So, what to say when someone asks where I'm from?

Sometimes I wonder if I really am your average “expat.” While some might be quick to use the term to label anyone living in a country other than that of their citizenship, the term “expat” generally refers to a person who is residing in a place and culture other than that of his upbringing.  

Culture. Upbringing. In my case, these are the things that make calling me an expat a bit tricky. First of all, I come from a bicultural background. My parents are Filipinos who moved to the United States in the 1980s. They met each other there and had been living there for a number of years before marrying, having me, and raising me in sunny southern California.

I grew up speaking both English and Tagalog (the official language of the Philippines), which impressed many of the other Filipino parents since their children could not pick up both languages. My mother would always proudly recount how my pediatrician had advised her to test the waters out and see if I could handle learning two languages at once and how, after careful observation, it was decided that it was not a problem for me to learn both. I do remember, however, that my  English as a child did have a Filipino accent to it, most probably because I learned the language from my non-native-speaker mother and my Filipino kindergarten teachers (Yes, I even went to a daycare and kindergarten run by Filipinos and often patronized by Filipinos and fellow non-Caucasian Americans). It was only when I went to elementary school that I began to pick up the American twang, only to start losing it later on when I would move to another country.

At home we spoke Filipino. Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero, once wrote “Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika ay higit pa sa mabaho at malansang isda,” which translates, “He who does not know how to love his own language is worse than a smelly, fishy-smelling fish.” (Malansa is one of those words in Filipino that have no direct translation in English, but refers to that salty, pungent fish odor.) My parents agreed with Rizal and often criticized other Filipino parents for consciously not teaching their children “our language.”

When it comes to traditions, although we did celebrate a number of holidays by virtue of convenience, many of the traditions honored in my family while I was growing up were not typically American. For example, every Christmas we did set up a Christmas tree, but there was rarely ever an angel or a star on top. Of course Santa Claus would come, but he would always be surprised when he found no stockings to fill since none were tacked onto the fireplace and no cookies and milk to enjoy since none were on the table. Neither did we send out Christmas cards to our friends and relatives, something I just realized now that I am in Germany and people were like, "You're not sending out any cards?" This Christmas was the first time I ever sent out Christmas cards.

For Christmas dinner, we would have pansit (a Filipino noodle dish whose roots are actually Chinese), semi-sweet Filipino spaghetti, a selection of Filipino dishes (many of which are Spanish in name and origin), hot dogs on sticks, and rice. For dessert there was always leche flan and ube ordered with pride from a Filipino bakery, sometimes cake, and, of course, a myriad of fruit salads (a.k.a. fruits doused in condensed milk) of every variety received from Filipino neighbors and friends. Never was there any eggnog or mashed potatoes with gravy or turkey served at our table. I remember this one year when I was so overcome by my curiosity of what eggnog actually tasted like that I insisted we buy a carton at the market when they came out around Christmas time. After a sip of the mysterious beverage, it was left to spoil in the fridge for the rest of the holidays.

The same went for almost all other occasions, even when we celebrated the most American of all American holidays: Thanksgiving. Since my mother did not particularly like turkey, my father loved this holiday since it was his chance to buy a big huge turkey and cook it. However, he would not do so in the traditionally American way of baking it stuffed in the oven and then served with thick gravy and mashed potatoes, but in his Filipino way, which meant the turkey would be cooked in a sauce made of patis with garlic and onions and anise (I think) and serve with rice.

 I remember having done a report on the Philippines in the fourth grade with Bridgitte, a Filipina girl also born and raised in the States. She did not speak Filipino. We shared our parents’ country with an audience of other fourth graders from a variety of backgrounds (Italian, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Korean, Belgian-Iranian, Armenian, etc.) and a teacher whose mother tongue was Polish. In our presentation, I remember distinctly how we defined Filipino values were “Malay in family, Spanish in love, Chinese in business, and American in ambition.”

The values upheld in our household were, I would say, a mix of American and Filipino, with a tendency more towards the Filipino. For one thing, respect for parents was a big deal. I was discouraged from watching the Simpsons because Bart would call Homer “Homer,” and not “dad.” While growing up, I was told that ang mga puti (the White people) did not value parents and family but, since I was Filipino, I had to. The ironic thing was that there was not really much of “family” and “relatives” going on while I was growing up, and I specifically remember my mother dreading and avoiding having to mingle with some of our relatives.

One thing that was prized in our little Filipino-American system of values was independence. To this very day, my parents, who now live back in sa atin (“our place” = the Philippines), value independence very much, and this is one of the reasons why my mother has some misgivings about returning “home” after a quarter of a century of having been away. As I have experienced, Filipinos are generally not an independent bunch and they like to maki-alam, or to get in your business, which gets on my nerves as well. They often give unsolicited advice and oftentimes it feels like their advice is more of an order which, if you do not follow, would result in the giver shaking his head. In this sense, in terms of valuing independence, I am very American – sometimes even too American for my parents.

