I haven't posted anything in a while... Ever since Amy left Shanghai in mid-late April, life has been going more or less at a break-neck speed. It was pretty much like this: in late April through the first week of May (officially May Day holiday), I was struggling to finish up my mid-term papers. Then for the whole first half of May, I spent every waking moment going above and beyond on my Financing Development research paper. Then, for the better part of May, any time I wasn't doing homework, I was rehearsing, or otherwise helping out with the play we put on at the center. Then after that was the three weeks of absolute hell where I was trying to complete work for finals for my five classes (damn me for taking almost twice the class load that I was required to). THEN, within 30 hours of our graduation ceremony, I had to pack up my whole room, say goodbye to everybody, take a train to Shanghai, fly to Bangkok, and show up for the first day of my summer internship.

So here I am now - my summer internship. Besides being timed badly (I really could have used a vacation), this is one of the best internships that exists, I think. The project is very engaging, interesting, and relevant. Our project team (of 4 interns), are given a lot of autonomy. It's actually extremely good experience since it's at the core, a financial analysis project, but at the same time, is still a development project and gives us grass-roots level exposure. On top of that, we get to travel all over South-East asia. Oh, and we get a stipend too.

The only thing is, when we work, we really work, and it's tiring...
Case in point: I have not gotten to sleep in the same place on two consecutive nights in over a week:
Last Tuesday: Slept in Manilla.
Wednesday: Slept on a really cold bus going up windy mountain roads on a hellish 9 hour bus up to Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon.
Thursday: Slept in a spartan room in one of probably two hotels in the small agricultural trading town of Santiago City.
Friday: Spent the whole day on the same windy bus on an 11 hour flight back to Manilla so that I could catch a 2 hour cab ride in rush-hour non-moving traffic back to the hotel. Slept in Manilla.
Saturday: Half-Weekend in Borocay Island. Beautiful beach, but there was a typhoon passing through, so it rained the whole day.
Sunday: Flew to Cebu City. Had a good chinese meal (Cebu has a large chinese population). Slept in a nice higher-class hotel (for the Philippines), because the local affiliate has a deal with the hotel.
Monday: Unfortunately for my sleep, had to wake up at 6am for a morning meeting. Immediately flew to Butuan, a small town in the north of Mindanao, the second largest island in the south of the Philippines and warm jungle home to Abu Sayaff, the muslim separatist terrorist group. Had the opportunity to help build a house. Spent the rest of the days in meetings. Slept in another ratty spartan hotel room.
Tuesday: Woke up at 4am (!), took a 5 hour bus (the only air-con bus leaves at 5am - I don't know why) to Cagayan de Oro, another whole day of meetings. Slept in Cagayan.
Wednesday: Finally got to sleep in, which meant waking up at 9am to pack and catch my flight back to Manilla.

So, here I am, back in Manilla. I just want to rest....