My wife has been in the UK for 8 years and is now a British citizen. She has changed a lot, though some of those changes are due to her just getting older and wiser. She remains close to her culture and seems to have found a middle path, taking the good bits from both. No-one is a more enthusiastic supporter of any British sportsman or woman than Connie, who even comes to watch football with me and gets very involved. She values the lack of corruption here, but gets depressed at the way some families don't support each other. She loves many "English" dishes and cooks them really well, whilst still liking to eat rice with her fingers.
Although we live in a fairly small Cambridgeshire town there is an informal but active Filipino community which automatically includes any new face in town to any gatherings. These occur pretty frequently, the last being only yesterday when a birthday was celebrated with everyone cooking a Filipino dish and singing.
Although Connie did face some racist attitudes whilst studying at college these were from mindless youngsters who pick on anyone, or anything, different. If she had been black, muslim, fat, thin or old I think it would have been the same. It is much more a condemnation of the perpetrators than a comment on Filipinos. In fact Connie has plenty of British friends. We take part in a weekly quiz in our local which definately helps but the biggest reason is that Connie is a talented singer, who after being in a band for 4 years, is now gigging on her own. She is really popular and she gets lots of affection from her audiences, which in turn gives her confidence. In my experience the more you reach out to British people the more accepted you will become.
We spent 6 months in 2009 in the Philippines, and have spent other times there too, so I have had the opportunity to witness life there at first hand. I don't think it really made any changes to me. I still cannot tolerate dried fish, especially the smell, prefer potatos to rice, think Halo Halo is a joke and JollyBee portions stupidly small. I continue to believe that the education system there is a confidence trick on the people and that the Roman Catholic church is the root cause of many of the problems. However I like the kindness, the laid back attitude and the respect shown by young people to the more mature.
