Day 2

DEAR PARENTS,

Hope you’re doing fine without us, it must be hard but I'm here to let you know that we’re having the time of our lives and we’re all healthy.  So today was our first full day in the Philippines and it was great but also an extremely hot way to start our trip. Today the team had an early start to the day (4:30am wake up) and went to the filming TV studio and where a part of the crowd. Then when and had breakfast t at McDonald’s. After we had breakfast we headed to the local College where we all got little Filipino buddies who were to spend the day with us then we played a friendly basketball game (Boys) volleyball (Girls) and I got to play with the most amazing basketball player named John Taylor (Group Leader) got smashed (106-62) after that we had lunch (chicken) then we presented a cultural presentation the Filipino people. Later that afternoon we went to the VMA training centre where we participated in water activities.

ILY MUM & DAD

Trent J

Our first full day was a touching experience that represented how Filipinos represent themselves and their country.  We were faced with challenges that for some, particularly me were difficult to complete. An activity that had been organised was to jump off a 10ft building balcony into water to experience what would happen if a ship was required to be evacuated. This was particularly difficult for me to participate in as I’m afraid of heights and the thought of being trapped under water, even though I was equipped with a life jacket. It took me a while and after many encouraging words from caring people and many, many tears I decided nothing good would come from not jumping. I knew I would probably be shaking too much to do it myself so I got my classmate Chelsea to give me a little push, thanks Chels. Someone else special who helped me through this experience was my buddy, Stephanie. At first I was nervous meeting her but we ended up having so much in common and one day wasn’t enough to spend with her. We all seemed to interact with our buddies wonderfully and their encouragement throughout the day and knowledge of their country added to the quality of our day. Our first day was a memorable one with many new experiences and exposure to the diversity of culture that is the Philippines.

-Aislinn J    

                                                                                                               

Today was a very insightful day and it showed us some of what’s to come while on this trip. We got up at 4:30 and went to the morning TV show it was very hard to keep our eyes open while we were watching. After that we went to the Australian embassy (Maccas) and had breakfast, it was a good meal and was the first time on the trip we didn’t have chicken and rice. From there we went to the local school to meet our buddy’s for the day, my buddy was called Rodel.  He was in year 8 but he taught me some of the local langue. We played basketball with some of the elder kids, we thought it was going to be an easy game nice and fun but we were wrong, we got smashed. After basketball we had lunch and a tour of their school. From there we went to a local swimming pool centre, while we were here there were many things that we did, first we had a fire fighting scenario, I was at the front of the hose it was very hot in the full uniform, after we had put out the fire we had to do a scenario were the boat needed to be evacuated (jump off) some people struggled but I thought it was fun. Then we had dinner and some karaoke then come home to the hotel. I hope everyone’s enjoying the home without you loved ones.

Calvin J