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Philippines: Student Comments
“This program increased my Filipino pride. I had so much fun meeting new people and making close friends whom I will never forget. The Philippines Studies Program opened my mind to the struggles people face daily. The intensive six-week Philippines Studies Program gave me the opportunity to learn about the history of my people that I never fully understood before. Classes ran from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. so we had to adjust to the busy schedule. Each class was two hours long. There were three classes per day: History, Tagalog, and Program A or Program B. For Filipino history, we had a different guest speaker lecture on a specific topic per day. My favorite topic was the history of women in the Philippines. The next class was Tagalog. Learning Tagalog helped me to communicate while living in the Philippines. There were options of different programs to take for the last class. I chose Program B, which consisted of Filipino cooking, sports, film, and visual art. All classes were informative and challenging. We had homework, tests, and quizzes, which kept us pretty occupied. In addition, there were two weekly educational field trips to places all over the Philippines like the National Museum, Baguio, Luneta, Intramuros, Payatas, Batasan National School, Corregidor, Boracay, and many more. We were exposed to so many things. Even though I am not native to the Philippines, there is a strong connection that I feel now after having been on EAP. I now understand my own Filipino culture and I was able to experience life-changing events so I can never look at the world in the same light, ever again. Studying abroad in the Philippines was one of the best experiences of my entire life. ” —Demarie Valera Dizon, UC Santa Cruz “The program is well organized and the students received a lot of support from the teachers and the Study Center Director, Don Goertzen. I learned so much from all the top-notch lecturers, language classes, community visits, and other trips.” —EAP Student “The EAP Philippines Summer Program was an eye-opening experience that I will never forget, one I will carry with me no matter where I go-no matter what major I graduate with, no matter what field of work I go into, and no matter what I do for the rest of my life. The program allowed me to delve deeper into my history, roots, and culture in dynamic ways, inside and outside of the classroom with other students who were as passionate and excited as I am about learning about our people and ourselves. Our learning came not only inside the classroom, but more importantly through the numerous field trips and experiences in daily Philippine life, conversing and interacting with the natives. My summer abroad instilled in me a stronger passion for learning about my culture and other cultures, and a passion for my Filipino community and their struggles: we marched alongside protesters in the State of the Nation Rally; we fought alongside the San Miguel workers who were unfairly fired; we learned how to play indigenous musical instruments of the Kalinga peoples; we stood on the shores of Boracay Beach with the sand in our toes; and we sang songs in solidarity on a boat rocking on the Manila Bay while the sun set. This experience helped me to construct and forge my identity as Filipina-American. The experience not only changed how I look at myself and how I view my Filipino people, but has also changed my plans for the future. What I learned on the program has penetrated the other areas of my life including my engineering major, and my passions and goals for the future now incorporate somehow returning to the Philippines, for now I feel a connection to my now-called homeland that I will never be able to sever. ” —Heidi Tuason, UC San Diego
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