Tour de Philippines

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Typhoon Ondoy. Please look at Google's list of places to help and consider donating resources.

There are also victims of the earthquake in Indonesia and tsunami in Samoa.

The Red Cross and Mercy Corps have information on how to contribute.

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Over the past few weeks, we've done some more exploring in and around Manila. Here are some highlights:

Diana invited me to a reproductive health information session that her boss held in Tondo. It's always startling to see women barely older than you with 7, 8, 12 children in tow. My grandmother married at 17 and had 9 children--a life not too unlike some of the women I meet here. I'm constantly reminded of the opportunities I've had in my life simply because I was born into the right circumstances. When I asked a 9-year old girl I met that day what she wanted to do with her life or be when she grew up, she had a blank expression on her face and no answer for me. I didn't quite know how to react to that. These children are some of the sweetest I have met since we've been in the Philippines.

This past Sunday, using Diana's birthday as an excuse to travel, we flew to Bohol for a few days. Whether good timing or bad, our flight out of Manila was after the first major storm of the typhoon, so we weren't in Manila to see most of the devastation. Luckily Bohol was spared from the storms, so we toured the island. Our day included:

1. The Blood Compact Monument

2. The plaque explaining the Blood Compact Monument

3. The Church of the Immaculate Conception (1527), the oldest church in the Philippines, and made of coral

4. Prony, the 23-foot python, with a surprise performance by this lovely lady:

5. Lunch on a floating restaurant, and a stopover at a "native" village (a completely fabricated village of people dressed in grass skirts and holding fake spears)

6. Tarsiers (Meena's blog has a creepy video of one)

7. A drive through a man-made forest, planted 38 years ago

8. The vista overlooking the Chocolate Hills, all 1776 of them

As always, food was the highlight of our trip. Bohol Bee Farm has an amazing selection of organic dishes. If you find yourself in Bohol in the near future, book your stay with them.

Finally, we've just returned today, two days early, from our field visit to Palawan because Typhoon Parma is on its way. We were there to test for malaria. For those of you who haven't already heard the BU go-to public health fact (fourteen times from the same three professors), the word mal-aria (bad air) has its root in the miasma theory of disease. Feel free to use that little gem as a conversation piece at your next party. Or is that lame and I should get out more? Anyway, as you can see, 'twas not the best time to be had.

Somehow, my master plan of spraying repellant on myself every twenty minutes on the barely-there exposed skin didn't work. Those little buggers bit through my clothes, on my face, and ear. The next day on the other ear! Ok fine, so I forgot to spray my ears. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I get malaria. Apparently though, we didn't have to worry because mosquitoes transmitting malaria are mostly active at night. Big sigh of relief, right? Nyet. Unfortunately the day biters spread dengue. Our professor contracted it once and she was in the hospital for a week with fevers, headaches, abdominal cramps, and bleeding gums. Bleeding gums. What have I gotten myself into here?