Hello! Kumusta! Maayong Adlaw!

I woke this morning and wondered why my alarm didn't wake me at all when I had set it to 7:00 am and I was looking at my wristwatch, it says 7:50!

I checked my cell phone and...Aha! Daylight Saving Time.

This is one other thing that I'll have to get used to. From where I come from, we don't adjust the time moving it one hour forward or in this case one hour back. We simply follow the time.

I'm a Filipino by the way and I've been living in the U.S for more than a year now. I have never traveled to other countries before so coming to the U.S. straight from the Philippines was....surprisingly not that big of a culture shock...for me at least.

I arrived in the U.S. in June, and it was HOT! HOT! HOT! Where the Philippines is humid, Texas is dry but still hot. So no, I didn't feel like I was in another country, especially that most of my companions were Filipinos too. They'd take us to Filipino restaurants and meet more Filipino folks. Feels like home away from home, eh?.... Kinda.

I remember missing the white sandy beaches, the fresh sumptuous seafood, Jollibee (Filipino fast food), my friends at work, my family back home, my best friend @tegoshei and her fam. I even miss the traffic!

Most of all, I miss steamed rice. Our version of steamed rice, the Dimsum (another fast food chain in the Philippines) steamed rice. I remember being so confused when I ordered steamed rice on the plane and was given just plain steamed rice. I looked to my mom and dad and said, "Where are the toppings? No sauce?" and of course they wouldn't know the answer as they too have never been outside of the Philippines. I didn't dare ask the flight stewardess as that would have been embarrassing. So, we pretended like this is how steamed rice should be. Which is in fact how steamed rice is in many parts of the world apparently.

Then, when we arrived, my aunt took us to an Asian restaurant. The waitress asked us if we wanted steamed rice or fried rice. I ordered steamed rice hoping it will have the savory toppings I love. But nope! Wrong again! It was just plain rice.

Also, on the way to the restaurant, we took the highway and I remember thinking that the highway looks like a huge elaborate version of our SRP. And the speed of the cars! Back home, we use kph (kilometers per hour), here it's mph(miles per hour). I believe SRP has a speed limit of around 60 kph which is equivalent to 37 mph. Really slow. But it makes sense because in the Philippines, the streets are more congested so speeding over 37 mph is dangerous.

There were a lot of things that were new to me aside from the ones I've talked about here.

Hmmm, I guess I had a bigger culture shock after all!

I'll stop for now. I believe this is a good amount of words for my first post.

Until next time!

-@akielle :)