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This week will be the first full week of working, which will be interesting. Every Monday we have a team meeting, and we organise either a community action day - an event to maybe promote deaf awareness for example. Or anything else in particular. Or we have a Active Citizen Day, we pick a topic we want to find out more about, an issue we want to tackle and discuss.
We go to our work placements and work on Tuesday - Friday. And we have the weekends to ourselves. Standard!
Today is exactly a week since I've moved in my host home. It's been a tough, difficult week for me and I haven't fully settled down yet but I will eventually! I guess you can never be prepared for such a different, contrasting environment; I live with a Filipino family as well as two Filipino volunteers. Most of the other UK volunteers do have another UK volunteer with them so I guess they have company! I've found things to keep myself distracted over the week, which was quite nice but I've found out one of the most important things to feel settled is to bond with the family. I sit down and talk to the grandmother quite a lot (usually she waffles on about being safe and watching out when I'm out, which is understandable as my purse got stolen last night!) and it's quite nice to do that as I haven't got my own family here. I saw my dad and sister over FaceTime last night which made me feel a lot better of course!
Yesterday there was a deaf international day in Cebu City Center, and I thought this would be interesting! There was quite a lot of people, everyone signing but a lot of strangers kept coming over for pictures and boasted to their friends that they got a photo with a 'white girl' and everyone else wanted photos and so on. It wasn't the same, I got kinda fed up and went out somewhere else with my friends!
I'm looking forward to the week ahead and to see what my work placement brings me!
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