1. Pre-departure

Hello friends! This page will serve as my companion this summer as I chronicle my experiences as an intern in Southeast Asia. Tomorrow, I set off for Manila, Philippines to begin my summer as an intern in the Social Enterprise Development department at Human Nature, a Philippine cosmetics company. Human Nature is more than your everyday supplier of lotions and soaps, they truly focus on uplifting their fellow Filipinos in a grassroots way. The purpose of Human Nature – and the purpose of my internship – is beyond the bottom line numbers and financial ratios. Human Nature operates to better the lives of Filipinos from the farms to the office, and every step in between. I will be helping to collectivize other startups in the Philippines in hopes that more socially centered enterprises will be able to develop along a similar trajectory as our friends at Human Nature.

I hope this page will serve to share my experiences in the Philippines with anyone who will listen, I am sure there will be many stories to tell. Stay tuned!

 

 

 

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9. GK Fridays

 

Part of Human Nature’s employment policy includes a provision for one volunteer day per month. Considering HN’s relationship with Gawad Kalinga, it’s only natural that many of these facilitated volunteer opportunities are house builds for upcoming GK communities. The Social Enterprise Development team made Friday, July 22 a GK Friday. In total, there were 16 volunteers from Human Nature who decided to give up their Friday to get their hands dirty to build a community from scratch for a group of people with disabilities. In addition to the Human Nature volunteers, there was a group from ABS-CBN as well as various individual volunteers.

Most of the morning was spent digging foundations for the new houses by hand. It was exhausting work, especially when the heat and humidity are factored in. One skill I’ve improved in drastically over the course of this trip is accepting the fact that the threshold of acceptable sweatiness is significantly different in this climate – it’s unavoidable, and accepting that makes any activity much more enjoyable – including house building! However, I was more excited than normal for the lunch hour to arrive, I had definitely worked up an appetite. After lunch, there was a mixture of avoiding rain, interacting with the community members (especially the children), and moving dirt from foundations to the designated dirt pile, for lack of a better term. Some of the most awe-inspiring experiences on this trip haven’t been the beautiful landscapes or the turquoise waters or even the cuisine (which I have enjoyed immensely); the most awesome experiences for me have been witnessing pervasive, unadulterated happiness from children who may not even know where their next meal is coming from – and definitely don’t have the latest and “greatest” in entertainment technology.

This GK Friday was beyond tiring, but interacting with my co-workers in a different setting and learning more about them as well as interacting with other volunteers and community members was well worth the sweat and the hard work. It was also rewarding to perpetuate Human Nature’s social mission in action outside the office and in actual communities working alongside our beneficiaries, not from above them. To me, that’s the special thing about Human Nature’s structure. Not only does Human Nature employ people other companies might not look twice at, they also give their time to work on the ground with the poor in community development and interact with them on a personal level. This not only serves to put up more physical houses, it also serves to keep the larger goal in sight for Human Nature’s employees; it brings the focus away from the daily stresses of work in the office back to the values at the center of the company. It’s important to keep the “why” behind the work in focus.

 

8. MAD Travel to Baler

After spending a little more than a month on a tropical archipelago, I thought for certain I’d have a plethora of relaxing beach weekends. Until my trip to Baler with MAD (Make a Difference) Travel, I hadn’t even seen the ocean! Crazy, I know. Baler is all the way on the eastern coast of the island Luzon – the largest island in the Philippines, and my home base. Before we took off for the beach, we stopped at a Gawad Kalinga community in Caloocan, a city in Metro Manila. There we spent time with some of the resident families, particularly the children. We also took a trip to the market to buy supplies for dinner that night – which the eight IWU interns (and a friend) were in charge of preparing. The menu consisted of chopsuey (a vegetable dish) and chicken adobo (this Filipino staple is chicken or pork prepared in a sauce of garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, and bay leaves, in its simplest form). And the meal’s featured carbohydrate was – you guessed it – white rice. Thankfully for everyone involved, we weren’t thrown to the wolves to cook by ourselves – one of the nanays (mothers) in the community was there to provide timely instruction. Thursday night, after the meal, we slept with a host family in the GK Silver Heights community and arose promptly at 5:00 AM (wait, that was just me) for breakfast at 7.

