To be on your own? With no direction home,
Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone?
- Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"
So I've been wondering what I really am, at this moment. I am more than halfway home (literally, since we end in mid-May), and I have been doing my best to adapt to life in France. Yet every time I speak to a French person outside of the house (and sometimes in the house) I feel like I'm actually regressing rather than advancing in my French skills. All my friends say that I'm really good at it (and why shouldn't I be? I studied it for four years, and it has been seven years since I started) but those three years without French lessons really killed me and I I stutter every time I try to speak in French. I also noticed in my video blog that my vowels are impure and very American (it's okay, Josh Groban has the same problem. No, really. Listen to him sing. He'll be singing away in perfect Italian or French or Spanish and then he'll suddenly slip in an American dipthonged "oh" or "ay" sound rather than the pure "o" or "e" sound that Romance languages have... it's noticeable even on his recorded - i.e. not live - albums. Oh, Josh). However, my mom keeps saying that I'll be really Frenchy when I get home and my host mom says that I'm already really Frenchy. I constantly stun both her and her daughter with my sheer knowledge of France and French culture (remember, I grew up reading the encyclopaedia. I'm not even kidding. Ask my mom. And my knowledge keeps expanding, given the vastness of the Internet and the average human's usage of only 10% of the brain), especially in casual conversation. Once I said "mec" (translating to "guy" or, since I'm from California, "dude") in conversation and Marlene (host mom's daughter) cracked up because I said that. I suppose it's something like a Japanese person, who's only really learned English through schoolbooks and the occasional movie, saying "dude" in the presence of Californians, but every time I go outside I feel like more and more of an outsider as time goes by. Like when I'm absolutely starving and have no time to eat except on the metro (and French people are absolutely fanatical about eating properly) and get stared at. Or when I'm speaking in English on the metro and get stared at. Or even when I'm the only non-white person in a particular compartment on the metro and get stared at. Ordering things in restaurants or buying things in stores (especially with my American magnetic-strip credit card, and my California ID that has to be shown with it) makes me nervous because I DON'T want to be the Obviously Stupid American in the room.
I know I'm not French, and don't pretend to be, but I CAME TO FRANCE TO PRACTICE MY FREAKING FRENCH SO I DON'T BECOME THE STUPID AMERICAN ALL FRENCH PEOPLE MAKE FUN OF. I am obviously American, but I don't want people patronising me by speaking in English unless I ask first... they usually end up speaking to me in English anyway. I don't always understand right away, and have to have things repeated, but I WANT THEM REPEATED IN FRENCH SO I CAN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND. I speak enough English - to my friends, to my professors (except Attal because he is the French professor and we are in an advanced French class anyway), to my family, even IN MY HEAD - so I need to practice French. I'd rather slog through the rapid French of a snobby salesperson rather than have them sneer at me in slow English. (There's only been one salesperson - at the ticket booth in the opera house - that has been rude to me so I've been lucky. But still, she didn't have to be such a B$%&# when I only asked where the bathrooms were. "Ce n'est pas publique" (It's not a public toilet), she snapped at me when, just ten minutes earlier, she had been all smiles and sunshine and lollipops when I had bought a ticket. I'M NOT THE PUBLIC. I AM A PAYING CUSTOMER. I PAID YOU, YES YOU, NOT EVEN TEN MINUTES BEFOREHAND AND BOTH MY BRAIN AND BLADDER ARE THISCLOSE TO EXPLODING because it's THAT TIME OF THE MONTH, SO STFU AND TELL ME WHERE I CAN PEE. (...now if only I could yell that fluently in French.)
And you know what else is weird? I speak more Filipino here than I do in America because there's quite a few Filipinos in Paris (we have our own fellowship at the American Church) and I see them work as domestics all the time in the 16th since that's where al the rich people live. I feel like I owe it to myself, Manila native that I am, to still remember Filipino in the jumble of languages I've spoken since I was here (stuttering French, mangled Czech, WTF German, gringa Spanish, fangirl/gaijin Japanese), and I am heading to Manila two days after returning to San Francisco ANYWAY. I want to be like Jose Rizal and speak twenty different languages, except (1) I don't know who I can inflict Sanskrit on and (2) Jose Rizal would probably make fun of me for how badly I speak Filipino. I mean, despite my natural love and knack for languages, and my best efforts to subsume my acquired American accent, Filipinos can still tell that I am American (and sometimes laugh at/make fun of me for it). NEVER MIND THAT I WAS BORN IN CARDINAL SANTOS, A HOSPITAL IN METRO MANILA NAMED AFTER A PRIEST FROM MY MOTHER'S HOME TOWN IN PAMPANGA, AND THAT I SPENT MY FORMATIVE YEARS IN SAMPALOC, THREE MINUTES AWAY FROM UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS, THE OLDEST UNIVERSITY IN MANILA. MA.NI.LA. AS IN, WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS OF THE ACTUAL CITY OF MANILA.
Anyway, yeah, it's weird how I feel like I'm regressing in French only after I've come to Paris. It's kind of like when you practice something so much that you begin to forget it (which is also happening with me right now, as I practice for my play which I don't even have a main part in, despite the fact that I've been one of the most faithful attendees of practices and a freaking good singer if I do say so myself, but WHATEVER).
