My baby's depressed from seeing her foreign cousins leave for home this week. To make things worse, they're leaving one by one on three different days.

I can't seem to do anything to ease her loss. All I can do is listen to her on the phone, as we haven't seen each other in a while.

Am sad for her too. :(
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My dad was probably right.

The day before classes resumed, he protested on my schedule this term. "Is this the best you can do?" he asked, seeing as my schedule was peppered with unusual hours-long breaks over the week. Told him I couldn't reconcile my major subjects anymore.

Now I'm finding it hard to soldier on with subjects that see me mostly alone, away from my friends and even my other classmates. A little glimmer of joy today, though, as I found a couple of my former blockmates sharing Tuesday and Thursday lunch with me.

This term's going to be a lonely one.
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My mom keeps badgering me and my sister about migrating to the US in the near future. She says life here in the Philippines has nowhere to go but down, what with the bad crime rate and all the trash and pollution choking Metro Manila. She wants us to go to America for us to learn to be more independent, to learn how to stand on our own feet and learn the value of work and hard-earned money.

We aren't exactly willing subjects, my sister and I.

We're both so tied down by the security and warmth of our relationships here that any move overseas is going to see us in terrible disorientation. It's also going to be a massive case of culture shock trying to adapt to everything American---the highways, the people, the ridiculous sizes of everything there, even the apathy of Americans. It's not like America's any semblance of paradise for me anyway. It's probably going to kill me in the end.

Besides, I think I want to do something to help the state of things here. The Philippines is down now, so there's nowhere to go but up. In order to start and continue any sort of upward trend, though, Filipinos will need to depend on each other. Fuck politicking and those star-smattered elections, I want to do something worthwhile.

I'm not yet definite in my plans, but they sure don't include migrating to America. Not anytime soon.