Always late...

So i've finally succumbed to the blogging bandwagon. I always feel like I'm late with these things. By the time I decided to do the Friendster thing, people were accusing me of being cliche... anyway, I'll try my best to make these entries interesting for all you fans.

I have no job and yet I don't feel like I'm bored or wasting away. Very uncharacteristic of me... In fact, life feels fast. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being the life of my old, fat, lazy dog and 10 being the life of a neurosurgeon on crack, i'm at about a 7, despite the fact that I have no responsibilities. And here's why...

I've been back in the states for two weeks now after spending the past year and a half living the LIFE in a tropical paradise called Palawan, one of the Philippines' 7000+ islands. Now you can imagine how my jobless life here feels relatively fast paced to the life I was living in the Philippines. I was there as a Fulbright Scholar (big fancy word for "recent college grad on vacation"). Actually, I really was working, but whenever I describe my work, people roll their eyes and say I was on vacation. As a Fulbright Scholar, I spent my time volunteering for non-profits involved with marine conservation. It was an amazing experience... living and working in remote fishing villages, promoting environmentally-friendly fishing practices, setting up marine protected areas to block destructful commercial fishing boats, and empowering local fishermen to become responsible caretakers of the waters that they live off of.

Here's a typical day in a village: Get up with the roosters. Eat fish and rice for breakfast. Listen to an officemate give a lecture on marine ecology to the community. More fish and rice for lunch. Ride a pumpboat (motorized canoe) out to the coral reefs. Snorkel/SCUBA dive while doing a transect survey of the coral reef to assess its condition. Eat merienda (usually some kind of rice-based dessert). Data analysis. Go to the bathroom before it gets dark and hope one of my officemate's remembered to bring toilet paper with them (if you're filipino... u know what i'm talking about; for everyone else, well let's just say the southeast asian way of cleaning up after a number 2 is kept secret from Westerners for a reason, but in all fairness they think the way we clean up our mess is gross too). Dinner... surprise! fish and rice.... And as the day comes to an end, drink Tanduay Rum and play guitar with the fishermen until we are drunk enough to go to sleep and ignore the mosquitoes.

Life was beautiful in rural Philippines. I was always taken by surprise when I'd read newsletters about the "impoverished, marginalized fishermen" that our non-profit was advocating for. Their poverty was masked by how happy they were. They had no money, but they didn't need any... They were living off the land and the sea. Sometimes, I feel like if nothing mattered in life, I would be perfectly happy spending the rest of my life in one of these villages teaching biology to the kids.

I miss everything about the Philippines. My family. My Bisaya cousins struggling to speak to me in Tagalog. The Sulu Sea. The beaches. Watching the sun sink into the ocean. The festive culture in which fiestas and parades were as common as weekends, but yet always happened to fall on weekdays so we could get the day off. 25cent beers. The ghetto clubs and the high-class bars. Geckos on the walls. Crazy Manila. Timeless Bohol. Life on a boat. Sitting on my rooftop. Gazing into the horizon.

Yet, with all of this behind me, I admit that it feels good to be home. In the months and blog entries to come, I should be able to explain that last sentence. I promise, this will be the last sappy blog entry. I only write like this when I reminisce about being abroad...