Neema Ejercito (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer
I knew moving to another country was hard, but I did not think it was going to be THIS hard. I feel that, compared to the average person, I have been a pretty decent immigrant. As early as my teen years, I had the privilege to be an expat in Hong Kong where I studied in an international school, moved back to the Philippines where I rediscovered my country (I would call that my re-migration) and graduated from university, missed living abroad and so applied for and received a one-year exchange program scholarship to Japan, worked in the Philippines for four years, took my masters in San Francisco, and made a family back in the Philippines.
So when my husband and I were approved to move to Vancouver four years ago, making friends was the least of my worries. I had been known to be a friendly and approachable person, and I kept in touch with friends quite well. The oldest friendship I still have is with my second-grade best friend! Assuming community-building would come easy for me, I chose to focus instead on ensuring that the needs of every other member of my family was met before I attended to mine.
I also took for granted the fact that I had family and friends in Toronto. I thought it would be easy to visit them, as if they were just one or two cities over, and we could grab coffee or lunch in a snap. I didn’t realize Seattle would be closer to me than they were! I recall that one of my first thoughts in our first Airbnb we stayed at was “Why the hell does Canada have to be SO big?!”
My cousins in Edmonton came to visit, and my aunt in Toronto called me often. And so many relatives of family and friends of family friends let us know someone they knew in Vancouver, and before long, I was sifting through a deluge of information in order to get our MSPs, SINs and CRA details, to list just a few acronyms I had to start getting used to.
When I finally started trying to build my community here, needless to say, I was floored. I tried my Parent Advisory Council, Meetup and even work to find friends, all to no avail. Seeing groups of parents chat after dropping off their children at school picked at a wound I never thought I would have. It wasn’t like I wasn’t trying. I volunteered, joined Orange Theory and made friends with new parents like me. I still did not realize that what had come so naturally to me in the Philippines was largely due to the fact that I was born there and did not have to exert effort into understanding what makes a Filipino friendship, simply because I understood all the references and nuances of my culture at the particular time I was born from people I grew up, went to school and worked with.
I remember one new parent friend from China who asked me about the church community, because he knew Filipinos were known to be religious. I was more spiritual than a church-goer, but his question made me wonder if I did want to join a church so I could find some friends. A parent did try to invite me to her church, but she was more successful in inviting me to a dance studio she attended.
Although my friendships did not happen the way I would have thought, it was probably better for them to just grow however they wanted. I find lately that the communities I build and continue to maintain here really grow on their own and not with a lot of help from me, as I had expected. I am still learning who has my back here in Vancouver and who are the people I howl at the moon with, so to speak. My journey in building my community here even seemed to cost me my community back in the Philippines, because I honestly thought that that community was holding me back from growing here.
But when I went home in August, I rediscovered how my friendships there have grown with me even when we’ve been apart. I was so touched to realize that there are women who truly have my back, even if we’re literally an ocean away. So now, armed with this realization, I am honoured to continue working on and doing my part in building and maintaining both of my communities.
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Before returning from her summer vacation in the Philippines with her partner and three offspring this year, Neema Ejercito did not realize that she still has so much to write about. Such as the boredom she felt raising her eldest at her in-laws’ place when she and her husband hadn’t moved out yet. Or how surreal it was to watch her youngest learn to swim at the country club where she learned to do so as well. She currently wonders if she will ever write about being a mother to a bunch of plants, all of whom she adores and loves to watch grow as much as her kin.