Leaving our host families

It’s time to say goodbye to my host family, as well as the hub staff here and all the other trainees. My host mother, Mommy Ann, took me and the girls (Sam and Bam) and their mom out to dinner on Thursday. We went to Afrique’s, which is an Italian restaurant, Filipino style. It is in a really cool old Spanish house in Iloilo. It was delicious. If anyone ever comes visit me, we will go there. It was a really cool place. Mommy Ann told the girls the house might be haunted, so they made me come to the bathroom with them and stand outside the door in case there were any ghosts. It was pretty cute, and whichever one was in the bathroom, the other one stood outside the door making spooky noises.

After dinner we went shopping, and the girls and I had a fun time looking at stuff, and buying ice cream and candy.

I left Lambuyao on Saturday morning with all my stuff. Everyone else is coming back after swearing in to get their stuff, but I will be going directly to Cadiz City, and had to haul it all with me now. My family, Erin’s family, Allan’s family, and Anna’s family rented a jeepney to take us and our junk to SEAFDEC, where we had a thank you party for the host families. We played games and ate a good lunch, and gave appreciation speeches. I gave my family two framed pictures of us, and some Denver souvenirs I still had. They gave me some cool beaded flip-flops, which I need because the rocky dirt road in Lambuyao has torn up my other pair. Probably the 2km community cleanup helped destroy them.

The host families left after lunch, and we made plans for me to come back the first weekend in August, which is my birthday and Sam’s birthday. It was nice living with them, they were a good host family. I’m worried about my new host family, because they seem a lot more formal and also they don’t have little kids to hang out with.

In the evening we had our own going away party at the hub site. We gave gifts to our staff, had a slide show, played some games, and did awards. I got the award ‘most acclimated.’ I got it as a joke, because nobody complains as much as I do about the heat, and about going swimming in the ocean. Most of the awards were funny. We did an activity where we put a piece of paper on everyone’s backs and went around writing nice things about them so that later, when you’re feeling depressed, you can read happy things from your friends. I was still in a bad mood about my final evaluation, so I read mine right away.