have their own stories to tell and are incredibly friendly and open with the volunteers, making the site a completely unique experience. Laughing and talking with these locals, many of whom were hit by the typhoon, you can feel the impact we are making. We are not only rebuilding structures, but our presence in this country even after two years have passed is rebuilding hope. Whoever came up with the tagline “We are still here” was definitely on to something, and the most I’ve felt it was at this site.

Here are some pictures of the Streetlight project. It is scheduled to be completed in early 2016.

Sign detailing all of the different parts of site

So much sand and gravel bagged, vital when you pour concrete most days

Sand pile behind bags of sand. Also a first look at the office

This is the “mock up,” a building that is used to test different materials and designs before actual implementation on the active site structures

Path to the warehouse

Homemade site Christmas tree!

The office from one side

The office from another side

Path to the site entrance

Study center from one side

Study center from another side

Dormitory with scaffolding. One difference between Streetlight and Camansihay is that Streetlight doesn’t use concrete blocks, but instead pours layers of concrete in form boxes (reinforced with rebar) to build the walls

The clinic, which is designed and started, but does not currently have funding to complete

One of the workers sitting by the office during our break

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, streetlight, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

…And to All a Good Night!

Posted on December 30, 2015 by brianwongderlust

Merry (late) Christmas! I’ve finally gotten a chance to upload some photos from the All Hands Christmas party at the Streetlight construction site as well as the party at base. For those of you following the blog, we didn’t end up using the clay oven we hand-crafted because on Christmas Eve it rained so hard that the back area flooded with what we think was sewage water and giving everyone E. Coli on Christmas is not the gift we had in mind. We were still able to borrow an oven from someone in the area though, so all was well!

Believe it or not, this was my very first Christmas that I spent away from my family in the United States. Every single year, I would fly back to Southborough, Massachusetts for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the one guaranteed trip back home to see my relatives. I did spend Thanksgiving with them for the first time in seven years, but Christmas was very much an All Hands celebration.

The thing is it still felt like Christmas. I expected Christmas in a foreign country with sunny skies and near-ninety-degree weather to make it feel like a holiday, but not Christmas. It turns out I was wrong, and this All Hands family by default has grown into an actual family for me since my arrival. We all live on base, sleep on base, shower on base, work full days on site, and over this past month I’ve gotten to know a lot of the volunteers here. Christmas with these people wasn’t Christmas with mum and dad, but it was still Christmas with family.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Local workers at the Streetlight construction site unloading the Lechon (suckling pig) on to our table

Streetlight Christmas tree!

Hello there, delicious

Mustafa can’t eat pork, but he an still take a great picture

Local Streetlight worker beginning cutting the pig

Chop, chop, chop

Laying out the cooked pork over banana leaves

Volunteers, friends, family

Crissssspy skin

By the time he was finished, this guy was covered in pork juices

Christmas feast all laid out on the table

Ready, set, go!

Christmas Eve dinner at Dream Cafe – grilled liempo (pork belly) and rice accompanied with a glass of Johnnie Walker Gold

Christmas Eve Mass at Our Lady of Fatima , a church where Mark, one of the All Hands Staff, is a Lector

After Mass, they invited us in to share a meal!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas written in all sorts of languages on the whiteboard

Perfect weather for Christmas Day

Prep team peeling potatoes for dinner

Head chef Mark cutting the pork

Peeling endless potatoes

Preparing peppers

Potatoes are done! Carrot time!

Frying a fish in oil over one of our four burners

The beginnings of hummus without a food processor…or tahini

N64 emulator on Rory’s computer with USB controllers

Tomato-based sauce for the fried fish

Veggies for the nut roast. Look it up.

Wrapping shrimp in bacon

Sauce for the fish and some carrots

Preparing the nut roast. Again, look it up.

“Some people frown upon cooking four whole chickens in one pan”

Frying up some pumpkin patties!

Pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin

Tables are decorated for the big meal!

Homemade base tree

Stuffed chicken and ham, leftover from the church the night before

(Left to right) Nut roast, pumpkin patties, potatoes au gratin

(Left to right) Fried fish x2, bacon wrapped shrimp, chickens, mashed potatoes

(Left to right) Church leftovers, roasted veggies, pork stew, cucumbers, hummus, deviled eggs

Volunteers, staff, local staff, and their families all gathered at the dinner table

=) Love it here

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, Christmas, leyte, philippines, tacloban, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

When Life Hands You Construction Materials…

Posted on December 24, 2015 by brianwongderlust

…make an oven to cook Christmas dinner!

