Technically, it’s
still the thirty-first of March for me because I’ve been able to sleep but let
me tell y’all. It is hot! Like I have
the fan on full blast but I still feel sweat on my face and it’s uncomfortable.
I don’t do well in the heat when it comes to sleeping. So, instead, I thought I
might write out my entry for y’all and post in the morning. Maybe I’ll be able
to post this right after I get out of class. If not, I’ll save it for next
week. I have an older post from February that I’ll be sharing with you.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to post this but if not, then this may be scheduled for
the week after or even later.
What thoughts
accompany at this hour? Well, I’ve thought about this past week and how I’ve
felt connected with the people here in the Philippines. I don’t feel like a
stranger for once. These people are always telling me to adjust telling me that
I need to change. Whereas, all I’m
trying to do is understand their culture first and then I can analyze my
observation and work with it from there.
I landed here on
April 26th, 2018. I stayed here until December 18th of
2018. Then, I came back around midnight of January 13th, 2019. In
total, I have been here for roughly nine-ten months. I have learned a lot since
coming to this country and I’ve been doing my best to learn from the people of
this country but something struck me this week.
Internally, I have
never felt a part of this country. I am
Filipino. I am their race but I’m not one of them. I don’t like to think
this way but back home I’ve never exactly fit into one cliché group. I’ve never
wanted to. But there’s this sense of belonging to society that humans have
craved over their evolution and I didn’t think that I felt the need to be
accepted into a society but after this last week I’ve realized an internal
battle that I wasn’t aware that I was having.
It has always been
okay for me to be different. I know
that I’m different. I’m aware that
I’m different. But I’ve never been placed in the spotlight (negatively) because
of it and that’s something that has happened here. Questions and comments like
the following are asked all the time and I’m constantly reminded that I’m not one of the people here and to an
extent I don’t feel that I ever will be fully.
How are you Filipino but you can’t speak Filipino? Why are you here and
not in the United States? You have to adjust to us. You can’t bring your culture
here. You might be ‘used to whatever it is you’re doing’ but it’s not
acceptable here. You can’t be bisexual, you don’t have an ex-girlfriend. You’re
not close to your family? That’s not the culture of the Philippines. You should
be able to speak at least one of our languages by now, you’ve been here for so
long. Why don’t you study back home? You can’t be ‘neutral’ to religion! That
means you’re antichrist! As a Filipino you have to believe in God! You’re a
woman, you shouldn’t carry your own things. Why don’t you have someone with you
to help you adjust? You’re not a virgin?! That’s not socially acceptable here!
You’re not married.
The list goes on. I
will get a little political here for one moment. I’m not here to change
people’s views in politics or judge people on their political views and some of
my readers may not continue to read because of the following comment but all of
you who are reading this need to understand that this is a personal public
journal and this is about how I have been affected by culture, society,
technology…by the world. So, if you are Trump supporter, you’re probably not
going to like the following.
I do not support the
president that I have to claim as my
president back in the United States because he is against everything that I am.
I come from a foreign background (as an American-Filipino). I am a female, who
is part of the LGBTQ+ community, I am bisexual. I believe that education is
more important than business because we can always makes more business but we
can improve those business through education. The military is important, but I
don’t believe that it needs more
funding.
That statement
wasn’t made to provoke anyway (and it probably will). But I’ll go back to the
social interaction of Filipinos because who
I am is questioned. I look Filipino but how can I also be American? I’m a
Filipino who doesn’t speak the languages. I can’t attracted to women, I’ve only
had boyfriends.
I could touch up on
the subject in parts but since this is supposed to be a short journal entry
I’ll see what I can add onto it on later days. My purpose of putting all this
in one entry is that… I haven’t felt like I’ve truly belonged in this Filipino
society until this week and I think I will continue to struggle with this
aspect until I write it out and come to peace with it.
Why should a person
be limited when it comes to who they are? Why is it not okay to part of
multiple society? What’s wrong with that? Is there a problem with being who
they believe they are? What makes a society’s standards the only correct standards?
These aren’t
questions that run through my head because I want to always feel isolated from
the community but rather, these are questions that I ask because I want to know
why it’s not acceptable to be different in a society. I may look like
these people but I’m not one of them on a mental and social level. I have
reached a level of acceptance physically and I know that I get my emotional
reactiveness from this culture but it took me meeting people who understood me
on an intellectual level as well as a mental and social level for this
invisible barrier to come down.
Through the people
I’ve met this past week, or to the people who I’ve come to realize can actually
sync with me, I want to say thank you. Thank you for making me feel comfortable
in my own skin. This was a battle that I had to fight in my adolescence. I
became comfortable not fitting in.
These people that
I’ve talked to this week… From the Vice President of Foreign Affairs, to my
Advisor in the Office of Foreign Affairs, to my Section Adviser, to my tutors
in Ilocano and Filipino, to the staff of New Tandem, to the Thai Bass player
that I got to interview, to my Physics friend, and to my actual best friend.
All of these people have helped me feel intellectually, emotionally, and
socially sound. It is because of them that I have realized that it’s not about being part of the community that isn’t
mine. It’s about finding the people who bring out the best in you.
The above people
have challenged me intellectually and synced with me in one way or another.
Some people I’ve only spoken to once, but one interaction was more than enough
to get me to realize the importance of why I’m here. I’m not here to be a part
of the Filipino community. I’m here to learn how this culture can better my
life. These people haven’t judged me for what I should be but rather, they look at me for who I am. I don’t fit into society and they see that but that
doesn’t cause them to think less of me, instead, this makes them wonder about
me.
Americans stereotype
Filipinos for being great good company and friendly host. But that’s only if
you’re not one of them. I am a Filipino but I’m an American first. This doesn’t
mean my race isn’t Filipino but this means that I was raised and exposed to
multiple cultures. Filipinos make the best friends but they make the worst
enemies.
This country has
proven to me through the society that there are
many Filipinos that live up to the
standard of good hospitality. However, I was exposed to the wrong crowd for far
too long and I didn’t realize it until the universe showed me who my friends
were this week. This week has to be the most enlightening week of my nine-ten
months here and I’m so glad that I’ve experienced it.
There’s a lot to talk
about in this entry but I’ll leave it here and come back to it later. My gut
has twisted as if I had said something wrong. The above is true and these are
my feelings. I cant change those feelings. What I can do is change what I do
with them now and it may take more than tomorrow but I do hope that I can begin
to enjoy the rest of this semester because I’ve figured out why I haven’t felt Filipino. It’s not that I’m not Filipino. It’s that I’ve culturally
thought that I was what was wrong
with the picture in society. When really, I was basing my opinion off the wrong
people in that society.
I’m going to have to
retouch on this subject,
Thanks for listening.
DJ/Nar/Cho
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