First day, first impressions

What a city! I wonder if I am ever going to find my way around!

Anyways, Thursday evening I arrived safe in what will be my new home for the coming months. I am living together with 3 other students (soon 4). Two of them (Sarah and Katrijn) are following the same course as me in Belgium and the other one (Sanne) is from The Netherlands (doing her thesis research). We have a very nice house. A nice place to come home to after a day traveling through Cebu-city…

I still call it travelling, as it’s a real adventure. The traffic is so busy, so chaotic…every transportation method is possible…on foot, by bicycle, tricycle, taxi, car, djeepney, bus, motorcycle,... and you honk or ring or yell your way through the traffic. We mostly use a djeepney to travel from one place to another. Djeepney’s are a kind of pick-up trucks…but with a roof. Each driver can decorate his own djeepney…and they are not afraid to use as many colors as possible! :) Although these djeepney’s always follow the same route and there is a logic in it all…I still wonder if I am ever going to find my way around. You can compare these djeepney’s to busses in the West, but they can stop everywhere. You just have to yell “Lugar lang” or knock on the roof and they stop. Quite handy, but for now still confusing.

As a result of the traffic the air in Cebu-city isn’t that fresh anymore…a lot of people are using a tissue to cover their mouth when in busy streets. Besides the bad air, the streets are also very dirty.

Friday I went with Sanne and Katrijn to their organization (WRCV: Women Resource Centre Visayas). We went to visit a school and in the afternoon we attended the graduation of some children from a daycare centre. Yes…a graduation. Graduation is a big event in The Philippines and even the smallest of them all can enjoy this. Graduation is for everybody who is leaving daycare center, elementary school, high school, college and university. As Summer holidays are soon starting here, there are graduation ceremonies almost every day. Anyways, the graduation of these children was very nice. They were all wearing a white toga and the girls were nicely made up. They all received one or several ribbons (f.e. best in oral, best in reading, most polite, …) and a medallion. The parents so proud!

Afterwards we were invited for diner in Ayala Mall by CPaG; The organization for which I will be doing my internship. A way to meet all the staff and the executive director. Hmm Ayala Mall…a huge mall, with way too many stores. There are several malls to be found in Cebu-city, but Ayala is the biggest. All the expensive brands have a shop and you can find all main American food chains (from KFC to McDon to starbucks). :) When in the mall you can easily forget that you are in The Philippines…you might as well be in the States. What a difference with what I saw in the afternoon...The mall is airconditioned (coming from outside it can do some good, but after a while a sweater could be handy), clean, trendy, rich, ... and you can have a drink outside on the terraces, where you wont be disturbed by noisy traffic. It can be nice (escaping the chaos)...but it just doesn't feel that good.

What else did I learn during this first day: Cebuano’s are not very subtle in staring, they love to be on photos and to take photos of us, very poor and very rich living next to each other, very American-like society (colonization), they love to celebrate and make jokes, Cebuano (the language) is a mixture of Spanish, English and the real Cebuano (f.e. they count in Spanish, to say “but” they use the Spanish word “pero”. Why Spanish? Colonization for about 300 years…).

I have to admit…the first day released quite some emotions :) and yes...it is hot here! ;-)