When I leave Manila.. the new country I’ve called home for a few months … What will flash through my memory will look like a kaleidoscope and sound like a mix tape like you’ve never heard before. For the sounds it would be something like this : honking horns, roosters, thunder, the sweet luring songs of ice cream and food carts, karaoke bars, huge winds rattling my windows, great hearty laughter of the filipino people, love songs of all generations playing on the radio.. the hums of air conditioners, and unfortunately due to all the construction in my building, a lot of power drills and hammers lol

  In terms of the visuals, it would be children playing in the streets and taking their showers by being hosed down by their mothers in the street and giggling, skinny stray dogs and cats rummaging through trash and taking casual naps on the sidewalk next to the bustling cars, red and white cell/tv/radio towers, lightning and thunder storms like i’ve never witnessed before.. they appear in a second, downpour like the heavens are just dumping buckets of water down on us  and then leave as quickly as they came, the pineapple fields on the drive up to Tagaytay and all the fruit stands with families running them, the huge billboards with all the smiling stars of the country which decorate the dark highways, the bridges along the river which are not just a means of crossing from one place to another but are also the homes for many hundreds and maybe thousands of people..traffic, traffic, and more traffic.. cars lined up as far as your eyes can see. My brain will explode trying to store away all the things that I’ve seen, experienced, come to love…

Life here for me has been quite different from what I am used to. In L.A and Tokyo (my two homes) I have the freedom to move about as I want to, whenever I want to. Here, sometimes I feel like Rapunzel, stuck up in my tower and just looking down at the world below me. Due to safety concerns I believe, my friends and management have urged me not to take public transportation…But normally, I’d just put my shoes on and just start walking.. see what I find. I so wish that I could be invisible… truly invisible.. so I could venture places I’m not supposed to be, so that I can see what’s beyond those narrows , winding roads. 

I was already torn between two places.. Japan and America. Both completely different but both a part of who I am. Although I have a lot left to learn about the Philippines (including the language which I hope to get better at!), I can honestly say I will miss being here when I leave. There are also so many more places in the world I’d love to explore, live in, get to know… get lost in. But for now, for this gypsy, now there are 3 places in the world I can say owns a small piece of me…3 places so completely different but equally beautiful to me.