It is not a secret that I love my family very much. I kind of have the same level of love for them and for Jeff. I bet they both won't mind. My favorite person in our house is my Mama, then my Papa, then my sibs. So my most favorite place would be home.

Since Jeff and I got married last year, I moved in with him and his family in the south. South meaning south of Manila. My family lives in Antipolo, which is about 45 minutes and 30 kilometers away. I love going home to my parents. I love seeing my Mama. Four hours with her every week gives me the courage to face the next 164 hours. She is my rock, my living proof of unconditional love. My Papa is my first love. A man of few words and many laughs, he is my mother's one true love. And my siblings? They are as crazy as I am.

I have always been very protective of my family. When I was a kid, I heard my neighbor gossiping about my Mama, I threw rocks to her house until I heard her scream so I ran back inside our house. In third grade, one of my classmates were making fun of my surname. He calls me Labandera instead of Cabaltera. So I threw his notebooks in the toilet bowl. No one makes fun of my father's surname. No one. One day when I was in second grade and my brother was in kindergarten, one of his classmates came to my classroom and told me that my brother was crying. I went there and found out that the kid was not letting my brother sit down. What did I do? I pushed the kid off the chair and gave it to my brother. My sister Sarah used to be bullied in gradeschool, so I went there and terrorized the other kid. I did a few things for my little sister too, like bullying her boyfriend, but that didn't seem to work. Haha!  I've done a lot of terrible things (no, I didn't kill anyone) in the name of my family. We are poor but we never really asked anything from anyone. What we are now are what my parents worked for many years. We are who we are because of them, not because of any damn person.