We arrived at our home for the next couple of months at around 4am and were greeted by Fatima, the 22 year old daughter of our host family. Fatima showed us to our rooms and we crashed out, not bothering to wash the 15 hour journey off ourselves, or even to put up our mosquito nets.

We woke up late in the morning and were introduced to the rest of our 'family'; Eddie and Inday are Fatima's parents and she has a 16 year old brother called Baboy. They made us feel at home instantly, giving us a breakfast of coffee and fresh bread and eggs. Being up first I told Inday that I don't eat eggs and we haven't had them since, much to Nathan's displeasure - he loves eggs! After breakfast we met up with the 4 that we travelled with and the volunteers that were already here; Jean is a 60 year old Kiwi who is out here for 6 months working at the school, Maria is an 18 year old Mexican girl teaching English at the primary school for 6 months and Rob is a 19 year old Canadian who is 4 months into his 6 month stint but has seemingly done nothing since his second month apart from eat, sleep, drink and smoke, spending his day between his bed and the sofa!

The facilities here are pretty basic. The house has no oven, kettle or microwave but heats everything on a wood fire. The bathroom has a reasonable toilet but no flush and the options for showering are either the hose in the courtyard or the bucket of eater in the bathroom. We were told that we would have to wash our own clothes but there is a local woman who collects, washes, dries and folds your laundry twice a week for £5 a month. We said that we wouldn't be lazy and do it ourselves but were told that she is a widdow and this is her only source of income, so we accepted. Plus I struggle enough with a washing machine and a tumble dryer at home, I wouldn't have a clue with hand washing in cold water!

The following day we went to the school to see what we were going to be working on. Jean was already there as he had been teaching woodwork in the morning and he showed us an old, cluttered storeroom which we were going to turn into a library. We set to work clearing the room out and assessing the work that was needed. Adam and Jenny painted the walls while we built timber frames for an opening between the room and an adjacent classroom. Much of the rest of the week was spent fitting little bits of work in around meeting the teachers, being interviewed by every one of the pupils and waiting for the school to aprove the conversion of the room.

Adam and Jenny's mum is our mum's sister and lives next door, all the volunteers congregate between the two houses. On our first Friday night we had a kareoke night, naturally I refused to sing but by the time the fourth bottle of brandy was empty they had to wrestle the mike out of my hand. They had me singing Take That songs because, apparently, I look like one of the members!?

Saturday morning everybody got up early and got the 8am boat to Romblon island... Everybody apart from me and Nathe who, because of the Dutch courage required to do kareoke, had to get the 1 o'clock boat. Once there though we got a motorbike to a remote resort where we were the only residents and had a private beach between 8 of us, all for about £3 a night each. On the Sunday we returned to town and went to the Romblon Deli, a restuarant owned by an English guy who had been on the island for 12 years and was able to offer us advice on scuba diving, island trips and sightseeing, as well as selling sausage and mash, pie and chips and a Sunday roast.

Our second week at work started with less structure than the first and we didn't make it into school until Thursday. Instead we went to the local hospital and cleaned and redecorated the children's ward for a few days. This was Pip and Lewis's idea because they wanted something to show for there time here, so we all helped out. Once we got to the school there seemed to be a lot more organisation. I measured up for the size of the windows and told Eden how many blocks and how much rebar to order for the following week and between me, Nathan and Vincent, a Filipino working for the volunteer organisation, we knocked down the wall and concrete cupboard in the room ready to start building work the following week.

Last Saturday was Jenny's birthday so the 6 of us who had met in Manila went to Boracay for the weekend to celebrate. Boracay is the same as every other holiday destination in south-east Asia, full of bars advertising Cheap cocktails and western food and plenty of fat, dirty, old white men with pretty, young Filipino girls. We all got suitably drunk and feasted on fillet steak and fresh seafood and Indian currys for a couple of days before heading back to work.

I picked up some sort of a bug in Boracay so was laid up in bed until Tuesday afternoon but on Wednesday we went to school and started re-building the wall we had demolished the week before. Neither me or Nathan have really done much wall building but we agreed that we would have done a better job than that done by the Filipino teacher who insisted on helping! The guy couldn't grasp the concept of using a stringline and a spirit level to build a wall - absolute moron! Safe to say we quickly took over and turned a 'terrible' wall into a 'quite bad' one. By the end of the week we had the wall built and the window frame in so hopefully next week will see the windows and bookcases in so that the cosmetic work can begin.

This weekend me, Nathan and Maria went to Romblon again to do some diving but the cash machine, the only one on the island, was out of order so we could only afford to snorkel. But the Deli meant we could have Sausage and cheese toasties for breakfast and chicken and mushroom pie for dinner so it wasn't a totally wasted trip.

The food that has been served during the week has been amazing, far from the standard fish and rice that we were expecting. We have meat pretty much every day, althought the type of meat is questionable! In our first week we ate dog, but not just any dog, the family dog, Pachio. Since then we have eaten cow skin and dog intestines and Eddie has promised to get us lizard, snake and monkey before we leave!

Bring it on!