HALF AND HALF
Most look at me and at first glance, think I’m a regular sixteen year-old Filipino kid. My Asian features mixed with darker skin than most make people think I’m Filipino like a good amount of my friends at Lowell High School. Yet, most would never think I’m Asian-Hispanic. My mom being half chinese and half mexican and my dad being full chinese made my family life very diverse and different than most households I know. Coming from two very different and unique cultural backgrounds, my parents have always tried to get me to learn about our two different cultures, while still learning the American culture and language for school. My mom introduced me to Mexican food and taught me Spanish, while my dad spent a lot of time with me during Chinese New Year to try different Asian foods.
However, I was too lazy and stubborn as a kid to try to learn Spanish and Chinese, so I ended up only knowing English with no accent. I somewhat regret not having learned these languages when I was young, but I hope that one day I can improve on my languages.
Growing up in my mixed household, I was taught to study hard and focus more on school than other things like being social. I was very smart as a child, knowing basic math and spelling at two and a half years old, but I never really had a lot of childhood friends. This was because my parents both grew up with immigrant parents and were honed to be street smart with academics being somewhat important. They eventually learned that academics were just as or even more important than being social and taught me to value school and learning more than anything. Later on, I would realized that I needed to be a lot more social. Not only did I need to be academically smart, but “life” smart as well.