Back Track - Winston

Time is precious - our travel time from Portland to Las Vegas was moved from 10:30 in the morning to 1:30 in the afternoon. More time to update and to "regroup" my luggage. My goal is to be able to update this blog up to Portland as well as I can. Cross your fingers..

Back Tracking to Winston!



We visited the Roseburg Lumber Yard - which was a huge lumber processing plant. The machines were amazing!
We performed at the Riverbend Park in Winston and opened the Melon Festival parade! I got to ride on the float in my Filipiniana costume and danced to Up With People song (something that I wouldn't have had the guts to do at home...). Matthew Erley from Denver carried the Philippine flag !
Here I am with the Education Team -- Scott, Jeremy, Hector and Ellen. Jeremy and I were the interns. Challenging meeting place ! We squeezed in with all of our tech equipment. there simply wasn't enough room in the park!

Beautiful scenery... on our free day, we drove to Crater Lake. Our host family lived in Roseburg, Oregon and could not drive us around so we had the UWP Van with us. I was hosted with Carolin (Germany), Laurel and Amanda (both from Texas) and Christine (Staff, from Connecticut). I thought Crater Lake was very much like our Taal Lake. I hope someday we can also preserve the history and scenery of Taal Lake and also have an information and history center about it.

It was also in Winston when Rafael attempted to load his flash gun to my camera - and that procedure screwed up my memory card. I lost a lot of pictures from Corcoran (with firemen! sigh) and was unable to take photos in the Wildlife Safari and our community impact (CI) project in Winston.

I did CI at the Food Pantry, where volunteers gather twice a month to assemble food packs for underprivileged families. When I say "food pack" -- it is not like the food pack bags that we have in the Philippines during relief operations. These are BOXES of food, some of them luxury items for me. Birthday cakes and coffee and tea and granola bars and cottage cheese. But still, the experience made me see poverty in America.

The thing that struck me the most was meeting a Filipino family who was in line at the Food Pantry. I thought about the "stereotype" American dream image that we have back home: that whoever goes to America makes it big. This family probably had relatives in the Philippines expecting gifts and "pasalubong"! Yet, there they were - swallowing their pride and signing up for food rations.

Life is so different. Poverty is so different too. The family owned an Asian market and small restaurant serving Philippine food (woohoo! I visited them and ate adobo and pancit) , yet it amazed me how they are considered "poor". Which goes back to my comment before in Denver - when I thought America was overreacting about their poverty. But I understand now. I simply cannot compare the poverty here to poverty in the Philippines. Because poverty is poverty wherever we go.
Photo: Having fun with Philippine chichirya at the Asian Market. Look it's Boy Bawang!