Making it Home

But this new life comes at a price. Immigrants must not only leave behind an entire way of life and their home countries (and nearly all have never traveled before). They leave their families: by far the most devastating loss. Family structures tend to be much more close-knit in the Philippines due to such factors as the uncommonness of leaving home for college, limited opportunities for travel and the rarity of divorce in the predominantly Catholic country.

“When I first started thinking about coming to America, the hardest part was that I knew I had to leave my family,” Christmas says, fiddling with a gold cross on her neck. “Before I was 26 I had never spent a night away from my parents and my younger brother and sister. I didn’t dorm, and I always came home after work. People in America think that it’s weird staying at home for so long and never going away but in the Philippines that’s the way things are–families live together until they die.”

She picks up the remote control to her brand new television set and fiddles with the buttons though the set remains turned off. “I talk to my mom every night on the phone but it’s not the same,” she says. Waving the remote control in her hand she explains, “I have all this new stuff I could never have in the Philippines. But you only wish your family could share it, you know?”

Looking at Christmas answer a phone call from her mother on her pink RAZR cell, it’s clear that their daily phone calls are an important part of the day. As her ring tone sounds loudly (to the tune of The Black Eyed Peas’ “Don’t Lie,” at which point Christmas proudly points out that one of the members, apl.de.ap, is Filipino), her eyes light up. She grabs the phone to check the caller ID. After she greets her mother in Tagalog, she continues the conversation at a breakneck speed. She provides a rundown of her entire day, discussing everything from what she ate and what she plans to cook for dinner to the “lazy” workers at the hospital. Looking at Christmas wave her hands in the air animatedly and talk in such a loud voice, her apparent shyness all but disappears. It’s obvious that she and her mother are extremely close, and as Christmas hangs up the phone after 15 minutes, a far-off look remains on her freshly flushed face.

“I can’t believe my mother and I live in two totally different countries,” Christmas says. “That’s definitely the hardest part about being here.”

Still, the decision to move to the Big Apple was a relatively easy one. Due to the saturation of American pop culture in the Philippines, she and her fellow nursing classmates were well aware of what they were getting into in America: tall buildings, incessant shopping, fancy cars and sweeping romances.

“Everyone in the Philippines watches American films and American television shows, all the time,” she says enthusiastically. With a girlish, high-pitched giggle she sheepishly stares at her hands. “I watched You’ve Got Mail so many times before I moved to America because it got me so excited to come to New York. I looked at all the places Tom Hanks went and couldn’t believe I could actually be seeing those same places too.”

But Christmas’s exposure to American pop culture since birth has proved to be a double-edged sword. With the overly romantic perspectives of film and television, Christmas was inevitably disappointed with some of New York City’s biggest attractions.

“I saw Central Park, and I don’t know … it looks so much better in the movies,” she says curiously, as if looking for an explanation as to why this is. “I was expecting this big, beautiful thing and it’s nice but I wasn’t really taken aback or anything.” She shrugs her shoulders and offers her own explanation as to why she felt so let down. “I guess maybe I was expecting too much.”

When asked what specifically she was disappointed with in Central Park, Christmas immediately mentions the lake and the ice skating rink in the winter–famous movie clich’es.

“The lake is so much smaller!” she laughs. “And I love the end of Serendipity where John Cusack finally meets up with the girl in the ice skating rink of Central Park, but it’s nothing like I expected it to be.”

At this point she frowns slightly. “It’s not as pretty–and definitely not as romantic.”