My Tale

After graduating high school, I took a gap year to volunteer abroad. I taught English at an after-school program in Antigua, Guatemala before taking a course to earn my "Teaching English as a Foreign Language" (TEFL) certificate to teach internationally as a paid instructor. (The blog for that experience is here.) I was there for about four months before coming home to celebrate Christmas with my family, hang out for a little bit, and turn around to journey onto Part II of my year off of school.

At KIDS Restaurant where my older students were working on a Friday night.

While I was in Guatemala, my mom & my lola (that's Tagalog for grandma) discussed Lola wanting to visit her sister back in Manila and her being unable/unwilling to travel alone...which is where I came into the picture. I was in the process of making plans to go to Colombia when my mom approached me with the idea of taking Lola to the Philippines.

Plans changed quickly and soon after that I was looking up non-profit organizations to get involved in for the four months I'd be spending in those tropical Pacific islands, hoping to find a women or girls' support group to work with as either a mentor or teacher.

So now here I am in that far away place I've been hearing about my whole life, sitting in the house of my tita that I met three days ago, sweating, listening to the man with the cart shout about the corn he's selling. And friends, it appears as if the adventure has already begun.