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Being ill in the Philippines is horrible. I experienced this today, woke up feeling so hot and sweaty and felt horribly sick. It's worse when you're away from your family, there's no bath to relax in, and you can't stay in your bed because it gets too hot upstairs.
I had to miss work today, and stayed home (the students in my grade 8 class sent me a get well soon video, will try and upload it on here! Made my day!) and tried to get better. My host mother was going on about how she has no food left in the house and no money to buy anymore because VSO didn't give her allowance yesterday. But within about an hour later, the money arrived and her mood drastically changed - it's amazing what money does to people!
Even though I was sick and tired, she demanded for me to come food shopping with her in Colon; the most dangerous part of Cebu City. I knew she was being clever; she knows how much I hate Colon; the amount of times I've said to her that I was never going back there again. But I know she was trying to show that it's fine to walk around in Colon, it's safe. But I strongly disagree.
So we went to Colon, and she treated me to a McDonalds (bless her). After slowly walking around and ranting on about how much she loves that necklace or those earrings, the food shopping was finally complete. The supermarket was so different to the ones in the UK.. I was standing in the rice section. And there were huge bags full of rice for as little as 200 pesos. Ridiculously cheap. And there were different types of rice, and they were even working out which types to mix together. Crazy! And I worked out how much a weeks worth of food shopping is in pounds.
£24.50. For the 6 of us. That's about a quarter of an average family of 4/5's weekly food shopping?! So cheap! But of course, the food shopping took up most of her allowance.
My host mother also went on Skype today with her daughter in Japan, discussing the typhoon that's happening over there. She was showing us torches and other security stuff ready for when the typhoon strikes her area. It's so weird how earthquakes and typhoons are almost non existent in the UK! I took part in an earthquake drill at the school I work in last week and I was clueless at what to do! Unbelievable how many students laughed at me!
Tomorrow is my final day at my work placement before the MPR (Thursday - Saturday) and then a whole week off for half term next week! Guess I'm not going to be working on my birthday!
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