Valentine’s Day and the Chinese New Year are on the same day this year, I realized. As one who has always been a “one-tasker” kind of person, the double celebration kind of squeezed me into a momentary (less than a minute lang naman) pause. That is, which one I would take the time to celebrate more than the other. And, thanks to the fact that I just arrived here, I don’t have to think of President’s Day which falls on the Monday after Valentine’s and the Chinese New Year. Phew! This is one of the “long weekends” Americans seem to have every once in a while.

Chapter 2:  Tip Number 1 - Never assume anything.

For most of us who grew up in the Philippines, there is always that underlying self-assuredness that if there was a country we knew best, it would be the United States of America. Especially, since we are so inculcated in all things American from the time we start our education, to the values we learn in the Western traditions embedded in the texts we use throughout our academic lives. The english we know is American English. The movies we see are mostly American, the TV shows we watch are ninety per cent American, some even fancy themselves living American lives based on the slew of all the American books and magazines they read.  You’d think then that having been immersed all things American, coming to live in America would be as easy as pie. Madali lang yan, as some so easily say. Except, we really don’t eat that much pie do we? What is pie in our language anyway?

So here is the time to asses what the year before had brought and taken. New Year’s resolutions aside, there is always an amount of confusion that lingers in my house when the kids have gone back to their lives, and I find the silence strangely different.