My 3rd 4th of July

This is actually a very late post about fourth of july. Nevertheless, I still wanna share the experience I had with the recent celebration.

The first time I had my experienced with 4th of july was 3 years ago, when peace corps volunteer we’re just new here in our province. We celebrated it at the White beach with what they consider the-traditional-way-of-celebrating-july-fourth. We had sausages, mashed potatoes, veggies and I fell in love with smores too. We sung the Philippine National Anthem, as well as the Star Spangled Banner of American National Anthem. We had bonfire, had some water games. All in all it was a remarkable experience. And I’m grateful that I was part of it.

The 2010 and 2011 july 4th celebration at White Beach.

The second time we celebrated it was with couple of American friends from different parts of the province and some visitors from Calbayo City. The Peace Corp volunteers had invited some of their co-volunteers to join in and other foreign friends too. We celebrated it at white beach again, but this time we had different kinds of American foods from fresh vegetables to fresh fruit salad (not the usual Filipino salad) to mashed potatoes, had cool aid and some drinks. But as always the best part is the cooking of marshmallow to have smores. YUM!! We did our traditional group pictorial at the shore line before everyone goes home. Despite me not in the mood to celebrate it, i still did enjoyed the super fun day with them.

Just  recently I had the 3rd fourth of july. Unfortunately, since the since the batch 268 had left and went home to America, there are only 3 left for us to celebrate it with. *sad* Alyssa, Lauren and Trent we’re the only ones who are left in our province, but it didn’t stopped us from celebrating it. Despite the busy schedule between our work and personal life, we tried to squeeze in to celebrate it. This time it’s not in the white beach. We scheduled it on July 8^th since all of us have to work on weekdays and on Saturday I have a class and so as Lauren’s boyfriend. We opted to try the new swimming resort in one of the towns here in Northern Samar. So we travelled for an hour to reach the resort.

Luckily, we got the whole resort for ourselves. Not to mention that it was a rainy. Though we never got the usual food that we have during our two previous July 4^th but everything are worthwhile.  We enjoyed the swimming pool for ourselves despite of the rain. After all the talks, eating and swimming we decided to go home early because it’s hard to travel  in motorcycle with the rain.

I will forever be grateful and thankful that I met people like them for they never fail to share their culture with us. They are very generous with their culture to be learned by others and they welcome people with their open arms. They may leave the country this year, but the experiences that i have learned and shared with them will forever stay in me. Til we celebrate the fourth of july together, again.

HAPPY FOURTH of JULY!!!

The improvised july 4th. Creative, are we?

The 'gang' who drove and conquered the rain. . and celebrate the july 4th in Lavezares

The two of the three remaining Peace Corp volunteers in our Province. In my left is Alyssa and in my right is Lauren