I once lived in a floating house

it was only for a few days, but it gave me some of the best memories of college life.

We were into our third year in our bachelors in Sociology when we had an exposure trip to the Magat Lake community in Ramon, Isabela.  The fourth-year class was also with us, and a handful of us volunteered to experience community life on 'floating houses'--houses made of light materials that were built on bamboo and literally floated on the water.  The houses were surrounded by fishpens and were tethered to the nearest piece of land by a long, fat rope.  Rej, my college bestie, was my buddy and we were taken to a small floating house to a young family who would be taking care of us during our stay.  Ate and Kuya had two little boys, chickens, a puppy, and a cat.  Our floating house had electricity (care of car batteries and a generator), television, tilapia and bighead fishpens, and a couple of small boats.  We also had a small 'comfort room', a stall covered by empty rice sacks.  It didn't have a roof, and at night when we took our showers we could see the stars.

Community profiling by land and 'sea' for the win!  :)

our little brother, mom, and older brother

part of the immersion was a trip to the hydroelectric plant.

market day

uncle

dog barkada on an early morning romp

studying with a chicken

feeding the fish

our bunso at his favorite spot beside the tv

coming home

father

cat.  she slept in the boat.

swimming chicken.

morning stretch.  with chickens.

i

they call this fish Imelda.

lola, little brother, rej, kuya (nanay's brother), nanay, littlest brother, tatay

beside our floating house

i woke up to this.  glad to have been here.

I used my lolo's Canon FTQL SLR camera with the 50mm/1.8 lens (which I took for granted before, now I know the different kinds of lenses, yay!). I was trying out my hand in photography then and I taught myself the basics with the FTQL--so you really have to excuse the overexposure and such. It's a heavy camera and I'm proud it survived the immersion (it didn't fall into the murky water!). As for the film, my favorite was the Fuji Superia asa400 and that's what I used for the trip. I had the film processed and printed at Kodak in Dapitan. This was in 2003 and digital cameras still had to make their way to the Philippine market (I think), and most of my printed photos were (unfortunately) used for our reporting and presentation. Good thing that today's technology allows for negative scanning directly to cd, and so after almost seven years, I finally have digital files of my film photos. :)