kentjamaro.com "Five Things a Balikbayan Needs to do to Fit in" Balikbayans almost always have a checklist of things to do before they return back to the country from whence they came. Just last month, I had a slew of family and relatives who visited the Philippines: my brother who is a Franciscan friar from New York, my cousins and their respective families from California, and my tito and tita from Toronto. Interestingly, all of them had some sort of to-do list that they wanted to accomplish before flying back home. This observation made me think of why such a proverbial list exists amongst visiting Filipinos. It prompted me to look back at my own balikbayan past and examine the few home visits that I did when I was living in Canada. True enough, I did have my own checklist back then and my reason for having it is something, I think, shared by most balikbayans. Homesickness is the driving force that compels us to make a balikbayan to-do list. After living in anoth