In this Episode Nicole Reflects Mostly

---

It has been a normal couple of weeks for me here. The second Fact Finding Mission we had planned to lead into the area affected by the militarization in March was literally rained out, postponed due to a typhoon that hit the region. That unfortunately also means that my attempt to celebrate a Canadian-esk Victoria Day long weekend was also preempted due to rain. A typhoon it turns out, is sort of like a blizzard of rain, the rains comes down hard for a few days strait, flooding the streets, blowing up, down and sideways, causing power outages and making travel dangerous. Even the beautiful, big-top circus, canopy roof of the city's biggest mall was soaked through, causing the patrons, all driven from their homes by boredom, to open their umbrellas inside. Trudging through the mall in my MEC heavy-duty raincoat, which it turns out is slightly less heavy-duty then a typhoon requires, I learned that there is nothing more incongruous to the North American mind then peaking out from under a hood at ice cream stands, cell phone kiosks and the Body Shop. Although I should have known better then to try to recreate the Victoria Day feel in a tropical country. Just as Canadians are finally feeling the urge to go out of their houses and sun their limbs again, Filipinos are donning sweaters and rubber boots in preparation for the nastiest part of their year. I would feel bad for myself, if I was not a Canadian who had already spent most of my “winter” in flip flops and breezy skirts.

The result of the postponed FFM is a week's worth of office work for me. I write and read human rights documents, and then write some more. In a way compared to being in the communities it is boring. In the communities there is sense of adventure, even when we spending sleeping, overwhelmingly hot afternoons watchings the chickens flit around the yard. As a girl from another country, being in that almost magical world full of fruit I have never heard of, rituals and little brown babies chattering in numerous languages I don't know, I feel like anything could happen. I get a feeling of being completely open and unafraid to take whatever life wants to give me and to learn whatever it wants to teach me. I will eat, do or go where ever I am taken in those times, living more freely then I have ever felt comfortable being. The communities are as rejuvinating. And so I was sad to find out I wouldn't be donning my ugly hiking cloths, pulling my hair back and heading on an adventure any time soon.

That being said, I found myself able this week to really sit back and look at Baguio, and some of the things I love about life here. You know no matter what kind of a city I live in, and no matter what country, they always start to feel like home after a little while. So even if I have to be a normal girl this week. And not a wild, mountineering life-explorer, at least I get to be normal in a place where I feel at home.

---