When breakfast was finished, and the rain died down a bit, we were to set out for Baler, Aurora. We knew we had a lengthy trip ahead of us (estimated at around 5 hours for the ~165 mile journey), but we didn’t realize exactly how long it would be. When the rain, Manila traffic, a slow lunch, mountains, and a flat tire are all factored in, our trip totaled just about 9 hours. We arrived in Baler in just enough time to eat dinner, avoid being attacked by any sharks during a short night-swim in the ocean, and head to sleep. On Saturday morning, we visited another GK community near Baler to spend some time with the kids in the community.

We were also treated to an excellent Boodle Fight by the titas (aunties) of the village. A Boodle Fight is essentially a feast laid out on long banana leaves where eating with your hands is the customary (and most efficient) way to dine. The next activity on the agenda was surfing lessons back in Baler. Unfortunately for me, I was the last one of our group to get the hang of it. But, after switching boards to a longer one (sorry, Chris), I was able to finally stand up and ride a few waves. Surfing is quite fun, but I must admit I prefer water skiing.

The final activity for our group was a mountain trek with an indigenous tribe in search of a waterfall. The locals advised us to wear flip flops, as there would be a substantial amount of wading through the river (they weren’t wrong). The difficulty, however, was navigating all the rocks along the riverbed. Thankfully for my upcoming track season, I made it out of the flip flop trek with both ankles intact! The journey itself was quite worth the unsure footing, featuring mountains on either side, untamed rainforest (which is unfortunately rare in this country after its history of logging), and the waterfall featuring water clean enough to drink.

Upon returning to the village, we were met with another Boodle Fight, which is quickly becoming my favorite activity at this point in my trip.

Fast-forward to our trip home, which involved stopping for sustenance at a bakery before we left (I bought a hot coconut roll for around $0.20, worth every penny) and stopping again at the largest Balete tree in Asia. The tree itself was an interesting sight, it looked more like a collection of vines shooting up from the ground than an actual tree. Anyway, the tree is more than 600 years old, and even has grown to the point where visitors can walk (with some expert maneuvering) through the tree from one side to the other! Naturally, as we were leaving the Balete tree, the rainy season’s wrath made its presence felt just in time to turn the 5-6 hour trip into another 8+ hour journey. I have mixed feelings about saying this, but I was quite excited to return to Quezon City by this point, perhaps a sign of growing familiarity? Or maybe I was just ready for a brilliant night’s sleep.

 

7.Social Enterprise Development – What it Means

After working here at Human Nature for a month, I must admit my daily responsibilities are quite different than my initial expectations. Effectively, I do very little related to the business operations of Human Nature in the traditional sense, but I am intimately involved with perpetuating Human Nature’s vision, which is to “be the gold standard of a globally successful enterprise with a heart that will embolden all businesses to better serve society.” My duties mostly revolve around the last clause – emboldening other businesses to better serve society. The Social Enterprise Development team is employed by Human Nature to help develop and collectivize other social enterprises in the Philippines, thereby developing the overall social enterprise landscape of the country which will broaden the scope of development in the country itself.

That description certainly sounds lofty and quite idealistic, mostly because it is. But, that’s the entire point of a social enterprise, no? In terms of concretely describing what exactly I am doing, the goal becomes less shrouded in such an idyllic mist. At times, I feel a bit like an external auditor because a lot of what the SED team does is to evaluate other social enterprises’ wage structure (focus on regularization and benefits also), supply chain, distribution chain, social impact, and the production process itself. This process is conducted mostly in a personal way, including site visits and informal interviews which lend insight to the operations of our social enterprise partners. The goal of these evaluations is to ensure that the social enterprise is sustainable in its operations (environmentally and financially), as well as to ensure that the social enterprise actually has a positive social impact on its target beneficiaries – not to be a detached third-party auditor. Through this entire process, the most important goal is forming meaningful relationships with other social enterprises, and helping them to reach their goals in a sustainable, socially impactful way.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of the SED team’s function is how little we have to do with actual Human Nature business operations in the traditional sense. It feels almost like we are ambassadors to other social enterprises. The SED team is essentially in charge of making the second clause of Human Nature’s vision a reality, which is quite a responsibility! The ultimate goal of my internship is to help create a Social Enterprise Guild, which would be a collection of social enterprise partners here in the Philippines focused on collaboration, sharing of resources (mostly knowledge), and continuing the development of the social enterprise landscape in the Philippines to have the largest positive social impact possible. As the cliché goes, two heads is better than one. In our case, ten, fifteen, or twenty heads is definitely better than one.

