Welcome to the U.S.A.

LOS ANGELES, California – We spent quite a long time at the LAX airport but it was not a boring experience at all. We cleared Customs and Immigration easily but in the case of brother Pros (Enggol), there were still some processes to go through. Being a new and rather reluctant immigrant, it seemed the officers also noted that he was not all that eager to stay in their country, so they did not give him any difficult time. Bing and I were the ones who were anxious and kept checking how many more “freshies” were there before him.

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In the meantime, we had to watch at the carousel area since his bag was one of the last to come along. Waiting with us were two middle-aged matrons who were already getting worried about them. When the bags came at last, they turned out to be so big, neither of them could get them off, and they screeched hysterically as the carousel moved on. Bing had to go back and drag their luggage off. Both were almost as hysterical in thanking him as they had been before they saw their luggage.

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One of the women said she was from the Ilocos region and the other was from Mindanao . They asked me if Bing was my son (imagine that!). I must have frowned at that, so they persisted, “Then who is he?” I said “He's the mayor of Bacolod City.” That made them hysterical again and they practically fell over him and thanked him all over again while apologizing for I don't know what. Bing seemed to enjoy it, though, and gave each his calling card. I guess he was tickled pink because they called him “young and guapo.”

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It was only later that we learned that in the airport crowd with us was movie actress Penelope Cruz and some members of the cast of her current movie. Well, we had other concerns, not the least of which were those who were meeting us who had been waiting for more than an hour already. So we dragged our loaded carts to the exit area and got a big surprise (especially Pros) to see the entire railings of the ramp leading out filled with our relatives cheering and clapping for the “new immigrant”. Not only that, they also waved streamers saying “Welcome” and “Congratulations” to him.

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Despite the confusion I immediately identified my sister-in-law Nena, her daughter Gretchen and husband Pio Dumatol with their kid Mathieu and Maia, Dr. Ina Villanueva Vasco and her children, Cora Deocampo and her sister Maricar Villasor, and so many nieces and nephews. Then they were calling out “Surprise! Surprise!” And then I saw my cousin from New York , Danny Corral and his son Darryl, who kept saying “You've landed in the wrong airport.” They had been hiding behind another cousin, Allan Gomez, whose house in Riverside , California , is my real “home away from home” in that state.

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Of course there was a scramble for “pictures, pictures” and the honoree was made to pose in front of the streamers, and then everybody joined in until the guard got impatient with us and shooed us off so the stream of arriving passengers could go through. I guess such boisterous welcomes are not new to them, especially if they are dealing with Filipinos.

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I almost forgot to mention something we saw before the incident of the two women. A young lady, very tall and attractive, came along to get her luggage and people looked at her because she was wearing a mini skirt and had beautiful legs. But when she turned around, she had two black eyes and her nose had a big dark bruise! Obviously somebody had beaten her up. What happened to equality, gender sensitivity and women power in the U.S.A. ?*

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