Realizations

I arrived to the final realizations of certain aspects of my life so far...

• It does not matter how long I live in the United States, I will never be an American. I have American citizenship but Filipino is the nationality attached to me for the rest of my life.
• I will never lose my Filipino accent. I have tried my best to train my tongue and lips to pronounce words in American way but at the end of the day when fatigue sets in, I revert back to my Filipino accent. I am not ashamed of it as I heard different accents of English language. No one can tell me that my accent is wrong.
• I need to eat rice at least once a week. However, I learned that I love brown rice more than white rice. Aside from brown rice heartier than white, it is more nutritious. Rice is a very versatile food as you can eat it with almost everything. Though my consumption decreased since I came to live here, it remains a staple in my household.
• Iowa is my home away from home. I tell people that I probably know Iowa better than the Philippines. Driving makes you more oriented to a place. When I first came here in Iowa, I felt like I was thrown in the middle of nowhere. There are no big cities and high skyscrapers that I imagined America would be. Instead, I found acres and acres of flat corn and soybean fields. People will argue that it is not really flat as it has rolling hills but it is for me compared to the Philippines where you can see a mountain silhouette from a distance. To make matter worst, Filipinos are small in number compared to other bigger states. However, Iowa has grown on me. I love its four seasons, the peacefulness, big sky, small towns, low cost but high standard of living and nice people. I cannot live anywhere else for now.