Following tradition where my sister and I cook Christmas dinner every year for our family, I’ve signed up to be part of the team cooking dinner for the All Hands Philippines base volunteers and local staff. We’re expecting around 100 diners once the local staff brings their families, and we’ve only got four gas burners, so the team decided to improvise a little bit. After all, what’s Christmas dinner without a nut roast/loaf?

Volunteers have already made benches and even a ping pong table from scrap material, so when someone suggested we fashion a stove with construction leftovers, I was totally on board. On sites where the local workers build sand sifters, metal wire tiers, mud tampers, and heaps of other construction tools, it shouldn’t be too hard to build an oven, right?

So, we gathered some cement, gravel, sand, and mud (so much mud) from one of the construction sites and got to work! Hopefully it holds up when we start cooking tomorrow…

Oven materials: 1 bag of cement, 2 bags of sand, 6 bags of gravel, 20 bags of mud/clay

Found some wire on base to make the skeleton of the oven

Reinforcing the skeleton with a second batch of wire

Mixing cement and mud/clay until its firm enough to pack on

Beginning to pack the clay mixture on to the skeleton. Allan very happy about this it seems.

Packing on more mud. It’s starting to take shape!

This looks like nothing, but it’s me inside the oven applying the inner layer of mud/clay/cement stuff

Finished! We added a concrete slab bottom for good measure as well as a pipe on the side for oxygen and a smokestack on top for, well, smoke

Firing the oven for the first time the next day. Slab was dry and there was a bit of smoke, but looks good so far!

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Camansihay Site Overview

Posted on December 23, 2015 by brianwongderlust

Camansihay is the name of an All Hands Philippines project in Tacloban where we are building a classroom for the Camansihay elementary school. While most All Hands Philippines projects are done in partnership with other organizations who provide funding, building plans, and other construction guidelines, Camansihay is a little different.

Rather than being built in partnership with other organizations, the Camansihay classroom is funded by an anonymous donor in the US who donated $22,000-23,000 (I forget the actual number). This means that the building design and approach can be designed completely by All Hands, as long as it meets certain country-wide specifications. So, All Hands is using a government classroom template with some modified materials (the original template is too expensive) and a customized septic tank. All modifications from the original template were signed off by a company contracting with the government, so it’s up to par with all country building specifications, including building precautions designed to ensure minimal structural damage during a typhoon.

The reason a new classroom is needed for the Camansihay school is that there is a large influx of permanent housing being built within the school district. This means that new students will soon be added to Camansihay, raising their student count to around 60-70 students per class (from 30-40). An extra classroom will help keep the average class size down and provide better resources for the children to learn.

Additionally, the customized septic tank in itself is actually quite interesting. The standard septic tank in the Philippines is a bottomless model, which means that there is a hole in the bottom for the waste to slowly seep out into the soil and disperse. There are many issues with this, but the main one being that waste does not reside in the tank long enough for the bacteria to die off. The bacteria then seeps into the soil and makes its way into water sources that are used for bathing and washing.

The septic tank we are installing for the classroom is a bit different. It comprises of two tanks that will minimize the amount of bacteria that ends up in the soil. The first tank has two chambers and holds the waste for a few days, allowing some of the bacteria to eat the nutrients in the waste. The idea is that once the nutrients are gone, the concentration of bacteria in the excrement will decrease, as it has nothing to feed off of. The first chamber is where the waste initially gets dumped, with solids sinking to the bottom and liquids overflowing into the second chamber.

2 chambers, 1 tank

After a few days, the liquids/semi-solids from the second chamber of the first tank will overflow into the second tank, where it stays for another few days, continuing the neutralization process. After the second tank, the materials are then distributed through three long pipelines, each with tiny holes throughout the length of the pipe to allow the mixture to disperse into the soil in small amounts over a large area. At this point, the amount of bacteria still in the waste is minimal, and the pipelines are buried below dense vegetation so the plants will suck up any of the remaining nutrients before it reaches a water source. The reason we don’t want bacteria in the water supply is obvious, but the reason we don’t want nutrients to reach the rivers is that nutrients will create algae, which takes up oxygen and kills fish.

Now that I’ve spent half a post talking about septic tanks and human waste, here are some pictures of the school site. It is scheduled to be completed by mid January.

Existing school buildings

More existing school buildings

Front view of our handy dandy cement mixer

Back view of the cement mixer with bags of sand

Our supply tent

Classroom before most of the walls are up

Walls are up! Hollow blocks, mortar, rendering

Inside with most of the rendered walls done!

