Day 1 - Arrival at Bagong Silang

The team arrived at GK Bagong Silang in the late afternoon after a rather late lunch over from SM Fairview. The first thing that caught my eye was the huge crowd that the van seem to be getting closer to with each drive forward. That was when I thought, "Woah, they think we are VIP ah?" Adults and children alike were all crowding around the entrance welcoming us.

Just after we alighted, we were warmly greeted with necklaces and straw hats by the mabuhay ladies. After entering the communal hall and placing our heavy luggages down, I noticed a scrumptous spread of food awaiting for us. I was still thinking that the filipinos must have their meals really early before i realised that the food was actually just our afternoon tea and not dinner! Still feeling full from the lunch, I customarily took a piece of the sticky rice cake to not disappoint our hosts. Indeed, while it was a tad too sweet for my liking, it was well prepared.

As we ate, we watched the welcoming performances by the mabuhay ladies, dancing to 2NE1's fire and the batang boys with their hip hop remix. Both the young and not so young can sure dance well! It was only later that I realised that dancing was just like second nature to the community down at Bagong Silang.

We were then later assigned to our host families by Roma according to our height. (I'm surprised that I'm even close to Yvonne's, she's so much taller!)

Yvonne and I were assigned to the Gilber family. Lea and Leiz, the two eldest daugthers welcomed us to the family and quickly settled us down, showed us the past people that they'd hosted and taught us basic Tagalog. The two youngest, Laila and Lloyd were not at all shy and immediately got the both of us to play their games with them. Their friendliness and family cohesion was one that I hardly experienced in my own. Despite having 9 of us in the little space, it was not at all uncomfortable.

We then proceeded for dinner and later had a debrief to prepare us for the start of the first day of construction. Honestly, sitting around in a circle, I finally started to feel that we were gradually moving towards a team, one that was not going to just merely be a group of friends, but work partners and our temporal family as we look out for one another throughout the rest of the journey.

While it was a long day, it sure was a memorable start to the many (not so many days now that I'm reflecting) days ahead of us in GK Bagong Silang.