Coming from a different country has its obvious struggles, like the language barrier and learning an entire culture. I came from the Philippines when I was 8 years old. Because I migrated to the United States at an age where I was old enough to remember living in the Philippines but young enough to not have lived all my developmental years there, it gave way to a lot of struggles that may not be familiar to many people.
1. Even though I learned English at the same time I learned my native language, I still struggled with communicating when I actually attended my first American school.
There are many factors that are just not accounted for in a closed setting. My school back in the Philippines taught me how to speak proper English, but it didn’t prepare me to speak to kids my own age. I remember saying “pardon me” as a kid and having the other 3rd graders looking at me weirdly. Slang isn’t something you learn at school, but rather, something you need to learn in actual authentic social settings. For the longest time, I really struggled with how to speak like a kid because there was a certain vernacular that was “acceptable.”
2. The subject matter we consider to be talking points in the US are not always relevant or the same in the Philippines.
A lot of this comes from the difference of socioeconomic standards in both countries. The United States is a more well-off nation, being a first world country, so it’s always an adjustment whenever I make conversation with American-born friends and Philippine-born friends. It’s also a subject of privilege because most of what comes up in daily conversation, that I have observed, is that Americans have a different idea of struggle than Filipinos do.
3. Family gatherings are smaller.
Birthday parties are smaller, graduations, maybe weddings, etc. Especially coming from a place that is literally on the other side of the world, where airfare is the equivalent to someone’s annual income, it’s difficult to arrange frequent family gatherings where everyone is together. I think my biggest trouble assimilating to the US was accepting the fact that I would not be able to celebrate my birthday the same way anymore because my uncles, aunts, godparents, cousins, and grandparents live too far away now.
4. Death is a whole other dilemma.
My uncle who lives in the Philippines recently passed away, and my family made an emergency trip back home during Thanksgiving. It wasn’t the first time we’ve done something like that, but it just reminded me how much it really sucks having family living so far away. In technical policies, bereavement is only about two days in the workplace and at SLU it’s five days. It takes four days total to travel to and from the Philippines, so bereavement policies aren’t always inclusive to people who have family in faraway places. My entire family still managed to take off work for these special circumstances, and lucky for me, it occurred during Thanksgiving break so I didn’t miss too much school. Throughout this entire experience, I also just realized that this was just a part of life. Death is going to keep occurring, and we’ll have to take trips like this again. Work and school may not always be forgiving, but life moves on.
5. Visiting home gets harder.
Don’t get me wrong, I love going back to the Philippines. When I went back recently, I was absolutely thrilled, but I had hoped that it would be under better circumstances. Besides all of the reunions and the food we were able to experience again, it hit me that it was going to get harder coming back home. I think this is because my memory of my childhood in the Philippines is like a snowglobe. I imagine it stuck in time and unable to change. It’s difficult having this image in your head of what home would look like and having that change. Particularly, I remember visiting my old neighborhood and my old house. Everything had completely changed, and even though it was nice having everything newly renovated, I felt…sad. It also gets harder coming back and communicating with people because I feel like I’m slowly losing my language from not speaking my native tongue enough. I’m still able to speak it to my relatives back home, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily anymore. And finally, I think the hardest thing about visiting home is realizing that life doesn’t stop for you. It was kind of heartbreaking seeing my younger cousins already turning into adults and realizing that I’ve missed so much of their accomplishments and that I’m going to miss more of their accomplishments. I feel like I have it in my head that things will go back to the way they were or that I’ll reconnect with them the same way we’ve connected in the past, but I know that life and distance will keep getting in the way.
I have many Filipino friends who are first-generation or second-generation immigrants, but I can’t always relate to them because they have never lived an actual day in the Philippines. It’s a different reality, different way of life, and people just have different attitudes in general. In many ways, known or unknown, immigrants have many struggles that the average American doesn’t have to worry about. It doesn’t make us any lesser or better than anyone else, it just makes our experiences very different. I think the problem in today’s society is that we are unable to communicate our struggles to people who are different from us because of the fear of being misunderstood. However, if we are truly trying to understand one another, we need to be able to take that first step of being open and sharing our own suffering.