Pancit

​Life is endless when you are young. No matter how silly something might seem, when you are young it just seems right. During my younger years I thought that my family was normal, but I eventually learned that no one’s family has the same traits, and it just depends onhow you are brought up and what traditions you grow accustomed to. 

I come from a large Filipino family, and its traditions have been ingrained in me ever since I was born, but it was not until I was about ten years old that I first learned to value the precious traditions that will forever carry on in my heart.

​Raised unlike most, my childhood possessed different characteristics than most. Since my family is rich with Filipino culture, I learned how to speak a little bit of Tagalog and Pangasinan, native dialects in the Philippines, at a very young age. For example, it remains a tradition to call all of my elder female siblings and cousins “Atchi” and all of my elder male siblings and cousins “Coya”. Also, “Bai” in Tagalog means grandmother, and “Laki” means grandfather. Interesting enough, however, I did not fully understand the meaning behind these foreign words that I spoke every single day of my life until I turned ten. I finally decided to ask my dad, “What does “Atchi” and “Coya” even mean?” To my surprise he said, “It is just a sign of respect to your elders.” 

​I remember being very confused because I still did not fully grasp the concept, so I would accidently call all of my uncles “Coya”. My dad still gets a kick out of me making those silly mistakes, and he tells me that I would call my Uncle Joel “Coya” Joel so often that he stopped correcting me at one point. Eventually I learned better, it just took time, and now I know and understand how valuable that tradition actually is. I remain grateful that my family holds the title of just one of many that uniquely adds to El Paso’s great diversity, and I plan on carrying on such an important piece of my life to each generation after mine just as my grandparents did. 

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