Hello there!
By now, most of the preparations through Projects Abroad are taken care of. I have paid my invoice, I have received my tickets by e-mail, I know where I'm going to be staying for my 8 weeks in the Philippines and I've read through the guides. All I really still need are my vaccinations and I'll be going to my GP this wednesday to get them. In just 3 weeks and 4 days (1st of September) on 6:20 pm Danish time, I'll be on the first plane of three that are going to take me to the Philippines. It is quite a long trip with 18 hours and 25 minutes of flight time and a total traveling time of 22 hours and 50 minutes including waiting time at airports, starting from when I leave from Aalborg Airport and ending when I arrive at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport. I'll be working on the Public Health project in the Philippines and am looking very much forward to the experience.
However, I still have a lot to do before I leave. I have to move out of my apartment and move my things to a rented storage room as I can't keep my apartment when I am taking a gap year from studying. There is also still a few items I have to buy before I leave but that shouldn't take too much time. The packing and moving can also be done in a day or two as I live in a one bedroom apartment, so the amount of furniture I have is pretty limited.
After my visit and volunteering in the Philippines, I'll be going to Tanzania for another 8 weeks where I'll be volunteering in Dar es Salaam on the medical project. I have no medical experience however, so it will most likely be a lot of observing. It is my hope though that the public health project in the Philippines will give me a little bit of insight in the medical world that might come to use in Tanzania. At any rate, I plan to do my best and show that I am willing to work and learn.
This will be my first time traveling alone and I have only been abroad very few times. I've been to Egypt when I was about 8 years old, I've been on a ski trip in Norway, I've been on a student trip in England (London, specifically), and I've been on a sort of student exchange trip to Mainz, Germany. Each of the trips have been of about one week in length, so it will also be the first time I'm going to be away for more than a week - and I'll be abroad for 16 weeks! It all seems pretty crazy, especially since I first contacted Projects Abroad on the 19th of July - not 3 weeks ago, and I signed up for the projects on the 27th of July - not even two weeks ago. Everything has happened and is happening really fast, and I'm not sure I actually realize what is happening before I'm sitting on a plane on my way to the Philippines.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to meeting with a lot of new people in the Philippines - my host family, the local population, and of course the other volunteers. For any other volunteers in the Philippines who is there during the period from September 2nd to October 26th and who read this, this is me after I graduated on June 22nd after passing a math exam with about 2 hours of sleep that night
I'll do my best to make blog updates during my trip, however I'll make no promises - I am there to experience new things, after all, not sit in front of a computer to write blog entries. I expect there'll be time enough for that anyway, though.
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Source: http://www.mytripblog.org/
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