l'identité

The first time I traveled outside the country was in September 1999 when I went to Beijing for the second Asia-Europe Foundation Summer School. Back then, the summer school was just an experiment to see how young people from 25 countries in Asia and Europe could promote understanding between the two regions. Since then, the program has been institutionalized and renamed the Asia-Europe University. There are currently 38 countries represented in our alumni network.

Even if the Spanish monarchy made the Philippines its home for 300 years, in contrast to American powers who stayed for only 50 years, I wasn't really aware of the European influence in our country's lifeways, perhaps because it permeates their deepest levels: the Catholic religion, food, aesthetic values.

From 6th to 7th grade, I had great difficulty learning French in ISM, because I thought the only "logical" system of signifiers was American English- my mind couldn't comprehend, for example, how nouns for objects, like people, had "genders" (la chaise or the chair is feminine, while le stylo or the pen is masculine). Now that I am studying Spanish and Italian, which like French are Romance languages, I find that there is beauty and logic beneath foreign expressions, if only one is patient enough to listen and try to understand them.

That trip to Beijing opened my eyes to the Asian aspect of my identity, what I had in common with other peoples in Asia. Next week will be the launch of the Asia-Europe Society that seeks to form a new community and possibly a new identity: an Asian-European one.

The above picture shows me with my AU-2 classmates- pioneers all in this great experiment- on top of the Great Wall of China.