 

Here ends my most visually bland blog post – I apologize. To make it up, my upcoming post about this past weekend in Baler will definitely make up for it!

6. Trip to Taal

On the back of the 50 peso note is a peculiar, but well known volcano in the Philippines known as Taal Volcano. Peculiar because of its almost paradoxical perch on an island in a lake that happens to be on a larger island in the ocean. Oh, and in the crater of the volcano? There’s another tiny island in the lake that fills the crater. Got all that? One more time, it’s an island on a lake on an island on a lake on an island on the ocean. Phew. Anyway, last weekend, eight of us IWU students decided to give the paradoxical volcano a climb.

 

 

 

After a bus ride from Metro Manila to Los Baños Friday night, we all awoke early Saturday morning for a large breakfast from the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) cafeteria and hopped on a van set for Batangas province, site of Taal. We got to the shore of the first lake a bit before 9 AM and quickly hopped on a boat and set out again, this time for the volcano itself. The boat ride took maybe 15 minutes, and after another 15 minutes, we were ready to begin the trek. It gets humid in Illinois occasionally, but at 9:30 in the morning, you’re usually pretty safe from the heat. That wasn’t exactly the case here in the Philippines. The heat itself was manageable, but add in the 85+% humidity and the 2 km hike felt just a bit longer than that. All in all, the hike was quite enjoyable (after finally accepting the fact that sweating through your shirt is the only option). The Spanish trail, which we took, is quite well traveled and equally well marked; which allowed us to focus on the fantastic view. The trail is not well covered by trees, so the whole trek was gradually more beautiful as we put more steps behind us.

 

The hike, from first step to last, took us only about one hour, with quite a few breaks whenever a good chunk of shade was available. The first thing I noticed at the peak of the volcano was the light breeze – more pronounced at the top than at any point during the ascent. It was the most welcome presence, maybe more than the view that awaited us twenty feet ahead! Before I include a picture of the crater, I have to preface that my camera had quite a difficult time fitting the whole of the crater in one frame – this had nothing to do with any sort of operator error!

 

 

 

I may have lied, all the other interns photos look much better than mine but I tried to be competent, I promise! After a supremely sweaty and sufficiently exhausting morning, we rolled into a Yellow Cab Pizza around 2:00 for a highly anticipated meal. You’re probably thinking “pizza?” Yes, pizza. There is quite the array of food choices here in the Philippines, and a familiar slice (or 5) of pizza is quite a welcome sight now and then. Especially when the restaurant features such a view.

 

5. Villa Socorro Farm

Part of my responsibilities in the social enterprise development (SED) department is to participate in site visits to some of the social enterprises supported by Human Nature. This Tuesday, Mike (my supervisor and the SED Department Head), Wanna (a Category Manager in the SED department), and myself headed to Pagsanjan, Laguna, the site of the farm. To get to Pagsanjan, we had to travel Southwest of the city, and through the mountains. The total trip is around 60 miles, but with the traffic and the geography, the trip took a little more than three hours. Villa Socorro is a banana plantation as well as a producer of banana chips. The supply chain is probably the most important part of meeting production needs, as well as a vehicle for the enterprise’s social impact. Social enterprises are different than traditional business models, because they focus on a triple bottom line model: people, planet, and profit; whereas traditional for-profit businesses focus solely on profit. The exact definition of a social enterprise is a dynamic issue, and there are many different viewpoints as to the exact requirements for a business to be considered a truly social enterprise. This is the primary reason for our visit to our social enterprise partners. The reason for our visit is not so much to be a strict external auditor, but more to build a stronger relationship with the enterprise, understand their production process and supply chain, and most importantly to ensure that the business is really doing what they say they are doing – the hallmark of a true social enterprise.

