Day 12: Bittersweet Paradise

Today was our final day in Boracay and it was definitely bittersweet to say the least. Our day started bright and early with breakfast at 6:30 AM to energize us for our long and eventful day, or so we thought. The rain had begun long before breakfast and there was no sight to an end. Today's focal point and culmination of our stay here in Boracay was the Yuppies weekly Saturday beach cleanup. However, the ocean's tide and Mother Nature has other plans for us. No sand just water was the view from back patio. What once was a sandy beach was all waves. The cleanup was scheduled for 7:30 AM but was pushed back an hour for hours on end. Lunch at 11:00 AM came and went with no beach clean up. With the weather aside, various of the students fell ill and the morning became a time of various naps and lounging around. About eight of us sat in Kelly, Rachel, and Matea, and Olivia's room to watch a really low budget version of Anaconda which was quite amusing.

Finally at 12:30 PM the weather broke and the tide receded. Our festivities began at 1:00 PM with the Filipino version of the Amazing Race. We broke off into five teams of four, with a mixture of GIEU students and Yuppies. There we five different tasks that every team needed to accomplish. The difficultly increased as the tasks went on. The tasks we as followed: fill three garbage bags of litter, fill three bottles with water without submerging them into the ocean, build a sand house with ten sand balls, count the number of coconut trees from our hotel and another resort, and lastly recite a tongue twister in Tagalog. Team two, which was composed of Rachel, Ray, Broghan, and Sophie prevailed and won the competition. After all was said and done it was time for an egg tossed Yuppies vs GIEU students in which had no winner because all of the eggs broke. 

After a days worth of physical activities, some of us continued to play games with the Yuppies while another group walked down the beach to grab a quick snack and shop. Once again all of this was cut short due to another down pour. Every retreated into their rooms to wait out the weather and relax. We made frequent trips into the hallway to check out the rain and were surprised to see that our stairwell turned into a waterfall. Hunger eventually set in and we became curious as to when and where we would be eating dinner. We knew that we were eating out but we didn't know where and to our surprise the Yuppies treated us to an amazing dinner at Tito's. The dinner was filled with wonderful food, great conversations, thank you speeches, and super cute gifts from the Yuppies to the GIEU students.

The night ended with a group gathering and eventually divided into two groups. One group enjoyed each other's company and serenaded the Yuppies while the others danced the night away at a club near the hotel.

We are ending our stay here in Boracay with new friends and smiling faces to begin our new experiences in Bohol.

Patrick and Adam! :)