Wow. I'm back.

Hello world,

It's been a looooong time since I've been here. The last several months have been filled with entirely with an unhealthy addiction to Myspace.com and World of Warcraft. It's all good though, cause I'm back.

As many of you probably don't know, I will be spending my first semester of college out of the country. That's right, I'll be "studying abroad" at Ateneo De Davao University in Davao, Philippines. Needless to say, I'm really freakin excited to be going.

A lot of people have been asking me why I've chosen to go there. It's a complicated story, but the gist of it is that though I am there to study, the main purpose of my trip is to connect with my family. For the most part, all of my family still lives in the Philippines; Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, Grandmas, etc. Only my immediate family and two of my uncles and their families live in the United States. So my goal is to spend as much quality time as I can with my family over there, especially with my grandmothers.

Both of my grandfathers passed away when I was very young so I never really had the opportunity to speak with them. I've only heard great things about those men. I'm hoping that I will learn a lot about my family history and lineage from my grandmothers. I plan on documenting what they say and what I find in either video form or written. I'm not totally sure yet. I think that this will be incredibly beneficial to me and to my children and their children and their children's children, etc etc... lol.

I will be gone from Mid-October to March of '06. That's about five months. I gotta be honest, my excitement is mixed with some anxiousness and some fear. I can't say that the Philippines is the safest place in the world. One of my dad's brothers was murdered when he was in his late 20's. Plus, the fact that I'm an American just brings more fears to me, womdering if maybe people will become jealous or hate me because of my situation; or maybe even something more extreme like being kidnapped... I don't know. So I'm praying through it and people who are close to me are praying for me. Don't get me wrong. These are just fears that I have... I'm still stoked to be going to the Philippines.

Another question people have been asking me is if I know/can speak Tagalog, the national language. The answer to that is No, I can't. I know, that's funny... How am I going to learn when I can't even speak the language, right? Luckily for me, the classes at the university are taught in English. Another thing I'm excited about is finally being able to learn the language while I'm there.

So anyway, I'm fired up to be going back to "The Homeland". I know a lot of you have asked me to keep you updated on how that goes when I'm there, so this is how I plan on doing that; by starting this blog back up again. When I get there, I'll let you guys in on my daily life, adjusting to the culture, family stories, and some pictures too. Sorry this was so long-winded, but I had a lot to say. :)

Until next time,
Cy


Coming Tomorrow: HOBY WLC 2005 - In Retrospect.