In the summer of 2012, my family landed in Manila, Philippines. When we got off the plane, family friends picked us up at the airport. It didn’t occur to me that the driver’s seat was on the left side of the car and we would be driving on the right side of the lane. The traffic was better than before because the last time I went back to the Philippines, it look us a really long time, even longer than the flight from Bangkok to Manila. There was so much pollution and smoke belching that sometimes I couldn’t even see the road. I don’t think I even saw a plant because of all this carbon dioxide around. All I remember was when we got to the house that we were going to stay in, I got pretty jet-lagged and tired. Even though it was only one hour difference I slept all day.

It had always occurred to me that I would be riding on tricycles some time but not as my transportation to school. It was a bummer that my summer would only be a week long because of the Filipino education system; their school year started in June. On a Wednesday morning, I would wake up an hour earlier than I usually had before and I would have breakfast at 6 am. I had to persevere because this would be my routine for the next 10 months. The first three days of school were introductory days; uniforms weren’t necessary at the moment because it was a start-of-the-school-year privilege. When my uniform was finally complete after a month it was strange. It was as if I had become one of them which I clearly still do deny. The girls and guys were much more unified that I had expected; they were like brothers and sisters touching each other’s elbows and putting their arms over each other like a gang. It was a way that made me comfortable and left out simultaneously. I had expected more from them academically but it had turned out that I was one of the three top students in the grade. I was very much disappointed when I observed that they were negligent on their education, that they cheat during finals week. I also found it incredibly confusing that I was a freshman and a junior at the same time because 10th grade for them was senior year. The school had no bell so teachers played it by ear when the class started and ended.

The school had no air conditioner which made me sweat inevitably in the heat. Powder was the most common thing to prevent the odor of the sweat. After lunch, girls and guys would put powder on their faces while looking at the mirror, making sure it was evened out. One of the rules in the school was that students weren’t allowed to bring any sort of gadget. My classmates broke the rules during lunch break when they would take out their phones and iPods start taking lots of selfies. After only five minutes, phones would be filled with selfies of the same person.

The school itself was so petite, a fifth the size of Grace International School’s high school building with a population of 150. Having its advantages, students and teachers didn’t have to go far to find someone. The disadvantage though, was when something significant has happened, bad or good; the whole school would know it in a matter of seconds like a wildfire. An example of that would be when I talked in English, my American accent came out and then people laughed at me. Later that day I found out that the entire school knew me as the “American-Thai girl” that was a Filipino. Every Monday morning the school held an assembly assigned to each grade and when it was our turn, I always led the prayers because they said that I was the one with the American accent. It was good to be different from them but I felt that most of the time I was just being used for English purposes.

Even though my time in the Philippines wasn’t easy, it was part of my life that I went through and I learned a lot from it. It was a culture that was hard to adapt to but it was a learning experience. I wouldn’t have learned that no matter where I am, I still have to be myself regardless of what other people think of me.