This entry was posed to me as a challenge. So let me do my best.

Being a legal immigrant, there are a number of challenges that have faced me on the family front in its many different ways. The life in Wisconsin and the USA is 90% different than the Philippines. My father and siblings are back in the Philippines along with all of the massive number of relatives there. My in-laws live 3 hours from where we do and when we began Goryo didn’t had next to no friends in the area.

It started with no friends, no family, in a totally different culture in a country I didn’t want to go to except for the reason my hubby is here. He didn’t have hardly any friends or family as economic issues forced him to move to the SE corner of Wisconsin for personal reasons. Sure, he knew some people but he wasn’t all that close to many.

The challenges did not stop there. Shortly after arriving here I had to contend with my father going through a serious medical issue, my siblings each having medical issues and I couldn’t be there for them because of immigrations. My frustrations ran very high and I even once thought about walking back to the Philippines. (Granted thousands of miles and the Pacific Ocean were a bit of a barrier.) His work went sour and his feet started falling apart. The start of our marriage was full of issues.

I have a set of loving parents. My Mom has been in more countries so she understands the challenges of international life. My father hasn’t been to another country much less the USA. My father-in-law has been to other countries but not a third world. My mother-in-law has barely been on a plane and Canada might be the only other country she has barely set foot in. What does that mean?

Anyone who has been to another country or gone through the long international relationship thing can testify to this. You can read all you want about life in another country. You can watch all you want. You can talk about all the possible things but you will never fully understand until you have been there. So there is a barrier in communication as not all have similar experiences enough to understand where the other is fully coming from. In the same way, I have some phone and email contact with my parents and siblings but we all know that isn’t the same thing as being there for them.

So how do you overcome all of those challenges and keep the family alive? I’m not done spelling out a few more challenges. My hubby really walked into an unfair language issue. Our household in the Phils and all of the relatives speak a total of seven different dialects including Tagalog. He never knows which one is being spoken when. On the flip side, my Dad and siblings are hesitant on speaking to him because their spoken English sucks. Goryo’s parents do not speak a different language. His siblings are…well…let’s not go there.

to be continued…

Anah