Strangers who felt strange
I had fun gate-crashing tonight. I had Filipino friends who study at ESPEME, a management school here in Lille, and they asked me to come with them to the party of a classmate. Since I wanted to immerse myself in the Lille culture, I decided to go with them and thus, I met all sorts of people - French (it's a given), Polish, Swedish, Slovenian, etc. We met the ESPEME students at the Grand Place after which we went to the venue of the house party.
The house was teeming with students, some drank, some tipsy, some still sober. At any rate, the moment our group stepped into the room wherein the party was being held, we could feel all eyes on us. Gausha (i don't know if I'm spelling her name correctly) couldn't have put it better - "I feel strange". There we were, a bunch of étrangers (sounds like strangers, but it really means foreigners) feeling strange in a strange party. hehe.
Anyway, some French students came up to me asking if I was chinoise (chinese), to my surprise. On second thought though, it isn't that surprising because most people here call all Asians as chinois. More surprisingly though, I've been mistaken to be British for two times already. I don't know but I just can't imagine myself having the British accent.
When I was starting to get the feel of the party (that was, when I was beginning to have decent conversation with the other students), my friends called me and told me that we had to go since we were going to fetch the other Filipinos who were in another school party. Everyone met up, everyone was satisfied (or so I think) with the night and we all walked back to our homes... except for me. En route to my dormitory (aka school), I bumped into my Polish schoolmates and we had a little trip to a nearby bar with some French ladies, after having a small street meeting with other French students in the street. The French ladies, especially Melanie, were really nice and it was really a pleasure meeting them. They were very patient with my very bad French, and they also tried to speak in English for us. I'll be meeting them later again. I'm so glad I went out tonight. It's fun meeting new people and learning more about different cultures.
AND, it's also fun correcting views about the Philippines. It was some joke, but anyways, one of the guys I met asked me this evening upon learning that I was from ICAM - an engineering school - "Why do you have engineering in the Philippines?" Totally shocked, I answered his stupid question with a stupid answer, "because we also build buildings and machines in the Philippines." Oh well, I'm not a civil engineer or something, but you know, just to make things easier for him... I just console myself that the said question was infinitely better than the top 2 questions other people have posed to fellow Filipinos here, namely:
2) Do you have electricity in the Philippines?
1) Do people live in trees there?
Grrr.. What questions.
They sound like urban legends, but they're true/ Oh well, it's time to put things straight.
The house was teeming with students, some drank, some tipsy, some still sober. At any rate, the moment our group stepped into the room wherein the party was being held, we could feel all eyes on us. Gausha (i don't know if I'm spelling her name correctly) couldn't have put it better - "I feel strange". There we were, a bunch of étrangers (sounds like strangers, but it really means foreigners) feeling strange in a strange party. hehe.
Anyway, some French students came up to me asking if I was chinoise (chinese), to my surprise. On second thought though, it isn't that surprising because most people here call all Asians as chinois. More surprisingly though, I've been mistaken to be British for two times already. I don't know but I just can't imagine myself having the British accent.
When I was starting to get the feel of the party (that was, when I was beginning to have decent conversation with the other students), my friends called me and told me that we had to go since we were going to fetch the other Filipinos who were in another school party. Everyone met up, everyone was satisfied (or so I think) with the night and we all walked back to our homes... except for me. En route to my dormitory (aka school), I bumped into my Polish schoolmates and we had a little trip to a nearby bar with some French ladies, after having a small street meeting with other French students in the street. The French ladies, especially Melanie, were really nice and it was really a pleasure meeting them. They were very patient with my very bad French, and they also tried to speak in English for us. I'll be meeting them later again. I'm so glad I went out tonight. It's fun meeting new people and learning more about different cultures.
AND, it's also fun correcting views about the Philippines. It was some joke, but anyways, one of the guys I met asked me this evening upon learning that I was from ICAM - an engineering school - "Why do you have engineering in the Philippines?" Totally shocked, I answered his stupid question with a stupid answer, "because we also build buildings and machines in the Philippines." Oh well, I'm not a civil engineer or something, but you know, just to make things easier for him... I just console myself that the said question was infinitely better than the top 2 questions other people have posed to fellow Filipinos here, namely:
2) Do you have electricity in the Philippines?
1) Do people live in trees there?
Grrr.. What questions.
They sound like urban legends, but they're true/ Oh well, it's time to put things straight.
posted by Pia at
2:38 AM
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