Miranda's story ....

Cisv, its such a perfect night mmm it doesn't seem quite right mmm that it should be my last with you cisv.

Oh hello there, I was just looking back at some of the memories I had at my cisv village that I was at over in the Philippines. It was the best experience of my life. I still miss everyone and wish I was still there with them all. Ill just have to try and look forward to the next big opportunity I get when I can be a junior counsellor and hopefully I can do something as amazing again some time in the future.

Hi my name is Miranda and I'm talking to you about my international summer village, over in the Philippines. My amazing adventure began when we arrived at Auckland airport and left for the Philippines three hours later. I went with four other people, Sean my leader and three other delegates named Henri, Sam and Devon. We took a three hour flight over to Sydney and stopped there for an extra two hours, then went on our eight hour flight to the Philippines, it was a really long flight so I had a long sleep on the plane seeing as it was 5:30 am when we left new Zealand.

When we arrived in the Philippines it was 7:45 pm and 29ºC, boiling compared to New Zealand. We stayed at the airport and met the camp director. His name was Jojo but we always called him Tito Jojo because in the Philippines it's a sign of respect to call the adults Tito and Tita, you call the men Tito and the women Tita. Once we had our iced tea with the director, we went outside to meet our home stay families. The boys went with Sean to their home stays while Devon and I went to ours. We stayed with them for one night. They were really nice people, with an extremely fancy house, six maids plus three dogs. It was awesome. But to see the way they wouldn't let me help their maids out with some jobs made me feel awkward and rude.

The next morning we set off to Baguio city. We got on the bus and met lots of friendly people from all over the world. It was a six hour bus trip to Baguio. I didn't mind though because we had made great friends with the Canadians and we learnt a lot about them. Once we got to the camp site, we went straight to our next home stay. The lady that looked after us was really nice, she had three kids and a dog. She took care of us very well and she let us help out with her helpers (as she liked to call them) we stayed at her house for one night then set off to our camp site. We stayed at the Brent international school, the first day was awesome we got to meet the rest of the delegates and got straight into our activities. We stayed at the camp for 21 days. I had so much fun you wouldn't believe. One of the best activities was the rich and poor game.

All we did was watch but it wasn't just a game it was a message our leaders tried to get through to us. They showed us how different people live, some are wealthy some are poor, the main message was that we are able to make a difference, we can help people who live poorly. That was the one rule to the rich and poor game. We were allowed to help.

But even the other games they didn't have a meaning but there was a main rule it was to have fun and make new friends from all over the world. That's how the whole camp works. This is how we got along at camp - respect and friendship. So let me try and get this one message through to you. You can make a difference don't bully others. If you can be kind to everyone and then you will be respected by everyone.

Peace out!
Miranda Chase