It's Holy Week.

This is the part where I get a little more personal, give a little more opinion, talk a little bit more about how I feel and what I think rather than what we do, since we're limited by Holy Week. Today, we travelled to Ormoc, and we visited the GK village, Tambulili. They've taken on the Bayani Challenge, but have paused all work until after Holy Week. Rob Banta's daughter, Reina, celebrated her 15th birthday today, and the village surprised her with a small fiesta, at least in their terms. It was so cool, seeing what this community could do for someone they don't even know. Even though the speakers kept apologizing about how little they had to offer, I thought they gave this girl the world for her birthday.

The GK youth had dances prepared when we arrived, and there was lots of music and talking. The village had boodle prepared, this huuuuge crazy long table covered in banana leaves with tons and tons of food. It was beautiful. Everyone feasted, all hands and smiles. The GK-USA team had their own separate meal, and I had the best adobong manok ever; so flavorful, so good. There was a French volunteer who was taking on the Bayani Challenge by himself. He's in his gap year before college, and he decided to go to Gawad Kalinga and help build a GK village. He was really nice. It's incredible to see the people taking on this challenge, they're so wholehearted and genuine.

So since travelling to and from this village took a total of 4 hours, it took up most of our time. Before we left, Savvy ended up becoming a small celebrity to the kids when she performed for them. Coming closer to our hotel, we stopped by what a sign told me was Yolanda Village, basically, a village was put together behind boats that were stuck on land due to flooding from the typhoon. It was literally feet away from the water, but the boats were huge, and since they couldn't move the boats, they just lived on it and around it. A little girl named Princess called out to me from the inside of a small store in the village, and they wanted me to buy something, but I didn't have any pesos. Her mother and sister were in there, too. Savannah got her flipflop stuck in a mudhole and it got sucked in. Levin told us later on that all the mud was mixed with sewage. This is the reality of post-typhoon life. God, it's intense.

To really try to put myself in the shoes of these people is difficult. I can't even fathom what it would be like to not only experience the brunt of the storm, but to survive, and live on to rebuild and start over. To go from living in a certain way and place and having to rebuild and start over based on whatever was around, if anything was even around. To have to dig through trash, possibly digging up dead bodies, to build another small home that might blow away the next time a storm happens. Saying that Filipinos have incredible endurance and resilience hardly describes what they have do and deal with every single day.