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The Cultural Connection I’ll Never Get in America
Being in the Philippines, I wasn’t seen as different. Instead, I felt accepted. For the first time, I didn’t feel like a minority.
After a long, tiring, seventeen-hour nonstop flight from JFK Airport, I finally arrived in the Philippines. Filled with excitement and nervousness, I had been counting down the days until this trip. This wasn’t my first time visiting my parents’ home country, however, it was the first time that I was visiting with my fiancé. It was his first trip to any Asian country and keeping that in mind, I recalled my first trip to the Philippines.
My first trip was five years ago. I was twenty-four years old. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know whether I’d feel right at home or like a complete outsider. And to be brutally honest, during that first trip, I felt a little bit of both. However, coming back the second time around, I can say that I felt a lot more at home. It was a familiar feeling, to return.
Growing up, I had always been somewhat embarrassed being Filipino in America. Because in some peoples’ eyes, I looked like a foreigner just because of the color of my hair, the color of my skin, the way that my eyes looked. Even though I was born here, I never felt one hundred percent recognized as…
