Man, I write my posts like I’m the screenplay writer for Memento.  So this actually happened the day before I left for Palawan; Friday, June 17th was the scheduled day for the last of the on-site trainings and orientations for the worms project I’m assisting with at the NIH, taking place in Cavite.

Cavite is a province two hours southwest of Manila, just past Tagaytay (a popular tourist destination in Luzon).  Everything is much more spread out in Cavite, though there are still pockets of commercial clusters — just look for the SMs or Robinson’s, or visit Dasmariñas City.  The main road that passes through Cavite is very narrow, which blows traffic to epic proportions come rush hour.

The morning of the orientation, I piled into a big ol’ 12 passenger van along with the other RAs and the Pittsburgh med students.  The med students were tagging along to observe and to make contact with Cavite health staff, since part of their research takes in Cavite.  After picking up a mountain of Chow King food for lunch, we made it to the Korean hospital where the orientation was to take place.  

Setting up was made a lot easier with the med students, who helped put up tables and arranged chairs.  Otherwise, the orientation went pretty similarly to the other orientations (see here for the typical flow of events), so I won’t bore you with that.  But here are some pics:

me doin’ my MC thang.

speaking: the provincial epidemiologist of Cavite.

the attendees:  a mix of Department of Health officials, local government health workers from the health centers, and DepEd staff.

a lecture on parasitology with the medical technologists, who will be examining study participants’ stools for worms.

The other RA and I explain how to obtain consent from potential study participants.

Medical technologists practice identifying worms under the microscope.

The other RA and I demonstrate how to take height measurements using the “height measuring apparatus” we designed for the study.

What I didn’t expect was the culture shock I experienced with the medical students.  Don’t get me wrong, I love ‘em, they’re really nice and passionate peeps.  And the shock wasn’t positive or negative, just surprising; I was getting a huge dose of America interacting with them, and it served to highlight for me all the little things that the Philippines had changed in me.  Haha, it’s difficult to word this delicately…being in the Philippines has taught me the benefits of speaking subtly, of patience.  For me this has manifested itself into a sort of soft-spoken introverted-ness (and it doesn’t help that I get super shy about speaking in Tagalog).  But interacting with Americans, it’s like a different self was emerging, maybe my old self — cracking American jokes, talking in strong American cadences about American things (San Francisco!  American med schools!  American fast food!).  So it was interesting, to be made aware of that dichotomy in myself.  But I guess that comes with the territory — as a Filipino-American, I am not quite Filipino and not quite American.  And I’m figuring out what balance of the two I want for myself.  

After the orientation, we headed back.  Traffic at the end of a Friday = krrrrrraaazy!  But we eventually got to Manila around 6 PM, where I jetted pretty quick since I had to prepare for a show later on that night at Conspiracy Garden Cafe (more on that another time)…

Next up on the blog queue:  FOLK U!  (i’m talking about a concert, promise ;P)