Philippines Capstone 2018: January 4th, The Long Journey Ahead ✈️

By Claire Stiff

After 3 long flights, over 19 hours in the air and way too much swelling in our feet, we have made it to Manila! Starting at the beginning of our journey, all nine of the CSS students and Dr. Julie Knuths, one of our professors, met at MSP airport ready to head overseas to the Philippines at 5:30 am on Wednesday, January 3rd. Our first flight took off at 8:35 am and we had a quick layover in Detroit before our long flight (13 hours) to Tokyo-Narita. Talk about impatience! One can only watch so many movies in one sitting. All of us agreed that we felt all we did on that flight was eat. After all, Delta fed us three meals...Luckily, almost all of us students were seated together so we were able to fall asleep on one another and get up as much as we would like to without the fear of bothering a total stranger. What was supposed to be an hour and half layover in Tokyo, turned into 10 minutes as our plane arrived in late and we had to go through customs to get to our connecting flight. We were all hoping to have this time in the airport to look around and gather souvenirs from Japan. The final stretch consisted of five more hours which felt like a piece of cake compared to the previous flight. We all had agreed before the flight that we should not sleep because we may be able to fall asleep later on. 30 minutes in the air, a majority of us were passed out.

When we landed in Manila, Gina Diaz, our other professor who is a class of 82' graduate of Mary Johnston College of Nursing, was there to greet us at the airport with other faculty of Mary Johnston, Ma'am Babes and Ma'am Marisel (Here in the Philippines, they use ma'am and sir to address people in a respectful manner). We took a short bus ride and arrived at the college and unpacked in our rooms. The girls bedrooms consisted of 4 twin beds, a kitchen table and sink, a dresser and an all-in-one bathroom consisting of a toilet, sink and shower head. We were very fortunate to have running water and better yet, hot water! Poor Kilen, the only boy on the trip had a room that did not have hot water. We all forgot that we are located in the heart of the poorest area in Manila and we will be caring for the underserved! All in all, I was very excited to be here and could not wait to dive in and indulge myself in the Filipino culture.