August 1, 2011

Last week, Cam Ang invited all of us JTAers to go to Bulacan for a quick visit at the Gawad Kalinga Center for Social Innovation. Being the always game for anything, I woke up quite early (5:45 am) to get to school at the supposed call time at 7 am but due to unforeseen traffic, I arrived around 7:30 am. I didn’t expect to know anyone actually and I was hesitant to go just because of that. But thank God that didn’t stop me from going.

After more than an hour’s worth of road trip, we finally reached Enchanted Farm in Bulacan.Kath, Aloy, Pearl, Timmy, CamAng, Hye Won, Melody and Natasska(both not in the picture) were my van-mates. Really fun company!

We were all given a tour around the area and it’s a very interesting place, so much potential to grow into something really grand. We saw the sites for different ventures and they were really interesting like the bamboo bike one and the bamboo palace site. And I would love to share those photos with you but I’d rather you go there for yourself and see how amazing the place is. Haha! You can, however, look at how cute some of the animals there were!

The one on the left was protecting golden eggs! Haha! No kidding. I think she/he was really because golden eggs is one of the ventures 🙂Cute! It’s really a dream of mine to take care of goats inside my dream house! Just wanted to share haha!

And of course taking a field trip-esque picture was a must!

We had some taste test thing after where we learned of different food ventures like the chocolate bar and the health tea and such. We were then told that we’ll play some sort of game and we were okay with it, I mean like hey, we be learning new stuff and now we have a game? HAHA! Fun! Although it was such a challenge! Eating one chili made me remember back in High School how painful the experience was! Haha! We were under the rain looking for eggs all over the area and it was enjoyable even if it was mega raining! haha!

Anj acting like a scarecrow wearing a raincoat!

We went back to shaded place and we had lunch! I got to eat lunch with Jillian, Joss, Kevin, Kerwin, Aloy and Rocky although it was  practically me, Jillian bonding and from time to time Kevin and Joss joined in HAHA!

Anj and Aloy, the Sciences Po people!After lunch we gathered at this place and one of the people from the place shared the vision of GK CSI and it really made me consider to go for social entrepreneurship but I think it’s too soon for me to really lock into it. However, I am still for the society as I have been since God who knows when.

We got to plant passion fruits and our “egg capsules” and we’ll visit back on January to check up on those. We went back and quite spontaneously, 2 more people shared some stuff to us and once again I’m just amazed at how people really give up so much pleasures and would’ve been pleasures so they can help out in society better. And I applaud them for that. Really moving 🙂

And I’m thankful yet again for how this whole JTA thing is going for me and a lot of other people. Hats off to Cam Ang and Ryan for pulling this simple yet effective trip for all of us. 🙂