Puerto Galera and PST2

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Busy in that I've been away from site and traveling a bit, not so busy in the sense that I've also been sitting around on my ass most of the time. First I went to Mindoro, the island south of Luzon, to meet up with 7 friends on white beach in Puerto Galera. There are definitely more beautiful beaches in the Philippines, but it is low season so it wasn't crowded and things were cheap. Lots o layin on the beach, playing in the ocean, eating good food, and drinkin beers. We found an authentic Italian restaurant that had things like prosciutto, mozzarella, rosemary....No idea where this stuff came from and how it was all so fresh, but we are still talking about that dinner. You have to understand how bad the food is that we eat day to day here, so something like that is totally memorable. So that was Puerto. From there we took a boat back to Luzon, and rented a van that was too small for our crew and all our backpacks, and being the smallest I naturally got voted to be in the back snuggled up with all the huge backpacks. It was quite a ride. But on the boat ride, the boat broke (engine just stopped....Typical and not at all surprising) so we just floated around for a while and waited for another boat to come tow us to shore. Turns out the engine hadn't broken, just run out of fuel. Not so good at planning ahead here. So we gassed up and went on our merry little way. Finally we made it to Silang, Cavite, considered my many to be the butthole of the Philippines. This is where we had PST2 (Pre Service Training. We have been here 6 months, so I don't know where the "pre-service" part of it comes from. I no longer ask about these things.) We were told that there was a pool, rec room facility with dart boards, ping pong, etc. So even though we were in the middle of nowhere we thought it sounded ok. Turns out we had to be in session from 8-7 every day. Pool and rec rooms close at 7. Sweet. Needless to say, it was a very long, boring week. It kinda felt like being at summer camp. Or prison. Some sessions were informative and interesting. Others were redundant and mind-numbing. I think its hard to plan for something like this tho, with so many people from so many backgrounds and projects/sites coming together. We all need different information. But it was cool to finally see some other volunteers that I hadn't seen since we got here in March. It was great to leave on Saturday and come to Manila for a few days. So now I am in Manila getting my ear fungus taken care of. It's always something.