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From City Life to Rural Bliss: Embracing Nature in the Philippines

Back to My Roots I was born in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, and moved to the U.S. when I was just eight years old. Still, we returned to visit every couple of years, and each trip always felt like coming home. Now that our work is fully remote, we’ve been taking full advantage—traveling across the U.S., tasting croissants in Paris, relaxing in Costa Rica, and yes, even chasing viral food in Taiwan (we did find that flat chicken from TikTok, haha). But recently, we did something unexpected—we came back to the Philippines to live what I jokingly call the “Reverse American Dream.” There’s something about being here that just feels right. Riding in a sidecar with the wind in my hair, seeing kids laughing barefoot on the roadside, old men playing cards under trees—it brought me back to a part of myself I thought I’d tucked away. I’ve always been drawn to simplicity, to nature, to the rhythm of life outside the city. My family has deep farming roots, and I remember watching rice being harvested and tiny chicks chirping in the poultry farm. Maybe I’ve always carried that longing inside me. In my teenage years, I was obsessed with homestead YouTubers and bloggers, dreaming about building a life off the land. Maybe now’s the time to turn that dream into reality. Maybe this is me coming full circle—planting new seeds in the soil that raised me. We’ll see where this leads. But for now, it feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. xoxo, Van