Villa Socorro’s social mission is to improve the livelihood of small provincial farmers by creating a market for bananas and inducing price competition for those bananas by paying higher prices which raises the trading price of bananas in the overall market and provides incentive for farmers to plant bananas in the first place. Villa Socorro also provides a guaranteed market for farmers to move large quantities of bananas regularly. In the wet market (raw bananas for sale in small fruit stands or supermarkets), a farmer would be lucky to move 500 pieces at one time. To meet Villa Socorro’s daily production needs, the plant needs some 16,000 bananas per day, which creates a fairly consistent demand for bananas – and at a higher price – which leads to greater currency circulation throughout the local communities and provides a higher standard of living for local farmers producing bananas. Additionally, Villa Socorro provides planting materials for free to farmers interested in raising bananas. This level of advocacy, skills training, and market presence enhances the local economy and surely qualifies Villa Socorro as a social enterprise. Most of the employees in the plant are local residents, and much of the production is manualized – by design – in order to retain more employment opportunities for people in the community beyond farmers.

All in all, a little escape from the city (which can definitely be overwhelming at times) to really get in on the ground and understand some of the mechanisms my team is responsible for – a sort of inside look at a particularly successful social enterprise – was a very welcome experience. It may be the first time in my life that a trip around 60 miles took a solid 3 hours, but I suppose that’s a virtue of my locale. I’m sure I will get used to the city, but the site visit came at a perfect time to get a little fresh air and perspective of the social enterprise department’s purpose – to understand and assist partner social enterprises in order to change the landscape of the Philippines. In my time here so far, I have been lucky enough to hear from our co-founder and chairman, Dylan Wilk, talk about the purpose of Human Nature beyond just selling cosmetics. He really believes social enterprises can change the landscape of businesses in the Philippines to the point that social entrepreneurship is the normal way of doing business, certainly a lofty goal but it makes the mission of my department a very easy one to understand.

Some pictures from the farm and the forestry portion of Villa Socorro (About half the acreage is devoted to banana farming and the other half to native forestry; additionally, there is also a bed and breakfast on the property!)

My teammate, Wanna, and I with Tito Mars – a founder of Villa Socorro

A junk shop themed room – part of the Bed & Breakfast.

Banana tree with flower in bloom

4. GK Enchanted Farm

Yikes, I’m already falling behind on my blog. Things happen so quickly that I feel like I barely have time to write everything down! Bear with me, I’ll get caught up here with a little two for one action. So, here we go! Last Wednesday (June 15) Liz and I arrived at the office like any other day, only to find out we were taking a trip with the rest of the new hires to the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm for a new hires immersion. Thankfully, I brought gym clothes with me to work: my office attire would have surely meant death by humidity. For a little background, the GK Farm is sort of the “Silicon Valley” of social enterprise, and the incubator that bred Human Nature. Social enterprises, for those unfamiliar with the term, are business with a social mission at the core of their existence. For example, Human Nature’s social mission is uplifting the poor and ending poverty for millions of Filipinos: no small task. The trip only took around an hour and a half, and the Philippine countryside was a welcome (and beautiful) sight after the first couple of tiring and overwhelming days in Metro Manila. Upon arriving, we received a short history lesson about the conception of Gawad Kalinga, their mission in incubating social enterprises and giving poor Filipinos a chance to develop skills and work in a supportive community. We also learned about how Gawad Kalinga (literally, “to give care”) is central to the operations of Human Nature, and the goal of being the gold standard of a social enterprise while offering assistance to many of the smaller, budding social enterprises developing at Gawad Kalinga. This trip really framed our purpose as an organization (and as interns) at Human Nature, and was critical to our understanding of Human Nature’s approach to end poverty in the Philippines, which is their social mission. In addition, GK features a village university, which serves to educate its population on social enterprise and social enterprise development. GK is focused on holistic change by providing skills training, education, and mentorship to all its residents.

