Another bright sunny day dawned in Cebu as we got up, all excited about breakfast with one of our sponsors. Jeary Esquivel was the man responsible for us getting our wonderful hotel rooms at affordable prices. By the end of breakfast, he was also volunteering the use of his company’s conference room to us. This turned out to be a great place to work.
We followed the format of previous days: working on our projects in the morning and meeting up with students in the afternoon. Our Children-Centered team started on storyboarding the comic, which looks like its going great.
With the students, we started with them presenting about something important to them. It was really interesting to see so many of them present Catholic relics as objects of sentimental value.
During the leadership workshop, we asked the students to think on service leadership. The answers that we got were surprising in their maturity level. I don’t think I could have answered at 14 years, in a language that was not my first language, that service leadership was like being a shepherd. That the shepherd was nothing without the sheep he serves.
Finally, we hung around after the project to watch the students prepare for a school celebration. Our “kids”, because I’m already feeling very big sisterly towards them, were involved in a sort of cultural festival. This was my first exposure to Filipino culture not on MTV, and its interesting how there were so many similarities with Malaysian culture and yet I could pick out so many differences.
I’ve been having a great time learning Cebuano which is so similar to Malay, even more so than Tagalog. Anam is enam in Malay, which means 6. Cool, no?
Pictures coming soon.