In our home, sexuality was treated “hush-hush.” While the Philippines is a very macho society which had a sizable porn industry in the 70s and 80s, people do not talk about sex. It’s taboo. It’s disgraceful. Sex is something you do in the dark under the sheets and as quietly as possible. If there is a sex video out, it would be referred to as a “scandal,” and this word “scandal” has a sexual connotation when uttered among Filipinos and it specifically means “sex video.” This is the Asian way of viewing sex, and the Philippines is very Asian in this respect. I remember having sex ed (sexual education classes) as early as the fourth grade and giggling with classmates as we pointed fingers at the anatomy page of our sex ed book, but that was the most sexual education I would have. I had heard of the phenomenon of parents sitting down and talking with their children about sex and about using protection, etc., but that never happened where I lived. As far as my parents were concerned, humans were asexual beings.

To complicate the matter of my identity even further, fate had it that I would move to the Philippines right smack in the middle of any American teenager’s teenage identity crisis: at the age of fifteen. This move would rock the boat of my cultural identity and even cause it to sink, only to awkwardly bob up again. 

High school and college are defined by many Americans as they time of their lives. This is the time when they get to enjoy their independence, to “explore” the world out there and to “enjoy” it (wink, wink). This is when you go out to parties and drink and generally have fun while bonding with friends and forging (maybe even lifelong) bonds with them while making memories that will last a life time. This is what this trans-Pacific move deprived me of.

It was a time when I finally ended my phase of being one of the geeks and actually making more friends and getting to know people, slowly developing an identity separate from the one defined by my parents at home. After years of being dropped off at school, I finally had the liberty of walking back home from school - something that others my age took for granted, but something I cherished. I finally started hanging out with a group of friends and going to Universal Studios together, etc. Then, BOOM! The bomb exploded in front of me. Since my father retired and my parents wanted to return to the beloved Motherland, I was shipped, along with literally over 100 boxes of our family’s belongings, to a country 7000 miles and 14 flying hours away from my home town.

To be bluntly honest, I did not enjoy my sojourn in the Philippines very much. While I must admit that I was exposed only to a microcosm of Filipino society and rarely ever really mingled with the Filipino Filipino, I did not particularly see eye-to-eye with many of the people I met and with the culture into which I was injected. It was too hypocritical and too superficial for me. (It’s funny because just the other day I met a guy from Boulder, Colorado, who said he viewed southern Californians as superficial hypocrites with their iPhones and Macs and Starbucks. Then again, this is something I cannot relate to since I left in 2005, right before the boom of all this “iTechnology”).

The Philippines that I came to know was very Americanized. Some would think that I would appreciate and embrace this fact, but in truth I loathed it. Around me I saw people trying to be as American (or at least Western) as possible. Some of the people I met were even more American than I was, which was a shock. They followed all the American TV shows, wore Abercrombie and Fitch and Billabong, used as many American expressions and as much slang as possible, and, you know “partied.”

But Filipino culture and a number of things in American culture cannot be reconciled. For one thing, there is that dimension called “independence.” The Filipinos I got to know live very un-independent, sheltered lives. They live in walled-up houses in gated, guarded communities and are served breakfast and dinner by their maids. The maids sometimes also act as baby sitters for children as old as 20 (twenty), and they are also on call. If the child forgot something at home, then she calls on yaya (babysitter) to bring it to school for her. They are also driven around by chauffeurs who actually do not look like chauffeurs and are referred to as tsuper, the Philippinized version of the word. If the child needs to go somewhere, she calls on her driver. The children never go out on their own and come home on their own. There is always a driver waiting, and having an iPhone or a Blackberry - or what have you - means you are always on a “telephone leash” (as I call it), which you parents tug on when it’s curfew. This means no drunken night out with friends or doing anything crazy. You had to go home to your parents. 

My situation was worse. My parents decided to build a house in the countryside, about half an hour away from the area where I went to high school and an hour away (without traffic) from where I went to university. This was not a bad thing since I enjoyed the respite from the city chaos offered by the trees and broad fields of our little gated community, but this meant NEVER going out and hanging out with friends. Thankfully, I stayed at a dormitory when I went to college. By the way, did I mention that I do not drive? 

But I diverge.

So, when it comes to culture and upbringing, defining mine can seriously get a bit tricky. Even I do not know exactly what to answer when someone asks me where I am from, especially now that I live in Germany. The conversation often goes like this:

Curious person I meet (P): Where are you from?

Me: Well, actually, I live in Germany now.

P: Where are you really from?

Me: I’m American.

P: American? You certainly don’t look like it. (pointing out how Asian I look.)

Me: Yeah.

P: Where are your parents from?

Me: The Philippines (OR, when I am not in a good mood: “Why does that matter?”)

When I start talking about how I lived in Azerbaijan for a year before moving to Germany, many people just get too confused and just give one of those smiles.

At the end of the day, I stop and wonder:

I live in a place (Germany) other than where I grew up (America), but I grew up with a bicultural background (American and Filipino) and then actually moved to the place of my other background (the Philippines) at a time when my identity was being formed. So yes, I am an expat, but an expat from where?

Or am I, in a sense more literal than in other cases, a “citizen of the world?”