After brushing up on our history, we sat down for an expertly prepared lunch with six other Illinois Wesleyan students – interning at the Farm. We eagerly exchanged stories of our experiences so far, while perhaps even more eagerly filling our stomachs. Here, we met Tito Tony Meloto, the founder of GK and the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s 2006 Filipino of the Year. Tito Tony, quite the inspiring speaker, welcomed us to the community and told us about the people here – and their mission to end poverty from the inside out. Here is a group of the new-hires with Tito Tony:

The worst type of poverty in the Philippines, according to Tito Tony, is poverty of the mind and of the heart. Giving Filipinos hope, a reason to dream for more, and the courage to follow their own ideas is the key to ending poverty of the pocket.When lunch was completed, the Human Nature group toured the various social enterprises located in the GK community. From a bakery, an iced tea produced with lemongrass (a typically useless plant, producing surprisingly tasty tea), a business employing many mothers in the community to hand-sew plush toys and keychains, to a salted duck egg production facility, each of these small enterprises illustrates a key value of a recent Human Nature campaign titled “the genius of the poor.” Gawad Kalinga provides space, resources in the form of labor (wages paid by each social enterprise), and a supportive infrastructure to help small social enterprises grow that would otherwise likely never reach shelves. Human Nature also acts as a distributor for many of these products.

Our next stop was the farm itself, there is a large mango orchard as well as some plots featuring lemongrass and other grasses that produce essential oils for Human Nature’s products. We even participated in some farm work – leveling ground alongside a 20 year old farmer, village university student, and GK resident Danilo.

Tito Tony informed us that farm work begins at 5 AM and spans 13 hours until around 6 PM daily. We concluded our visit by sharing values we received earlier in the day and applying them to Human Nature, our daily lives, and our experience at the farm. Most of this discussion was in Tagalog, so I don’t have much to share beyond that. Ha! Interestingly, most of the signs around the city are in English, but most of the communication takes place in Tagalog; something I didn’t initially expect, but makes sense from a cultural identity standpoint. The GK experience is critical to understanding both the origin of Human Nature as a company, and the social enterprise movement here in the Philippines from an insider’s perspective.

Sidebar: I realize that I haven’t explained any of the titles I’ve been giving people, like Kuya and Tito. These are respectful titles used to address others (particularly those older than you are) and translate to mean something similar to “older brother” and “uncle.” Ate and Tita translate to something like “older sister” and “auntie.”

3. The Great Snafu

Monday, June 13 marked our departure from Los Baños to our longer-term destination – Quezon City, Metro Manila. Liz and I as well as four IWU students interning with the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (also in Metro Manila) departed with Tito Mon and Kuya Mellord – two of our local contacts – for the city around 6:00 AM. Traffic was surprisingly light, especially considering this was the first day of school for many of the schools in the Philippines, and so we arrived at FNRI an hour early. The six interns and Tito Mon entered the FNRI building and received the general tour. FNRI is a division of the Department of Science and Technology, a governmental agency, and the compound was quite large.

After tagging along for some of the FNRI students’ orientation, Liz and I along with Tito Mon returned to the van to make the trip to Quezon City – the site of the Human Nature office and my internship for the summer. I mentioned the thick traffic in an earlier post, but upon arrival at Human Nature, I realized just how intense Manila traffic can really be. Human Nature sits on Commonwealth Avenue, which happens to be the largest highway in the Philippines. Commonwealth features 8 lanes of traffic headed each direction. Traffic can be so dense that left turns do not exist along this stretch. Instead, there are designated U-turn lanes every half kilometer or so (around a quarter mile).

Before entering the office, we made the short trip to the apartment complex where we were to stay for the summer. The apartments were a short distance from Human Nature – maybe 150 meters, which was well within walking distance. There were 4 apartments in the building, the third door on the left was to be the site of my “rest and respite” for the summer. We got the initial tour, two bedrooms, a small kitchen and bathroom, and an entryway/living room combination. But, we weren’t there to stay and we dropped off our luggage and headed to the nearest mall to get lunch and kill a bit of time. Important note: malls are everywhere in the Philippines, and not just your ordinary malls, gigantic complexes filled with not only stores, but seemingly never ending rows of kiosks. Sometimes it is hard to tell where one kiosk ends and another begins. Tito Mon informed us that the mall we were attending was relatively small, which came as a surprise to me as there were 3 floors featuring a church on the third floor, and a supermarket on the first.

