billete/chit

i got my ticket for eva air on friday, so its official. more official than setting up a blog and saying i will go. my parents bought it for me at aa travel, down the street from balikbayan cargo. they wanted to buy it at bbc because you get free phone cards, and they wanted to be efficient since they were there anyway sending a balikbayan box which will arrive one day after i do. so that is my two 70lb checkins (probably only 40lbs of my stuff), 1 bbb, and some carryons, so mga 250 pounds. i have a lot of junk in the trunk.

i will be visiting about 9ish families (its sad that i dont know exactly how many, nor all the names and faces) over there (3 live here in the states), and staying mostly with my cousin who is 24, and an MSI (medstudentyear1) on summer break (contacted via friendster). actually most of my cousins are around 20-30yo which will constitute going out a lot. the families are for the most part doing pretty well over there, some in politics, medicine, engineering, all in or have graduated school. ive only met them that last time i went (only one uncle has visited in the past 15 years) so this will be an interesting trip, on top of flying solo, and being 15% competent at tagalog. overall my plans are still in the air. there are some events and places i want to check out but i dont want to overly-intinerize myself. if anything i set goals of what i want to do/see, and its family, relax, music, medical sites, and natural/historic sites. i know i will never really enjoy my stay, perhaps because i know too much, or too little. all in all i think it will be bittersweet.

prologue 1

its been about 6 years since i've been to the philippines, an event which steered me in a direction that i still live by today.

every personal statement for every application in the past 6 years has included this life changing experience. my entire college career was based on this trip and all of my social consciousness and awareness began here. it was the perfect precursor to my senior year of high school, and will be the perfect precursor to my first year of medical school.

for a detached upper middle class filipino american, notions of class and social inequality are easy to forget and get caught up in the system of a society that is more focused on the individual, on materialism, on escapism. i always need some sort of check now and then to remind me of the privileges i have and continue to have. detached in that i grew up away from extended family. detached in that i grew up away from my homeland. detached in that i didn't grow up speaking my languages. detached in that i live in a strata of society that a majority of my people do not. all these things which i cannot change, nor blame my parents for it. they chose what they had to for our family. all i can do from here is only understand and attempt to reconnect the bonds which where forcefully severed by the same system which i live in today.