Personal Reflective Essay

When I moved to the Philippines with my family at age six, I had no idea that I’d wind up locking myself in the room downstairs every day for weeks. I remember refusing to go to school where everyone would speak to me in a language I had no fluency in, and instead feebly hiding in the corner of the room in my new house with the door locked, waiting for my carpool to leave before I would come out. I was terrified and overwhelmed; the culture shock seemed insurmountable at the time and looking back now, it definitely was. Everything in the Philippines differed so much from what I was used to in California, and even from Japan where I lived for a year prior to moving. Never would I have thought that it would be there where I would find myself and become more intact with my culture than anywhere

Their house was so concrete and worn-down that it would barely even be recognized as a house in America. I was baffled; how could people live in such poor living conditions? There were five children in the family yet only one, tiny bedroom. Despite it all, they were the some of the happiest people I’ve met in my life. As time passed I began to feel more and more comfortable with my surroundings and the customs that made up the country. I began speaking Tagalog fluently to the point where speaking English was a rarity, and I adapted to the traditions and social norms of my community. I was happy to call that place my home. But my home was also a third-world country. You get used to seeing children and homeless families who have no one but each other begging for money on the streets, mangy dogs and cats roaming the area. It’s not that you become immune to it — you just learn to accept that there’s not much you can do to help, no matter how abysmal the situation. And that’s the root cause that entails from living in a country like the