We settled on Mang Inasal, a fast food-type restaurant on the first floor of the mall which sells primarily grilled chicken and rice (with an unlimited rice option for only about 20 pesos extra – an option I found to be quite attractive). After lunch, there was still a bit of time left to kill and our driver, also named Ramon, was in the market for a new phone accessory so we watched him haggle away with a kiosk attendant. Haggling is a skill that comes quite in handy here – most items do not even have a price tag, and it is important to settle on a reasonable price. I usually consider myself quite thrifty, but haggling in tagalog is quite a different ball game for me. Hopefully it is a skill I will master before long, for the sake of my wallet!

Around 12:00 we finally left the mall and set our sights on the Human Nature office. Ten minutes and two U-turns later, we arrived at the ivy covered complex and walked into the store that occupies the first floor. The Human Nature store is a sleek, modern space with some impressive woodwork.  Most importantly, the store has air conditioning! Most of the work day Monday consisted of the grand tour; which was more taxing than one might think because of the tiered structure of the building. To go from one office to another, oftentimes the only way to do so is to walk outside, go up or down a flight of stairs, and duck into a different door. Upon leaving the office for the day, with a new friend from Human Nature, we went back to the mall to get some dinner and find a few simple groceries. We ate at the same restaurant as lunch, because by this time, both Liz’s and my stomachs were questioning exactly what we were doing to them – and grilled chicken and rice sounded like a safe option.

June is a transitionary period between the end of summer and the beginning of the rainy (monsoon) season. Although I definitely knew the rainy season was approaching, with all the other adjustments happening all at the same time, the last thing on my mind was carrying an umbrella. Surely enough, as soon as we exited the front of the mall, we were met with the sound of seemingly golf ball sized raindrops pounding the pavement and cars ahead of us. Without umbrellas, traveling back to the apartment complex seemed out of the question. After maybe 15 minutes of waiting, we decided we were tired of waiting, and caved in and each bought an umbrella for 150 pesos each – around 3 USD. We braved the downpour and made a pit-stop at a nearby Starbucks for our first taste of sweet, sweet Wi-Fi since leaving the airport late Friday night. Liz and I immediately called our parents – who couldn’t have been more overjoyed than we were to hear their voices. With all the turbulence of the weekend, we were both feeling homesick. A feeling I didn’t expect to have so quickly upon arrival.

Finally, we reached the apartment complex a little before 9:00 in the evening. Exhausted from the day, I decided I would unpack later and focused my efforts on getting some much needed rest. I fell asleep rather quickly, but was rudely awakened by an unwelcome visitor – whose identity remains unknown to me still – crawling across my legs. By midnight, I had given up on sleeping for the night. My decision was affirmed when I opened the bathroom door to be met by a beady pair of eyes owned by a nice, plump rat. I couldn’t tell you which one of us was more surprised to see the other, as he nearly jumped out of his skin and I jumped back so far I banged the back of my head on the stairs. Thank goodness for Spotify premium, as the familiar sounds of music comforted both Liz – who gave up on sleep after being awoken by the “thud” created when my skull met the stairs – and I as we stood guard the rest of the night.

Emotions were already running high by this point, considering our chats with our parents and the unshakable feeling of homesickness, so the rest of the night proceeded very slowly. As the cliché goes, every cloud has its silver lining. This situation was no different for Liz and myself. Some colleagues from Human Resources decided that resting all day Tuesday would be much more productive for us than anything we could bring to the office that day. So, Ate Eeena Meloto graciously offered to arrange for us to rest at her house for the day, to catch up on missed sleep and to adjust from the still nagging jet lag. Miss Eena assured us that she would start searching for another place for us to stay immediately. By the time I awoke from my morning nap, my Philippine phone had already been reached by Kuya Mellord, apologizing profusely for our rough experience and long night, and assuring us he would be on top of the search for a new place. For the night, we were taken in by a friend on Liz’s team in International Business, Arabela (Arab), and her family in a beautiful home in Mandaluyong City.

The silver lining was not the change of scenery, or the outcome of the situation (a new place to stay). The silver lining for us was the understanding, caring, and hospitable nature of everyone at Human Nature and our local contacts in Los Baños. They spared no time or resource in ensuring that our experience in the Philippines would be comfortable, productive, and ultimately enjoyable. The care extended by our Filipino hosts was something that I will remember always, and am currently extremely grateful for. Wednesday evening, we met Kuya Mellord and Kuya Carlo for dinner near Arab’s house in Mandaluyong City and we both thanked our two friends for everything they had done, and their fierce hospitality – a trait Mellord assured me was a Filipino staple, and he was definitely not lying.

