A Facebook post recently caught my attention, it seems a lady, a mother specifically, decided to raise her family the Filipino way. Her husband had a job in the BPO industry in Manila and they moved there in 2009 and began a family there. She was very impressed with Filipino culture and they decided to help their children learn about the culture they were living in.
Cindy & I have discussed the pro's & con's of raising our child both in the the Philippines and in the US. When we realized that we've spent our entire relationship combining both cultures. That's when we realized we should do both for our little Pumpkin too. There is a lot of good reasons for both places and we will make sure they know as much about both as we can manage. It's because of exactly that, helping them learn about both that we realized that it would be best if we didn't choose one over the other and incorporated the best of both. We plan on doing that in many different ways, starting with languages. The current plan is to have me speak and respond to English only with them, Cindy will use Bisayan. I've seen some Spanish speaking friend raise their kids in a similar way and their kids were extremely fluent in both languages that way. Fortunately Cindy has several Bisayan friends in Phoenix so there will be others that can help with hearing others speak too. When we're here finding other English speakers won't be as much of a challenge and school will be in English.
As far as culture and traditions, Cindy & I have been doing a pretty good job of learning about each others since we got together and found ways to incorporate elements of both in most circumstances. For Christmas we learned to decorate the inside of the house starting on her birthday, but the outside decorations waited until the 1st of Nov. For other special days we've just celebrated both. We attend Philippines Independence Day celebration day in June and then US Independence Day in July (July 4th is also Philippines/American friendship day too)
Up until School age we plan on living in the US and vacation here, when they get ready to start school we'd like to move back to the Philippines. Here most colleges have private elementary through high schools too. These schools are every bit as quality education as any in the US. So we believe that their education opportunities would be best met here.
In the end we accept that as the last year has taught all of us, life as we know it can change in completely unpredictable ways. So much of this is just that, our plans and subject to change. But the one aspect that won't change is that we will find ways to continue blending both her heritages. As our motto states "Two Countries, One Heart!"
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