I can relate. When I'm there, I stay at our house in Quezon City. I can go weeks without seeing a non-Filipino, and that's just fine with me. I do feel more at home there than I do stateside, but I'm sure that has a great deal to do with the culture there being in many ways like the culture of the MS Delta of my youth.

But my grandkids are here near Seattle, so at least for now, this is where we'll stay...and I'll continue being an island unto myself until the day we can go home to Quezon City.