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 Exchange Program on Education, Culture and Teaching Objectives (EPECTO). It was on the eve of Christmas when Saskia Hümmer’s domestic carrier from Manila landed in Naga. The sun was still flamboyant even at the coolest time of the Philippine year, and humid winds were poised to continue hovering over the city. The nineteen year-old Central European was on a journey to experience a different culture, and the sunny Christmas season with neither the snow nor the subzero interlude would be her starter.
Shortly after her arrival in Naga, Saskia traveled to Iriga for a scheduled immersion in a Filipino domestic environment. Together with two schoolmates, Lea Dippon and Josephine Henry, she was welcomed by a Filipino family and ushered to a typical Filipino household: large in number, significantly communal, and explicitly consanguineous. Filipino culinary practices and eating habits were quite unusual: spoons and forks—rather than knives and forks—were the standard set; rice was the constant partner of viands; eating was mostly done more than three times a day. There was hardly anything so familiar indoors or outdoors. But the girls went through it all, with a sense of determination that was beyond their years.
In the suburbs of Iriga, the girls had a close encounter with the Filipino Weltanschauung—the Filipino worldview—and the vicissitudes that continued to shape it. The Filipino life was a dialectic of travails and triumphs: the common man would cascade down a slope of hardscrabble existence only to get back up and call it a day. There was a peculiar sensibility required to survive in the country, but much of it was contoured by a smile.
 Driving behavior was more visceral rather than cerebral: no traffic lights; no radar systems; and people would walk—and cross—just about any part of the streets! For some reason, the people had a way of “feeling” each other on the road, and, in most perceived cases, traffic rules were deemed by motorists as suggestions, rather than absolute imperatives. Residences and small-scale shops were lined up along the streets like an entourage of ushers prompting guests that they were not alone. Signs of life were everywhere: greeneries, rice fields, animals and people. The perceptive trio paid attention to all of these with a big heart and a jovial mirth.
There were hardly any theaters or coliseums to regale the soul with orchestras or plays, but they noticed the omnipresent theatricality of private (and public) Videoke gatherings. Videoke machines were as common in small districts as were soccer fields in Europe. It did not take long before the girls pitched forward and made waves in a community where singing was almost a daily habit.
On the 27th of December, Saskia, along with a group of Filipinos, had a date with the only active volcano in the region: Mayon. In Legazpi—a city associated with the world-renowned volcano—the girls welcomed the sunset and the view of fiery lava slithering down from the volcano’s apex. After a few more days with her host family in Iriga, they were set to travel to Boracay for the last days of the month. In that island, they marveled at the white sand, the blue sea, the people, and, more importantly, the socio-economic concerns of tourism development projects. Even amidst the hordes of tourists and marketing units, the girls grappled with the hidden tensions of a globalizing region that nonetheless still had much depths and breadths to retrieve on its own, and sometimes relegated its previous native centers to the margins. Notwithstanding Boracay’s enchanting beauty, there was a hidden poverty in its pompous nooks. To those who paid much attention, the place bespoke the helpless muttering of economically alienated natives.
The yuletide break ended on 3 January, and the next day was to be Saskia’s entry to the co-host and partner-institute of EPECTO: Ateneo de Naga University. In the remaining week of her visit she would finally live in the city of Naga.
In the university, Saskia eagerly observed classes, methodologies, pedagogical practices, students, and extra-curricular activities. Socializing with students eventually gave her a sampling of dormitory life, with the company of Exchange Students Josy and Lea, and their dorm friends. With them, and with friends from her host family in Iriga, she explored as much of the city as she could—gaining familiarity with the town center, its establishments, its transport systems (jeepneys, tricycles, pedicabs, und so weiter und so fort) and its way of life. She met various people off-campus as she did on-campus, and immersed herself into the pluralities of the Naga-rationality.
 In a classroom setting, Saskia witnessed the differences between German and Philippine academic interactions: the Filipino students were generally timid and reticent in class. The quantity of questions raised by students, as well as the quality of their involvement, depended largely on the connection that teachers established with their classes. Student-enthusiasm in the Ateneo classroom seemed to hinge on the ability of teachers to level off and empathize with their students’ culture—a feature of Jesuit pedagogy signified throughout centuries by the phrase cura personalis, or personal care.
The academic sojourn in Ateneo de Naga University culminated in a courtesy meeting with the President, Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J., and the delivery of an EPECTO presentation at the Instructional Media Center. Through the sponsorship of the Political Science – Philippine Foreign Relations class, the girls opened the gateway to contemporary ethics, foreign relations, and the humanities by presenting keynote lectures on the philosophy behind the European Union, the lives of Schiller and Beethoven, and the roots of racism. The presentation was synthesized by a reference to the broad strokes of EPECTO’s philosophy (education by way of interruption; to be ethical is to create space for the other), and capped by a cordial forum involving Ateneo students.
German EPECTO Coordinator Karola Klier once posed a pregnant question: how much life can one live in a lifetime? To this, one can perhaps add: how much life can be lived in a brief sojourn? Exchange program visits can sometimes be too short to offer substantial immersions into a vastly different culture, especially when they last for only three weeks. But Saskia Hümmer’s visit teaches us about the essential difference between the “many” and the “much.” It is at this juncture where one can perhaps claim that in exchange programs—as in life—the latter seems to be more worthwhile.
The university extends its gratitude to Saskia and to the key drivers of Friedrich-Alexander-Gymnasium for another successful visit.
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