Friday, January 20, 2006

Immersion.

2:20 p.m. HEALTH ECON class ended. RLE groups 3 & 4 start chatting about the upcoming immersion to happen in a few hours. I feel sick about going to Antipolo and stay for two nights.

3:10 p.m. ELINOR and I decide to run to SM to buy her stockings--she forgot to bring one pair.

3:20 p.m. ELINOR and I leave school without our bags, just money.

3:40 p.m. We arrive UERM. Picked our bags up from KAY, CESS and OJ in the canteen.

3:45 p.m. RLE groups 3 &4 leave school.

3:50 p.m. Immersion groups unload from a jeep. I fall and bruise my leg. The nail in my shoe's heel was pulled up.

4:00 p.m. Immersion group members impatiently wait for the next train to SANTOLAN.

4:15 p.m. We arrive in SANTOLAN station. PATRICK, KENN, and BRYANN look for a ride to BRGY. DELA PAZ. The ride is uncomfortable. ELINOR and I feel homesick.

4:40 p.m. Groups 3 & 4 arrive in the staff house. We all forgot our waivers. We were asked to text our parents for a verification that they know we're in a community immersion program. My heels start to hurt.

5:45 p.m. Community Immersion formally begins.

8:30 p.m. I take a bath. 10 minutes, max.

8:40 p.m. I feel refreshed but still convinced it's hot.

9:00 p.m. Immersion groups pray the rosary as ordered by CI PROF. LIM.

11:30 p.m. PROF. BUTCON and PROF. MOLO discuss presentation of data from the survey tools floated per pair.

12:30 a.m. Sleeping time.

** Times are based only upon approximation or guessing.

I wasn't able to sleep much, I kept waking up in the middle of each our, maybe, becuase I felt so uncomfortable sleeping in a mat on the floor with a teeny-tiny pillow. Thursday was a not-so-work day. All we had to do was to go back to our respective blocks in Phase V and finish up the houses we weren't able to interview the last time. We only had about 4-5 houses left and only we were only able to gather 1. About 10:15 a.m. Elinor left for the preparationof our lunch. I stayed with Patrick and helped our other blockmates finish their surveys. Btw, we are so deprived of the usual pleasures of good food so we had to sneak in a bakery on the opposite side of Block 10 to eat. We spotted ICED GEMS and it was divine. I call it my "Nostalgic Food." Once I started eating pieces of eat, it brought back my childhood memories. It was like the food that only existed when I was a little girl. We ate fish for lunch. I didn't enjoy. The rest of the day was boring. There was nothing to do. By 4:45 p.m., we were all dressed for the team building activity at 5 p.m.. The games were really fun and exhausting. We all felt so dirty but we enjoyed alot. :) This night was different; I noticed that there were unusually more stars in the sky than there ever was. We all took a bath while counting down the hours of our departure from Antipolo to our homes. I had a better sleep last night. Everytime I would wake up in the morning, it would get so cold that I'm shivering. We were all ready to go by 5 a.m. and departed as planned. By 7:10 a.m. I was back home. I missed EVERYTHING. I've learned to appreciate my bed, the food in our house and especially our shower.
BED - It can never be easy to lie flat on your back against a mat that is placed flat on the floor.
FOOD - Although, I always complain that the food-cooking cycle's really short, At least I could eat all the meat I want and I could drink iced water or softdrinks.
SHOWER - One pale of water per person??? Oh, and we had to pump the water up ourselves in the street perpendicular to the staff house's.

I don't ever want to do that again. It's bad enough we have to go there even without sleeping.

*~*

| 9:47 PM | |