More finished wall!

Back wall of the school!

Realllly deep hole for the septic tank

Trenches for the septic tank pipelines

CKI Forever. Live to serve. Love to serve.

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, tacloban, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Little Dreams

Posted on December 20, 2015 by brianwongderlust

Little Dreams set up at Cali, one of the past All Hands Philippines sites

Little Dreams is a program that All Hands Philippines puts on every Tuesday and Thursday where we show a family-friendly movie at either an active site or a site that was completed in the past. We get back from our normal work day, take showers, then head out to the site with a laptop, projector, screen, and speakers. When we get to the site, we walk through the area telling all of the children that we will be playing a movie, which normally prompts the local children and their parents to rush to our makeshift cinema.

Although the children don’t completely understand English, most of the movies are relatively easy to understand even without any audio. At the very least, we can definitely tell that the kids are enjoying the movie by the flood of laughter that erupts whenever they witness a funny moment. It’s in moments like these that we can sit back and appreciate what is happening.

These are children in areas with minimal access to electricity, internet, and most of the modern comforts we experience in the States, yet they are some of the happiest and lighthearted people I’ve ever met. Coming from a place where people complain about life on a daily basis, we can certainly learn to find joy in the smaller victories, seeing the good in situations rather than just the bad. Happiness is subjective, and it’s all in how you look at a situation. Sometimes an impromptu outdoor cinema is exactly all that’s needed to spread joy and happiness through a community.

Something amazing happened last week at Camansihay, the school site where we are building a classroom. This past Tuesday, we were scheduled to host Little Dreams at the basketball court just outside of the school, so the number one priority on site that day was to make sure the court was clean by the end of the day.

Let me set the scene for you. The site is on a hill – the basketball court is right at the entrance to the school near the top of the hill. From the basketball court, you would go through a gate and walk down the hill a bit to get to the school. There are a few buildings already functioning there, but if you walk even further down the hill through the school grounds, you eventually reach the site where we are building the new classroom.

So the big event for the day was that we were getting two truckloads of gravel delivered on the day of Little Dreams, and the only place where the trucks could unload was at the basketball court. So for the entire day, we had our eyes locked on the court, ready to put all hands on deck to transfer the two truckloads of gravel from the court down to our site in order to keep the court clear for the movie to be shown later that night.

The first load came in after lunch, and we worked together to get most of the gravel down to the classroom site quickly, but by the time the second truck dumped gravel on the court, a lot of us were tired, sluggish, and one of us even fell dehydrated and ill. Still, we worked and we worked, bagging gravel and then carrying bags while others used our wheelbarrows to wheel more gravel down the muddy hill to our classroom site.

By about 3:00 in the afternoon, it became apparent that we were not going to be able to move all of the gravel ourselves, clean our tools, and leave the site to go back to base at 4:00 (We needed to do this in order to shower, pack up, and leave base again at 5:30 to get to the court in time to set up for Little Dreams). Still, we worked harder and harder, fully knowing we would not be able to clear the court in time with our available resources.

I remember the next moments quite clearly. I had just carried a bag of gravel down the hill and through the mud to our gravel pile by the classroom, and I was dragging myself back up the hill to get another bag when a shirtless man ran by me with two bags stacked on his shoulder. As I neared our gravel pile, I heard more voices, and I was shocked to see about ten of the local Filipino workers from a completely different construction site helping bag and carry gravel down the hill. They must have heard about Little Dreams and decided to leave their job site to clear out the court for the movie that night. The feeling of walking up that hill, hearing voices, and seeing so many locals helping us out with our gravel pile was just so overwhelmingly wonderful.

Little Dreams is so much more than just a movie on a given night – it’s bringing something special and magical to children who otherwise might not be able to experience a night watching a film. Those local construction workers understood its impact on the community, and they spent their own time helping us bring this wonderful treat to the neighborhood. It brings light and laughter to those who truly appreciate it, and that’s always worth putting in the extra effort.

Posted in Philippines | Tagged all hands, leyte, philippines, travel, volunteer, wongderlust | Leave a comment

Brianwongderlust

I’m Moving to Korea!

So Long, Sweet Philippines

Finding Myself on Sambawan Island

Saying Goodbye to Traveling Friends

Beach Break

Streetlight Site Overview

…And to All a Good Night!

When Life Hands You Construction Materials…

Camansihay Site Overview

Little Dreams

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