We've taken Noah to the Chinese New Celebration since he was born (almost accidentally). He will have been exposed to so much more than me in his short life! I heart NYC!

It will be my second year as the Co-Director of Filipino Heritage Camp (FHC) and the first year that any of the 10 Colorado Heritage Camps (CHC) has two Directors that are both adult adoptees in its 19 years of existence.

I volunteered as a camp counselor in 2000 when I came across the website after doing a search on line. I still have the printed emails that I sent to the CHC Director who is pictured to the left.


I was not sure what I was getting into - traveling solo to Denver, CO to be a counselor to young kids who were adopted from the Philippines. I comforted by the fact that there was a fellow young adult adoptee that I could relate to and that a couple families happened to be on the same Motherland tour 2 years earlier!

Fast forward a decade later and many hours on the phone with my fellow co-counselor and now Co-Director. I would like to think I am ten years wiser and more experienced to take a leadership role in a camp that has become a second home and family to me.

It will be our 4th consecutive year traveling to the Rockies with my son who has been attending and recently participating as a camper, which will undeniably help play a role in his own identity development.

A gal cc'd me in an email to a fellow adopted person from the Philippines. She revealed that she came across a picture on our orphanage page on Facebook and identified herself; an image she had never seen before, a photo of herself before the age of 4 years.

The photo was taken a couple years before I was born but somehow I felt an instant connection with her as we spoke that same night. Her excited voice was rambling and asking questions that I could not necessarily answer. It was one of those conversations that could have gone on for hours as we compared notes about what our Pilipinas passport looked like and if I knew any of the names she blurted out.

This recent reunion of sorts has me thinking whether I want to find more information about my life in the orphanage. This gal has a sister who is my age and is very likely that we were at the orphanage at the same time.

I always feel like I am having an out of body experience when I have these encounters. As though they are unreal and I am an observer. I guess this is part of my adoption that I am still working out and attempting not to alienate myself from the fact that I lived in the orphanage for the first five years of my life.