New week in Tacloban

Now I've been in Tacloban since Thursday 17 March, and I'm now really getting used to this city. Also working as volunteers for Streetlight is a group of 7 students from HIST (Hoegskolen i Soer Troendelag) in Norway. They arrived some days before me and also stay at the Rosvenil pension house. It's nice to do volunteer work with fellow Norwegians, and in the evenings we usually go for dinner together. They also write a blog about their experiences here in Tacloban, this blog is in Norwegian.

http://paagataitacloban.blogg.no

This week we will continue with the renovation of the stage in the park, and also arrange electricity for new spot lights.

For anyone who wants to contribute with funds for Streetlight, you can check the following blog entry for details.

http://einarstravelblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/donation-for-volunteer-work-in-tacloban.html

Greets from Tacloban!

The sun is shining in Tacloban!

Finally the rain stopped here in Tacloban, and the sun is out. So now finally everything can dry up, but still there is a lot of water around and many houses are still flooded.

Except from this there isn't any big news here from Tacloban, the next big plan here is to fix the park that belongs to Streetlight.

Tacloban during nice weather.

The nice newly painted castle in the park that belongs to Streetlight.

Arrived in Tacloban

This morning I finally arrived in Tacloban, Erlend picked me up at the airport and on my way to the guest house where I'll be staying I saw a lot of flooding after yesterday's typhoon.

A lot of people are being evacuated since the water levels are critically high, so we are hoping for no more rain.f

Cebu Pacific Air from Manila to Tacloban.

Rosvenil Pensionhouse, my place while I'm in Tacloban.

Burgos street in Tacloban, this is the street where the pension house is situated.

Going to Tacloban

Today I had my flight with Thai Airways to Manila, and in the afternoon I was supposed to fly to Tacloban with Cebu Pacific. Unfortunately there is a Typhoon in Tacloban at the moment, so now I'm stuck in Manila until tomorrow morning at least.

I guess it's time to have a look at Manila after all.

My mobile number in the Philippines is +639195682933 in case anyone wants to give me a ring :)

Cheers!

Donation for volunteer work in Tacloban

Hi everyone!

As some of you might know I'm going to the Philippines for almost 5 weeks to do volunteer work for Streetlight (http://streetlight.org/)

Since everyone doesn't have the chance to go and do something like this I hereby invite you to make a donation. The money collected will be used to make sure that new and ongoing projects in Streetlight will have enough funding.

While I'm in Tacloban I'll do some English teaching, so for this I might need some accessories for school, books, pencils, etc. so if there is money available I can easily provide this for the students.

If there is any money left over from the donations this will go directly to the project http://streetlight.org/our-projects/encyclopedia-and-dictionaries

I hope some of you have the possibility to help Streetlight doing an even better job in Tacloban.

When making a transfer, please state your name in the info and if possible send me an e-mail to let me know. My e-mail address is einargu@gmail.com. Please mention Tacloban/Streetlight in the subject field.

Account details:

Transfer from Norway:
Account number: 97135472097

Transfer from outside of Norway:
Bank: DnB NOR
BIC: DNBANOKKXXX
IBAN: NO0616073335462

Last days in Bangkok, Philippines next!

On Wednesday I went out for lunch with a Russian friend of mine who I met on the Great Wall in China, and since it was happy hour at the place we had late lunch it turned out to be a long night out. On Friday I tried the local boat transport on the Saen Saep Express Boat, this is a service mostly used by locals, so this was a dirty, but interesting experience.

On Saturday I went with my friend Yupapun to a nice park in the east of Bangkok, we rented a small boat for an hour and pedalled around in a lake full of fish. The hunt for ice cream was imminent since it was 34 degrees today, unfortunately they didn't sell any in the park so we had to get some later at the mall.

The aen Saep Express Boat service arriving in the middle of the city centre.

Having some drinks with Ayuna on the roof top bar called the Nest.

Nice park in the east of Bangkok with many European style gardens and a lot of water.

Nice flowers in the park, don't smell them if you're a guy