AS IN. That wasn't even halfway of getting wet -- taking the whole idea of being immersed in your chosen area.
We had a choice between going to live with the Aetas or spending much of your day with the children in conflict with the law (yeah whatever).
My group (Mik, Binx, Peps & Abigail) chose CRADLE, a facility where juvenile deliquents are detained. It's inside Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan and I have no idea how to get there. But then again, they live in cells so wth. The kids (everyone less than 18y/o) were being detained for all sorts of reasons (murder/homicide, rape, drugs, robbery et al). They aren't exactly in jail compared to their neighbors ( i.e. one leader of the Abu Sayyaf is being held in the prison just a mere 50meters away from where I was). Unlike other immersions, ours didn't require us to sleep in our area >_< So, for 2 1/2 days, we just went there to participate in games and GDs and ice breakers (seriosuly, one of our facilitators actually called it an ice breaker). It was Intact/NSTP/high school outreach program/Exposure trip all of a sudden. I feel I kinda really wasted my weekend when I could've just started studying for Epidemiology or start that lab report.
But, there were isolated "fun moments."
We had a game wherein we had to guess our partner's name. There were 16 of us AdMU students and 16 other CRADLE kids. We each formed a single line and faced each other. We had 3 things to guess about our partners: (1) name, (2) age, (3) area where you live. There wasn't a pressure to get all three correct.
Bianca's partner: Sa tingin ko po, ang pangalan niyo po, Angela.
Ate Bench: Ah, Angela ba kasi para siyang anghel? *utter laughter from everyone else*
[ I don't even know if Binx' partner actually agreed. I think he did. *wink wink*]
Miko's partner: Ang pangalan niyo po, ano po, Cathy/Kathy.
Miko: *laughing*
Binx and Tadz: *laughing out loud*
Tadz' partner: Ano po, tingin ko pangalan niyo Jasmine/Hasmine.
Binx: *ROTFL*
Miko: *ROTFL*
My friends. Great. Thanks for the support. I'm pretty sure he pronounced my name with an "H". And I think he never got my real name the first time around. No one usually does. Hahaha.
So that was it. I can sum up my whole Immersion experience in that guessing game. Everyone wanted to go home and get it over and done with. Maybe we should've gone to the Aetas.