Also, it's weird because I don't know what to call home (especially since "Like A Rolling Stone" is playing on the radio): my place of birth, my place of upbringing, my original ("home") university, or my current (temporary) domicile (which is in what has been my dream city since I began to wear glasses, and my home base in Europe - I actually got to tell people "I'm from Paris" when I was on spring break)? I call all of them home at the same time. My mom uses the same verb ("muli," meaning "to go home" in Kapampangan) to refer to me going to the Philippines and America, and my host mom sometimes reminds me that the apartment is (for now) my home too. When discussing study abroad, UCSB is referred to as my "home" university. However, none of them are really HOME at the moment.
Or maybe they are.
I suppose that one can argue that I'm trying to keep up with the exoticism of AUP students by asserting my transnationalism (lots of rich people, multinationals, expats, study abroad kids, and/or diplomats' kids go here), but one (I) can also argue that I am a transnationalist because I was born in one country, raised (with heavy, heavy links to the former) in another, and currently live - like, with a NON-TOURIST visa and everything, however temporarily - in another.
But I'll leave the entry about transnationalism for another day (sociology/Asian American Studies student that I am).
I suppose it'll get even more confusing once I go back to the Philippines. My mom actually told me once that I was not Kapampangan (never mind that she speaks to me in nothing else), and I never feel Just American, EVER, and I never feel Just Filipino, EVER, and I am Obviously Not French. So... what am I? And don't say Filipino-American, because that just brings up dreadful images of either
(1) suburban kids who spent their adolescence wishing, or trying to, be "normal" (read: WHITE) and then all of a sudden bursting into Rabid Filipino Pride upon attending college,
(2) suburban girls who dress in Abercrombie or Hollister, dye their hair a brassy blonde-brown, have white boyfriends and Volkswagen Jettas, join overwhelmingly blonde sororities (and thus are the darkest person in the sorority picture no matter how much they try to block UV Rays), and (if they have enough money) get surgery to sharpen their flat noses, or
(3) suburban kids dressed in Fubu and Sean John and Girbaud, braid cornrows in their straight Asian-but-insisting-they-are-Pacific-Islander hair, and American accents mangling words in Tagalog far worse than I could ever do.
Unless, of course, you're Don. He's cool. (And grew up in the Philippines until, like, age 16 so he still speaks with a slight Filipino accent even if he dresses like everyone else. And lives within SF city limits, which gives him automatic street cred.) I miss Don, insufferable dork that he is... Or Rianne, who is a mix of EVERYTHING (half Filipino, half black-white-possibly Hispanic, I never remember, but she went to school in the Mission for like eight years so that probably counts for something) but grew up with her resolutely Filipino grandparents. Or Casey, Sergio, or Noni - I think they are the perfect mix of Filipino and American. I always envied how they could mix well with Fil-Am kids in the way I never could, but without the ghetto-wannabe affectations or atrociously American-accented Tagalog of some other kids I know. And they still mano adults and say "po" at the end of every sentence and everything. Or even Andrea and Kyle, who moved to America when Eeyah was nine and Kyle was sixteen (I think), but they still are fluent in Tagalog (although Eeyah was born in Pampanga and sometimes I give her crap for not knowing Kapampangan since she grew up in Manila) and are obviously Filipino, BUT STILL ASSIMILATED WAY BETTER - AND COOLER - THAN I DID. (Even if Eeyah is a little too blunt towards her parents to be the perfect Filipina - hey, "pnaysoblunt" is/was her screenname - but then again, she inherited it from THEM. LOL.) Or Joan and Jordan, who are the "typical" Filipino American without being obnoxious about it (speaks predominantly English, but understands Filipino fluently; may or may not have been Philippine-born, but has been raised in America from an early age; leans toward hip-hop culture without going overboard with "ghetto" affectations; the life of every party; actually LOOKS LIKE A FILIPINO PERSON; digs in heartily at any Filipino dish on the table... you know, now that I think about it, kind of like the Antonio kids). Or Leonard and Gail, who actually DO use their Tagalog skillz in addition to ticking all the boxes of "typical Filipino American". Or Megan - or Ruth - or Janice - or Toby! - who are in their own categories altogether.
OKAY, FINE. I MISS YOU ALL. AND YOU ARE ALL UNIQUE. I LOVE MY FRIENDS.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that among my friends there is no one set "Filipino-American" archetype - I mean, you see the caricatures at PCN (I played the fobalicious mother, w00t) and in movies like "Lumpia" and "The Debut" and "The Flip Side" - but growing up I always felt like I (and perhaps Adrian #1) was always the odd Filipino out. Too white to be Filipino, too Filipino to be white, and nowhere near the African-American/Latino hip-hop normative, ethnically, culturally or psychologically. And no one ever thought I looked Filipino. (At least Adrian had that... but at least I knew I wasn't the typical Filipino and never tried the ghetto immersion thing. Bwahahaha. Okay okay okay, cheap shot, sorry
I suppose I should follow the advice of the song playing on the radio - "Relax, Take It Easy."
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