A quality I'm really proud of in Filipinos is our hospitality, the way we make visitors feel like family. I'm a forty-seven-year-old secondary school principal in Iloilo, and I've seen it in every part of my life.
People show it in lots of small ways. If you visit a Filipino home, even a very poor one, the family will insist you eat, and they'll often give you the best food they have, even if it means they eat less. Guests are offered the most comfortable chair, and when you leave, someone usually presses a bag of fruit or snacks into your hands. Strangers on buses will happily give directions or even walk you to the right place.
I noticed it most strongly after a typhoon hit our province a few years ago. Many families lost their roofs, and yet when volunteers arrived from Manila and abroad, local people still cooked rice for them and found them places to sleep. One elderly woman near our school insisted on making coffee for a group of foreign engineers, even though her kitchen was half underwater. I remember thinking that was extraordinary.
I'm proud of it because it shows generosity isn't about money. It's about seeing other people as worth looking after. In a world where people can be quite suspicious of strangers, I think that openness is valuable. It also helps Filipinos who work overseas, because they bring that warmth into hospitals, ships and homes all over the world. Of course, hospitality can be taken too far, and some families spend money they don't have on guests, but overall I see it as one of our best qualities.