{"id":5999,"date":"2025-10-20T09:30:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/?p=5999"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:27:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T13:27:28","slug":"healthy-drinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/healthy-drinks\/","title":{"rendered":"A Life Measured in Miles, Years, and Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" This blog was born in one of the most challenging chapters of my life: the long, uneven process of integrating into Europe \u2014 specifically, into Germany. In the early days, I wrote about learning a new language, searching for a job, and slowly building a circle of friends and acquaintances. Nothing about that journey was linear. I stumbled, learned, unlearned, and tried again, over and over, until I could finally say \u2014 with a quiet, hard\u2011earned sense of triumph \u2014 that flight HnH has landed.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"It took almost 3 decades. To be exact: 28 years filled with meaningful connections, disappointing encounters, and everything in between. And somewhere along the way, I aged. I have now spent more years in the country I integrated into than in the country where I was born. Which leads to the million\u2011dollar question: Which country is now my home country? Well, I feel both! I have the privilege to enjoy the best and not so ideal in both countries. I feel good when I am in the Philippines and even so when I go back again to Germany. Just the same as I miss both whenever I am away from one or the other. <\/p>\n

This year, I am turning 54. Another number now marks not just age, but the years of transformation, adaptation, and identity\u2011shifting that brought me here. Not simply in the sense of adding another candle to a birthday cake, but in the deeper way life ages a person \u2014 through experience, loss, growth, and the subtle reshaping of identity.<\/p>\n

As I settled into the country I chose \u2014 the country I worked so hard to integrate into \u2014 something else shifted. Almost without noticing when it began, my sense of homeland changed. I am now proud to be a German national. I feel the need to defend negative impressions about Germany. I feel the urge and excitement to promote Germany as a country worth visiting in one\u2019s lifetime. I feel joy wearing my Dirndl. I feel good speaking the language confidently.<\/p>\n

And so, the conclusion becomes clear: Call it political, cultural, personal \u2014 the label doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

What it is? It\u2019s CHANGE<\/strong>. People change \u2014 and I am no exception. I\u2019ve grown into the culture, values, and rhythms of my new home, Germany. Yet in embracing this new chapter, I never lost the identity that shaped me. My love for the Philippines remains woven into who I am. By origin, by birth, by blood, by ethnicity, and by the color of my skin, I will always be Filipino.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog was born in one of the most challenging chapters of my life: the long, uneven process of integrating into Europe \u2014 specifically, into Germany. In the early days, I wrote about learning a new language, searching for a job, and slowly building a circle of friends and acquaintances. Nothing about that journey was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5999"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6069,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions\/6069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahlou.de\/tweethumbsup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}