This is the first time that First-time Travels will be featuring an article from a guest blogger. I love that. As I’m pretty sure that every seasoned traveler started out as a first-time traveler, I welcome stories about travel experiences when you first embarked on your travels or when you first visited a place. Read …
Farmerbrown. The name wasn’t familiar to me before until I encountered it and it definitely stuck in my memory bank. Not only was the place where I had my first dinner in San Francisco, if not in the USA, but how I got there was in itself an interesting tale. I was in this beautiful …
I’m not referring to a town in Rizal Province in the Philippines. Rather, this is San Mateo, one of the suburbs near San Francisco, California, USA. It’s 20-30 minutes away from downtown San Francisco and about 10 minutes away from SFO airport. We could even hear the planes as they land or take off. So, before …
“LA is great big freeway…” so the song goes. And big freeways, indeed, fill the Los Angeles landscape. Next to rows of palm trees, of course. My good friend Cathy was kind enough to host me all throughout my LA trip right after the conference which I attended in San Francisco and take me to …
Forty-five hundred people. Thirty-something new friends. A grand opening session. This has been the biggest conference I have attended so far. This was the National Conference on Volunteering and Service (NCVS) 2009. It was a gathering of various non-profits, government agencies, and corporations all over the United States. So, why was Hands On Manila part of …
Read more “NCVS 2009 with Michelle Obama and some Hollywood stars”
It was my first time in San Francisco, California. In fact, it was my first time in the US. On a bigger scale, it was my first time across the Pacific. I went to the US to attend the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service as a representative of Hands On Manila Foundation, an …