25 years ago – exactly on January 21st 1993 at 7 am – we celebrated the start of our union with a garden wedding. Yes it was 7 am and not pm: we choose a nice location facing the beach at Insular Hotel Davao City. During the day it gets so hot and we had the choice of either morning or late afternoon. Since it was often raining at night during the rainy season we choose to have the ceremony in the morning. We started 7 am Filipino time (meaning to say it was around 8 am …) We were very thankful for around 200 friends and relatives to be there. But the very highlight was that the family of Thomas came from Germany to attend the wedding. Our pastor Ernie Abella really gave good insights on marriage. He knew both of us as we were attending his church – “The Jesus Fellowship” in Davao City. We were so blessed to have him at our wedding. But there was a number of
We went back to some places where we had our first dates. Both of our favorite places have now different owners – many things have changed in the last 25 years. But here are still sweet memories – not only to the Hallo-Hallo and to the places it was served. You do not know what Halo-Halo is? See at the movie and look for more details online. On our first dates we were seldom alone – normally we brought some chaperones to be with us. For us our chaperones were usually Rosemarie’s sister or her brother or other friends. Wikipedia explains the following about a chaperone: A chaperone in its original social usage was a person who for propriety’s sake accompanied an unmarried girl in public: usually she was an older married woman, and most commonly the girl’s own mother. In modern social usage, a chaperone is a responsible adult who accompanies and supervises young people. Maybe the younger ones feel strange about that – but even today in many countries chaperones are there
Within our first 24 hours in the Philippines, we went already to two birthday parties. We arrived around 2 pm in the afternoon in our house in Davao and learned that we were invited for the 60th birthday of our Ninang Bernadette Al-ag that evening. We enjoyed the party and it was also nice to meet the new vice mayor of Davao City, Bernie Al-Ag and his wife. The next day our nephew celebrated the first birthday of their son Chase Noah. Celebrating the first birthday is a big thing in the Philippines. The parents spent lots of time and money to prepare for a wonderful party. Rose also prepared materials in Germany for the birthday cake and we were so excited to meet our grand-nephew for the first time ever. Also this party was great. There were around 100 guests – most them we did not know and there were lots of activities for the children. It is great to meet friends and to have good food. But on
More than 26 hours of traveling from our home town to Rosemarie’s family in Davao. Watch some impressions from our trip and understand why it is not easy to be far from your loved ones.
We are so excited – in five days we will fly to the Philippines. Today is our day of packing our things. Actually packing only our clothes would be easy – it is warm in the Philippines. But there is much more to bring. Everybody in our family and all our friends are waiting for a Pasalubong. You do not know that Pasalubong is? Here is what Wikipedia says: Pasalubong (Tagalog, “[something] for when you welcome me”) is the Filipino tradition of travellers bringing gifts from their destination to people back home. Pasalubong can be any gift or souvenir brought for family or friends after being away for a period of time. It can also be any gift given by someone arriving from a distant place. Pasalubong, in general, is a “gift for a relation or friend brought by a traveler returning from a trip,” and could also refer to “anything given as a gift to someone on the way home to a certain place. It could also mean “homecoming gift” or any present which signifies appreciation to the
Almost 27 years ago we met for the first time. Thomas went as a volunteer with the mission organisation YOUTH WITH A MISSION to the Philippines and met Rosemarie during that time. Since that time we are in love with each other and now we look back to 25 years of marriage and a family with three wonderful children. In 11 days we will fly back to Davao City where it all began. Our first date, getting to know each other, our wonderful wedding, our first baby – and also our first crisis … We are both so excited to be back in the Philippines and reflect many experiences and places of our relationship. You are all invited to join our story as we will document it with this blog and many videos. You can subscribe to our E-Mail newsletter, to our Youtube channel or follow us on Facebook or Instagram. It is also our desire to interact with you – so please send us your feedback and also share your own experiences with us.
It‘s Christmas time again. Time to celebrate and also a time of traditions. All over the world, people celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ. In some countries like in Germany, this is often a silent night. A night at home with the family. In other countries Christmas Eve is a big party with lots of food, lots of people and loud music – sometimes even with fireworks. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Family and in-laws are often a reason for conflict in marriages – much more for intercultural couples. Every family is different and we are so thankful, that we got two wonderful families. In Germany the extend families (the parents, uncles, aunties and other relatives of the couple) are for many couples not so important. There are many families who have little contact to the rest of the family. It is also sad to see that there are more and more families where the relationship between grown-up children and parents are destroyed. In Germany normally a young family tries to be independent from their parents or the rest of the family. On the other side family in the Philippines (at least in most cases and in the family of Rose) is considered very important. Often after marriage the young couple stays with one of the parents in the same house. Finances are shared and everybody is involved in taking care of the children. How do you experience family? How is
Even after almost 25 years of marriage we realise that our marriage is not perfect. The way we grew up is different, we have different personalities and we are just not perfect. But we do not need to be perfect – we decided to stick together and we want to encourage other cross-cultural couples to do the same. Don’t easily give up in your marriage – don’t throw away your relationship – just fix what is broken – just as this couple said who was married for 65 years. With our messages we want to encourage you – but we also love to receive feedback from you – either here on our blog – or just privatly via e-mail or any other form of message.
We are excited to present our second video. This time we are sharing about the time our first son was born. Both of us grew up so different (just listen to our first video if you haven’t yet). Even if both of us were so excited about our first baby we did not expect the struggles we had upon deciding where the baby will sleep. Each one of us had in mind how we grew up and thought, that this is just THE way to do it. Only years later we realized that it was not just a typical discussion between father and mother. One reason for the struggle was that we were not aware of the cultural differences in this area. As we share in the video we are looking forward to your feedback – either public as a comment on this blog – or private through our contact form or via E-Mail.