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Bay City native to join Peace Corps in Philippines
Monday, July 22, 2002 By Amy Jo Johnson TIMES WRITER
Bay City native Julie M. Fredrick is packing two suitcases - and a few rolls of duct tape - for her upcoming 26-month stay in the Philippines.
"They said to bring duct tape. They say duct tape fixes everything," said Fredrick, who has been reading up on advice before she leaves for the Peace Corps on Wednesday.
A booklet full of advice from Peace Corps volunteers also has instructed her to bring toothpaste, because the toothpaste in the Philippines contains sugar.
She'll also pack a fair amount of dental floss, which isn't readily available in the Asian island country, and hard candy, which is a popular treat among the locals.
The 23-year-old recent college graduate is flying to San Francisco for a two-day orientation before she leaves for the Philippines on Friday.
"I'll be back September 2004."
Fredrick and 38 other volunteers will have a week of training once they arrive in the capital city of Manila.
The volunteers then will break into smaller groups and be taken to different locations for five weeks of language and cultural training.
While she's in the Philippines, Fredrick will stay with a local family. She said it's not likely she'll have common amenities like running water and electricity. She'll be connected to the rest of the world by one central telephone in the village.
Fredrick's assignment is to instruct other educators from the Philippines on how to teach the English language to youngsters.
Fredrick holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids. She said she expects her work in the Philippines to be quite a challenge.
"I've never had to teach other adults," she said.
Fredrick applied to join the Peace Corps in December. She said she kept thinking back to two months she spent living in a teepee on a Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Browning, Mont.
"It was great," she said. "You never knew what the next day was going to bring."
The trip to Montana, part of an Aquinas study program, helped give Fredrick an appreciation for roughing it and inspired her enrollment in the Peace Corps.
Fredrick said she and some other college students returned to the American Indian reservation one day to find the wind had blown their outhouse over. The group had to dig a new latrine and then move the structure that kept them from the elements.
"It was the raw edge experience of it, I guess," she said of what helped her decide to join the Peace Corps. "I thought, 'Heck, why not?"'
Fredrick says she's anxious to participate in the Corps, to learn another culture and have the opportunity to help others. She said her upcoming trip is like an assignment from God.
"I feel I'm called to a sense of service," she said.
Fredrick isn't a stranger to service work.
She was active in Paint-N-Pride in high school. She worked with terminally ill kids at DeVos Children's Hospital in college. She participated in campus ministry at Aquinas and was a freshman orientation leader for three years.
Fredrick even donated 14 inches of her hair in April to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hair prosthetics for children who have developed long-term medical hair loss.
Fredrick is a 1997 graduate of All Saints High School. She is the daughter of Louanne Threehouse of Bay City and Charles Fredrick of Sterling.
Fredrick is planning on grilling out with her family and friends tonight, an event that she's certain will be difficult.
"That will be emotional, I'm sure," she said.
Fredrick says she still isn't used to the fact that she'll be gone so long that she'll miss milestones like friends' weddings or the birth of her sister Joyce's baby in December.
"It's hard to deal with things like that ... that life's not going to stop here," she said.
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