“I love Canada, I’m so proud of being Canadian, I love my family and my friends, [but] whole time I was there I was thinking about Philippines,” Kyle Jennerman said, a Canadian travel blogger who decided to stay in the Philippines after falling in love with the place and its people.
Kyle Jennerman / Photo from his Twitter account
Jennerman shared how he had traveled to over 20 places in the world and met Filipinos for the first time when he worked in an outdoor company in Hong Kong.
“I worked in Hong Kong for an outdoor adventure company and about 15 of my colleagues are Filipino,” Jennerman said, “I travel around the world, but the Philippines is that strange country floating over there…I don’t know any Filipinos, until I worked with them.”
It was those Filipino co-workers that invited Jennerman to visit the Philippines.
“I remember the day, January 17, two thirty in the morning, I landed in Cebu and I stayed in Cebu, I stayed there for a week, then I stayed in Cagayan De Oro, Mindanao for a week, I went to Davao for a bit, then up until I stayed in Quezon City here in Manila, and in that 3 weeks, it just overwhelmed me,” Jennerman shared.
Kyle Jennerman / Photo fomr Bitlanders
He recalled how accommodating his Filipino co-workers’ families were going as far as offering food and beddings at three o’clock in the morning with just as much enthusiasm and he learnt to appreciate the way Filipinos treated him as family.
When he went back to Hong Kong for work, Jennerman shared that one time when he was sad, he remembered the happy times he had in the Philippines and decided to take up a poster with the word smile on it and stand around in Hong Kong with it.
“Ninety-five percent of the people that walked past by me, people I don’t know, they smile or they laugh, and they do a positive gesture with me just presenting something positive, and you know what this is from the Philippines,” Jennerman said.
The smile poster of Jennerman has spread around online and he admits it was inspired by the Philippines.
A particular incident he narrated was when he visited Tacloban after Typhoon Yolanda struck and he passed by a Filipino family where he conversed with them, made jokes, laughed. It was only when he was about to leave that he found out they were currently looking for the dead body of their grandmother.
Despite the odds, Jennerman said “people here [Philippines] aren’t afraid to smile” and he claims he has never seen this same happiness in other countries.
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Source: ANC
