Skulking Around

Western Philippines University (WPU for those in the know) has been preparing for an accreditation for the past three weeks. The goal of the university is to achieve Level Three accreditation. This will allow them to teach other higher level courses, attracting new students, and increasing overall revenue. To be completely honest, I have no idea what "preparing for an accreditation" actually entails, but to the best of my understanding, it basically boils down to the following sentence:

"Yeah, yeah, yeah...you're interns, we get it. Just calm the fuck down, chill out for a few weeks and we'll get around to talking to you...or not, whatever. Go away, I'm busy stapling important documents to other important documents".

So we wait. We research and we wait.

We've actually researched an insane amount of material regarding ecotourism, come up with a project plan, set objectives, and begun to determine what types of questions we want to ask ecotourism operators and tourists. The overall goal is to determine the ideal skill-set and knowledge level of an ecotourism operator, assess the actual skills and knowledge level of local ecotourism operators, and try to determine the knowledge level and perceptions towards ecotourism of local ecotourism stakeholders. Overall, we are providing data to WPU for the development of curriculum relating to a new proposed ecotourism course. Sitting back and reading that previous sentence for speeling mistaks actually makes me feel like we are accomplishing something, or at least on the way to accomplishing something.

We were called into an impromptu Wednesday afternoon meeting last week to answer some questions for the accreditation. The questions were pretty general, asking what we were doing at WPU, our goals and objectives, etc, etc. When we finished this meeting with the accreditor we had another brief meeting with Doc Ben, our immediate supervisor. We went over what we had been doing and where we planned to go, detailing our research and preliminary time-frame. We talked for a few minutes, Doc Ben listening intently the whole time. When we finally finished our spiel he remained silent and sat still for a few moments. Shifting in his chair and adjusting his posture he remarked:

"Sounds good, sounds good, but slow down".

Heh.

Today we went to Honda Bay. Honda Bay is a tourist destination where you can rent a boat and go island hopping to five different islands. We went as part of an opening ceremony for a new ecotourism project. The project is a floating classroom. Here, local fisherman educate divers on the surrounding reef ecosystem, explaining what a coral is, how it grows, the importance of coral reefs to fishing and biodiversity, among other things. After this we went to Luli Island, an island that is almost completely submerged during high tide. Here we ate some BBQ and seafood and explored a little. I came to realize that I have an unnatural obsession with the super macro function of my camera. No matter how boring something may be, I am determined to squeeze every last drop of excitement from it by zooming in. I spent 10 minutes trying to drain a rock of all its awesome when it struck me that I was on a beautiful island in a tropical paradise taking pictures of a fucking rock. I did manage to tear myself away from the wonders of the stone long enough to snap some pretty good pics of the island and the floating classroom though. All in all it was a pretty fun day. We saw some sights, had some eats, met some peeps, and snapped some rocks. Also, I burned. Next weekend we are planning a trip to see the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River.

I bet there are all sorts of rocks in there!