Celebrating Life — SAP Social Sabbatical Philippines (Week 3)
Score 8.5 — Feeling good about ourselves
As we reached the end of week 3, it is time to wrap up and prepare our final presentations / recommendations to our host organizations. I can not believe that time passed so fast and now, in one week, it will be over!
Every week, we have a meeting on tuesday evening to share how we are feeling and how our projects are evolving. Our coordinator here, Norman Cualteros from Pyxera Global, always starts with the question: "From 0 to 9, how are you feeling?". Why 9 not 10? I really do not know, ask Norman. 😂
This past week our average score was higher, 8.5! After almost 3 weeks, we were feeling more comfortable as well as more confident about what we are going to deliver. Nice work team!!
Immersion in the culture: FOOD!
There are many ways to connect to a culture. Language for sure is one really important one, but it would be impossible to learn the tagalog in 4 weeks.
As I appreciate food a lot, I chose to go this way. We had the chance to try many different plates here, most part of them are with chicken or pork (meat is expensive) and lots of rice. As I am a rice lover, I am in heaven.
I tried Sisig, Adobo, but my favorite one is Pancit Malabon! Sisig is made of fried pork cheeks, I really enjoyed it. Adobo can be with chicken or porc, really good. But Pancit Malabon would be similar to a Paella but instead of rice, you would have noodles. So GOOD!
Meeting People in Weird Places
In the last 3 weeks, I have been around Manila Great Area and have met many interesting people as I already told you in my previous posts about Social Sabbatical Week 1 and Week 2 (if you haven't had the chance to read them, just click in the links).
But this week, something weird happened and we got trapped in the elevator with very nice ladies from the Pediatric Conference that was taken place in our hotel. It took us 10 minutes to get out of the elevator, but we really had fun with the ladies. After that, Dan and I were not brave enough to take the elevator again, so we took the stairs. No need to go to the Gym that day.
Celebrating Life
This week, I had many important people celebrating birthdays not only in Brazil, but also here in the Philippines.
On February the 19th, I had my teammate Marco Pfeifer and my mom celebrating their birthday, 35 and 80. It was difficult to me not to be there with her to celebrate the milestone, but God was really good to put someone really special at my side to celebrate on the same day: Marco. The funny part is that we celebrated his birthday during the entire week. This drove Marco crazy and I think he has celebrated his birthday for the next 10 years. 🥳
On Friday, February the 23rd, we had the birthday of this beautiful lady, Dolores Tuccia. I chose to celebrate her birthday in a very different way. Very intimate and small celebration. I really wanted to tell her how special she is is and how much I appreciate her. Different people, different celebrations.
I also had my beautiful cousin Aimee Navega (19/Feb) and my dear friends Rosane Rocha and Steve Balahtsis (24/Feb) celebrating their birthdays as well.
Why did I choose Celebrating Lives and not Birthdays for the title? Because as I turned 50 in January and I see my parents getting older and more fragile, I realize that we got to spend every minute with who we love and birthdays mean that they are still with us to celebrate. What a blessing !So let's celebrate that we are here, that we have comfy homes, loving families and good jobs. But at the end, it is not about HAVING, it is about BEING! Being there for our loved ones, being there for those who need our help and mainly being better people every day!
Good bless you!
With all the love and care from Ate Nayla.
SALAMAT PO!
