Tagaytay

CFSI (the organization I’m working for) took all of us on a retreat this weekend to a small rural town about 1-2 hours outside of Manila. It’s up in the tropical mountains with fruit stands everywhere you look. The city overlooks a beautiful lake with a volcano in the center. The volcano is the smallest active volcano in the world.

We stayed in a convent “Villa of Santa Luisa”. The nuns provide accommodations for visiting parties. The rooms are dormitory style. The grounds are filled with beautiful tropical gardens. We were fed jack fruit, fried fish (whole fish) chips, chopped livers (from various animals) marinated and cooked in blood, chicken adobo (famous Filipino dish), and of course tons of rice.

We spent the weekend participating in team building/getting to know you activities. The people I work with are so amazing. Many of them spend hours commuting or only go home on the weekends in order to work this job. I never hear any of them complain about it either. They are always smiling and teasing each other, constantly! On Friday night we had a talent show (CFSI Idol). They sang or danced to traditional songs from the Philippines, others played the air guitar, while many of us just embarrassed ourselves. Us Americans showed them famous dance moves from the 90’s, like the running man, the shopping cart, the butterfly, the sprinkler, etc. We had a great time laughing at each other. I am so very excited to work with these people and to learn from their experiences.