Heart and Soul

I am so lucky to be invited to the Familiarization and Orientation Tour of the Nayong Pilipino. I intend to have a good time so as to give myself a break from the past week's drama which sent me to an emotional roller coaster ride. And fortunately, I did had a good time. I just try to learn, to savor the pieces of information that I got and acted as if it was the first time I had been there.

Program for the Famtour/Orientation

I have not been to the old Nayong Pilipino in its former location in Paranaque City, but I have been here, in this new location in Clark Freeport Zone and I could say that this time, I was impressed.



Lucky also to have the Executive Director of the Nayong Pilipino Foundation Atty. Jun Anota as our guide. I can say that he sure does know his Philippine History. I learned a lot from him. I can see the passion in his eyes when he talks about the changes the park will be going through in the next years to come.

Garland for the special guests

The Orchidarium

Nayong Pilipino is not just a theme park, but an educational institution as well. Science has now become an integral part of the park, and can even be a model environment structure to combat climate change. It has added fountains in the park to add moisture to the orchidarium. This orchidarium will be better than that of Singapore once the plants are in full bloom come August. After a video presentation on propagating orchids, guests were given first-hand experience in artificially pollinating an orchid. The orchidarium is also home to the rarest orchids in the world.

Executive Director Atty. Jun Anota explaining how the pollination of orchids is done.

Guests have first-hand experience in pollinating orchids.

This fountain has many purposes, one is to maintain the moisture inside the orchidarium.

Rarest orchid..:)

The Villages

Nayong Pilipino has replicas of some of the more known villages of ethnic tribes in the Philippines.  Among them were the Aeta Village, Kalinga and Ifugao Village. I felt a sense of pride to know the ingenuity of the Filipinos , of being great architects even in ancient times. The houses that they built were earthquake proof, such as the Maranao's and the Kalinga's houses. Did you know that Kalinga Apayao once became the capital of the Philippines around the 1900's when Gen. Aguinaldo retreated to the north? The very house that the general stayed at has a replica in the Villages.

An authentic Kalinga lass sits at a replica of their houses. Notice the ingenuity of how the houses were built.The stone stove sits in the middle of the house, which also serves as a heater, giving off heat to the whole house,cooking the rice and smoking the meat which were placed on the top level of the stove.

An authentic Ifugao man sculpts which is one of their main sources of income..

and the ladies weave...

The Historical Houses 

A Maranao house..earthquake-proof and typhoon-proof.

Stepping inside the replica historical houses in Nayong Pilipino, one cannot help but be amazed. Imagine getting inside the house of Jose Rizal, Apolinario Mabini and Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo. Or hear mass in the Barasoain Church. These houses played a very important role in fighting for the independence that we are all enjoying today.

Inside Jose Rizal replica house, behind me is a bust of our national hero.

"Ang hindi magmahal sa sarilingwika, ay higit sa hayop at malansang isda."- Dr. Jose Rizal "He who doesn't love his own language, is worse than an animal and a stinky fish." (my literal translation)

Replica's of Jose Rizal's compositions.

Replica of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo's house, the seat of the First President of the Philippine Republic.

Behind me is a replica of Emilio Aguinaldo's house.

Museum of Weaves

This is a new addition to the park. This museum contains artifacts of the different weaves of our forefathers. Too bad the tradition has stopped and has not been passed on to the younger generation. It is sad that the most beautiful weaves and materials used to come from our country. The designs were just so intricate and the weaves were so fine that only experts with dainty hands could have woven those elegant pieces of silk.

OIC of the museum, Anica Alcopra.

Woven pieces usually used by the Tausugs.

The details,design and weave is very intricate deserving to consider this our culture's treasures.

The treasures of the Philippine's can be seen not only in the fineness of these artifacts, but specially in the smile and beautiful faces of it's people.

I'm proud of my culture, I'm proud of my heritage. I am proud to be Filipino.

See more of our culture in my next post Nayong Pilipino: A Cultural Presentation.

