#fahmchallenge Day 3 — Obstacles | Ok I didn’t want this to be a long self-roast lol so I’m sticking to one thing: being bilingual. It’s hard to balance remembering all the little words, phrases and slang from both Tagalog and English. Some days one language I’m better at, some days the other. It feels like being a jack of all trades but a master of none. Older titas/titos I meet always get surprised when they hear me speak Tagalog, esp when I tell them I was born in PI but grew up here. Sometimes I feel like I can’t joke around or talk casually the same way as other Fil-Ims (Filipino immigrants) around my age because I don’t fully understand the humor, because I didn’t come here when I was older. Sometimes I would stutter when talking in English to half-Filipinos or non-Filipinos because deep down I’d feel insecure about how good my grammar was. When I get too excited, whether texting or talking I’ll straight up skip some words or mush things together and make gibberish (in both languages 😑). Being bilingual itself is not the obstacle but it’s the fact that it will always be a little difficult when I’m trying to build and organize folks on both sides of the language spectrum, but damn I hella try lol. . I found this image on Pinterest (hmm..) but it’s supposedly of an American Thomasite and an indigenous Aeta student. The Thomasites were 600 American teachers who were sent by the US gov’t to the Philippines after the Philippine-American War in the 1900’s as a way to pacify and control Filipinos through our education system, and their first task was to teach English. . To control a culture is to control its language, and to a control an entire people is to control their minds. We need to reclaim what’s been stolen from us and create a new revolutionary culture, starting from our mother tongue. . Tagalog TLDR: Ang hirap mag salita ng Tagalog at Ingles. Salbahe ang mga Thomasites, ibasura natin. Gumawa tayo ng bagong rebolusyonaryong kultura. https://www.instagram.com/p/B3MB0a3gPOFtNapHSMo_0UneLQypKnsVVKIgUQ0/?igshid=5co66zn285nh