Great week in Sagada and final days in Tublay

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  Tublay, Benguet, Luzon, Philippines
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Greeting's to all!


I arrived back to Tublay on Tuesday after a wonderful week spent in Sagada! Sagada is a beautiful mountain town about six hours north of Tublay. It holds a lot of memories for we PCV's since it is where we spend and host our big Thanksgiving Bash every November. Plus I connected the cave guides I worked with in Tublay with the well established SEGA-Sagada Environmental Guides Association. With all of these wonderful memories I had to return one more time before I leave and enjoy the fresh mountain air and hang with my local friends in Sagada.

I spent the beginning of the week hanging with Siegrid, who is a local female cave guide and extremely talented potter in Sagada. She has been a long friend of PCV's and it was wonderful to spend time with her during my last days here. Sagada is a prime example of a community that is actively working to preserve their culture and traditions even with the strong historical missionary presence and tourism influx over the last ten years. My first full day in town I attended a house blessing ritual of Siegrid's Uncle who is a retired Episcopal Priest. Even with his more western religious influence he still actively believes in the indigenous rituals of his ancestors and hosted a blessing of their new home in town. The blending of these more western beliefs and indigenous practices is found throughout the region and specifically in Sagada. This unique blend of belief systems is special to witness. Basically the blessing involved the butchering of a pig as a sacrifice and a series of native priest or Mabunos (in Ibaloi) reading the heart of the pig and reciting aloud various blessings. It was nice to get to witness another ritual before my departure.

While this was my sixth visit to Sagada it was my first time to enjoy many of the hikes and waterfalls in the area. I met an RPCV in Manila last month that served in Ecuador and has been doing a legal fellowship in Mindanao over the summer. Megan joined me in Sagada for part of the week and we had a great time! One morning we hiked to the big waterfall located in a far off village of Sagada. While it was a cold morning the day cleared up on our way there and we had a spectacular hike to the waterfalls. The hike took us though the rice terraces and while it is harvest time rather then planting, the views of the terraces where still beautiful. Planting rice is not an easy job and you will often see the old women who have spent their lives planting rice with their back permanently at a 90 degree angle! It is very humbling to see this type of hard work. It was wonderful to spend one of my final weeks in Sagada. It is a place I know I will return to often in my memories and picture the pine forest, cooling temperatures and beautiful mountains all around!

I am back in Tublay for my final days here. My nervousness with saying good bye to my incredible host family and up-coming travels are starting to hit it hard in these final days. So I am doing my best to soak in these remaining days! While I know I will be back it will never quite be the same as it has these last two years, but I will always have my incredible memories to take with me.

This Sunday is my despidida or going away party with my host family at the farm. It is traditional at such parties to have a pig butchered and spend the day enjoying each others company and eating lots of food! I intend to do all this and much more!

I hope you are all well and I will send out one final update from here before I fly to Bangkok on August 11th.

All my love and Peace!

Sherry

Post your own travel photos for friends and family Pictures

Beautiful views of Sagada	Big waterfall from a distance	Classic Sherry Picture at waterfall	Close up of Big Waterfall
Close up of rice terrace	Close up shot of Paley Rice	Hanging coffins in Echo-Valley Sagada	Hanging coffins in Sagada
Hiking thorugh the terraces on way to waterfall	Local Lolo at vilalge near waterfall	Lola's serving themselves at the rutual	Me and Siegrid at the Ritual
me with rice terraces in background	Me with the waterfall	Megan and I at waterfall	Mist created from power of waterfall
Morning fog rolling into town Sagada	Native Priest at the Ritual performing blessing	On hike to the big waterfall	Our Wat-Wat and Tapey (Rice Wine)
Paley or rice ready to harvest	Piknikpikan Dish (Killing Me softly Chicken)	Pinikpikan Chiken Dish in Sagada	Pottery in Sagada
Rice almost ready to harvest	Rice bundles drying after harvest	Rice terraces on way to waterfall	Siegrid playing wiht ids at the Ritual
Siegrid working on her pottery	Siegrid working on the wheel	Siegrid's house where I stayed in Sagada	The Pottery Workshop in Sagada
These views deserve the dorky pose!	Time ot eat at the ritual	View of pine road in Sagada	View of small scale mine near village in Sagada
Views from Siegrid's house in Sagada	Views on hike to waterfall	Views on hike to wild horses	Village from a distance on hike to waterfall
Village roof tops on hike to waterfall	Wild horses on the distance	Yet another classic Sherry Picture

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