The overseas student survivor's complex

The Philippines and its problems are the heritage I choose: something indescribably broken but indescribably mine.

- IO CARPISO

There are several things I wish I had known before studying in the UK: the summers are way colder than you think, they weren't lying about the taste(lessness) of the food, and there's a special kind of anger inherent to being a Filipino international student.

After spending 15 months in a small university in Oxford - a cozy college town in southern Britain - I was determined to discover Manila during the three months of summer I would spend at home, the first time I've returned since leaving in January 2023. Oxford was a world away from sizzling urban Manila, where my family moved the year I left. Before and during the pandemic, I was never really given an opportunity to venture out of my routine of heading to school and then home again, so I made it a promise to catch up with my friends who've made Manila their stomping grounds.