2. Time Travel, Justin Bieber, ng Maganda Umaga

Time travel exists! Well, it feels that way at least. My first trans-Pacific flight hurled me 13 hours into the future, talk about an adjustment. Essentially, June 10, 2016 didn’t really exist – we traveled right past it. As far as logistics go, the travel portion of this trip have been excellent. Our flight from O’Hare to Incheon (Seoul, South Korea) was on time, and quite hospitable. The food was solid, and plentiful which made the trip less exhausting than my original expectation.

14 hours of flight time later, we touched down in Seoul, South Korea where we experienced a ~4 hour layover. While waiting for our connection to Manila, food became the first priority of the group. There were various food court style restaurants in the airport and we settled on a Korean style sushi restaurant. I ordered the spicy pork rolls, to which attendant warned me of just how spicy they were, I stubbornly stuck with my order only to find out how right he was. The three chili peppers on the menu ought to have been an indication that I should have been a bit more cautious with my order. Thankfully, Liz had just come back with a yogurt smoothie, which I sipped as if it were the elixir of life after each bite. After the meal, we sat and played euchre for the rest of our wait.

The connecting flight from Seoul to Manila was unfortunately delayed, but only by about 45 minutes. After takeoff, we were just three and a half hours from our final destination – Manila, Philippines. After another in-flight movie (this time, an…interesting romantic comedy), a meal, and a brief nap, we touched down in Manila around midnight local time. By this time, our total travel time was around 22 hours. After meeting our escort, Kuya Mellord, and claiming our luggage, we headed for Los Baños, the site of our orientation (and sleep) for the weekend. My first impression – besides the oppressive humidity even in the middle of the night, and the fact that the first face shining back at me in the parking lot was Colonel Sanders – was of the huge difference between American and Philippine traffic. Manila was lively, even at 1:30 AM, filled with cars and people everywhere I looked. Finally, around 2:30 AM we had reached our resting place – a dormitory at the Center for Continuing Education at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. Throughout our travels – which totaled around ~30 hours for me including my trip from home to O’Hare, I had slept for a total of maybe 30 minutes. I was tired.

Fast-forward to 1:00 the next afternoon and we began our orientation meeting, which included a brief history of the Philippines and a crash course in survival Filipino language (or Tagalog). To be honest, the ~3 hour course on language survival found me overwhelmed and frankly, unsure of how I would be able to function with the locals. I’ve made it this far though! After our orientation, the group of the 18 interns and our local guides piled into a jeepney  – which I am a bit tall for –  and headed to a floating restaurant for dinner. Tito Mon and his family wanted to welcome us to the Philippines right by taking us to a traditional Filipino restaurant where we ate buffet style from plates lined with banana leaves. We ate adobo (pork and chicken marinated in a soy sauce mixture), grilled tilapia, grilled pork belly, chopsuey, sour soup with shrimp/fish/or pork, and of course: rice. The food was delicious, and was accompanied by a quartet who sang Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, as well as some Filipino songs. At this moment, I was for the first time able to put aside my nerves and anxiety and really appreciate the hospitality of our hosts and take in the beauty of my surroundings for the first time.

By the time we returned to the dormitory after dinner, the exhaustion had really set in. Since Thursday morning at 5:30 Central time, I had slept for about 6 hours. It was Saturday at around 8 PM Philippine time by this point. I finally had my first night of restful sleep Saturday night and awoke around 6 AM ready to find some breakfast. Liz and I ventured out to a restaurant not far from our dormitory, and ordered our meals while we were serenaded by Frank Sinatra over the radio. The restaurant featured some gorgeous woodwork, from the tables and chairs to the decorative carvings lining the walls. I had sausage, a fried egg, rice, and coffee, all of which were terrific, all for 150 PHP – around $3.12. Following breakfast, Liz and I decided to explore our surroundings. We walked past two baseball fields on campus and looked up to see banana trees, coconut trees, and a stunning outcropping of mountains looking down on the campus. Maganda Umaga translates to “good/beautiful morning.” Sunday morning in Los Baños was certainly that.