Keep the faith,

-Mei

Back to School Items on Sale

I have always loved writing, and so when blogging was "invented", I was glad because it became a medium for us "wannabe writers" to practice our craft. Personally, I started blogging just for the sole purpose of writing, of putting my thoughts into words, and most especially, as a form of therapy. Keeping a journal was one of the suggestions my psychiatrist told me to do, so I can keep up with my thoughts.

Photo: onlineincometeacher.com

But there's more to blogging than just something you write your thoughts on. It is also a very powerful tool used for online marketing. And you can also monetize your blog,so it can compensate your expenses in running a site if you run your blog in your own domain. Or if you are using a free blogger site, then won't the extra cash be a nice incentive? You earn while doing the thing you love to do.

Photo: wow-womenonwriting.com

How do you monetize your blog? Here, I wrote down the ways on how to monetize your blog in ways that I have tried.


1. Run ads on your blog. If you have good traffic and a very nice following, you can opt to run ads. Start with your friends who owns businesses. You could run some of it as an exchange deal initially, and then start charging at a minimal price. As you work on getting more traffic and followers, you can start asking for a standard price for your space.

2. Join affiliate programs. There are plenty of affiliate programs available on the internet. You do not need to pay for joining affiliate programs. Just think of it this way, if you need to pay for joining affiliate programs, that would be contrary to what you are intending to do, that is, to earn with the least expenses. By running their ads, you earn a commission for every sign-up or purchase done by clicking through the ads in your blog.

Here are some affiliate programs that you may want to try out.

Mommerce - Mommerce is an affiliate program that has plenty of merchants to choose from. Their merchants includes Starbucks, Walmart, Nordstrom, Avon, Pandora, among the more popular once. What's good with this program is that you only need to approved once and you get to choose which program you want to join. Every merchant offer different commission. You just have to choose which program suits your blog.You can sign-up for Mommerce here.  Mommerce also offers referral programs.

http://network.mommerce.com/signup/2699

                   

 Shareasale - Shareasale is another affiliate program. Most of their programs are discounted or sale items. Note however, that you have to apply for each merchant. Each merchant have different criteria for approving your application. An approved application for one merchant does not mean an approval on another. Choose which programs you would like to join.
   Amazon- You can be an associate and earn in two ways, run ads and set up your shop. This by far, is my favorite. Setting up an A-shop, you get to choose which products from Amazon you can sell on your shop. You can either use widgets (which they have plenty to choose from) or set it up in a separate page. There are also widgets for mp3's with sample songs for your readers to listen to. You may need to read how the commissions are calculated. You can set up your Amazon Affiliation here.

                 

  Lazada - Lazada Affiliate Program works the same way as Amazon. The only thing is that you may have to wait for 3-5 business days for your approval. You might also be surprised that even though you applied for Lazada Philippines, the approval comes from Lazada Indonesia.The best part though is when you get approved, you can join in all their campaigns, including those of Lazada Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. So all in all, you get to join in 5 affiliate programs with one application. You just need to activate or join in the program.

                 

 Adsense - Adsense is Google's advertising program. It is different from Adwords though, which is a bit more complicated to use. Adsense is as simple as embedding html codes available for you, into your blog. The system automatically generate the ads that would be shown in your website by getting relevant keywords from your site. The only downside to this is that it may take awhile for the approval, based on my personal experience.

                 
               

3. Sell Products - If you have products to sell, you can do in your blog. Create great content with your product that you can share on your blog.

4. Get Paid for your Posts- This is called Paid Post. You can write product reviews or even press releases. PayPerPost and ReviewMe are popular options.

Sign up for PayPerPost :


5. Memberhip Programs - If you are confident about the content of your blog, you can set up a membership program, either free or paid. You can start at free with limited content to share to your members. Build your way up to selling paid membership/subscription. Just make sure though that people will get what they paid for. Great and unique content is the key.

These are just a few of the ways you can monetize your blog. There is nothing wrong with earning a few bucks to cover up for your website maintenance. Who knows your blog just might bring in more cash than you expected.

Keep the faith,