Ya know, every now and then…

I’m reminded of why I love him so much. I had a talk with my dad, who I was previously on rocky ground with, and he managed to reassure me about a lot of things and just make me feel much better than I’d been feeling lately. I love my dad, and I feel bad that I had any negative feelings towards him in the past couple of weeks.

I actually opened up about things I never thought I could talk about with him. I talked about grad school! Holy crap! I was thrilled to say the least. At some point, I asked him if he could teach me their (my parents’) regional language. He said he would, but then he suggested an idea to me that I had actually been considering for a very long time, and that idea was going to PI and immersing myself in the language. He would take care of everything as long as I was willing to do it. I told him I was totally willing, so there’s a good chance that I’ll spend a good half of the beginning of next year there. Eeeee!

And now, an excerpt from a patriotic Pilipino song (‘Bayan Ko’) that my dad felt was relevant to my life right now:

Ibon mang may layang lumipad
Kulungin mo at umiiyak
Bayan pa kayang sakdal dilag
Ang di magnasang makaalpas!

Translation to come.. when I’m not so sleepy.

UPDATE:

The translation (the only good one I could find on Google):

Even birds that are free to fly
Cage them and they cry,
Much more a beautiful country
Shall long to be free.

When my dad was explaining the song to me, or at least these lines, he gave a literal translation which was similar to the one above. He related and contrasted it to the English expression that says something along the lines of if you let something go and it comes back to you then you know that it was truly yours in the first place. I think these Tagalog lyrics are less trite than that English expression, and considerably more relevant to me.