During one meeting every month, members of the Asian Student Association (ASA) discover a different Asian country, learning about customs and language via informational presentations, games, and food.

October is Filipino month, and freshmen Denise Mae Restum, a Filipino herself, and Lucy Cortez, a Salvadoran, created and shared a PowerPoint presentation about the Philippines, including information about the traditional clothing worn, food eaten, and common phrases used in the country. Then the group played a game, and topped it all off by eating some food.

The two official languages of the Philippines are Tagalog and English, but there are more than 170 dialects. In Tagalog, you say thank you by saying salamat. If you want to ask someone what their name is, you would say, “Anong pangalan mo?” Some types of clothing typically worn during ceremonies such as weddings are the barong, or a fancy men’s shirt, and and a terno, a fancy dress. Some types of food eaten in the Philippines are palabok, turon, pancit, chicken adobo, and lumpia. Lumpia, as described by Restum and Cortez, is a taquito-like food. Finally, the colors on the flag of the Philippines are used to represent different things. Red symbolizes war, the yellow sun with eight rays symbolizes the first provinces, and the stars symbolize the three main regions: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

ASA members also played a typical party game in which two or more people each hold a string tied to a banana, and attempt to use the banana to push an egg over a finish line without touching anything other than the string. Freshman Danh Ta won the game, and then the members celebrated by eating Filipino food before ending the day.

During a typical meeting, members discuss upcoming events for the club, sometimes participate in contests, and play games like Pinoy Henyo, a type of guessing game, and Fruits Basket, a game played with chairs. In Pinoy Henyo, a group of people try to guess a word that another group of people came up with by asking questions. Fruits Basket is a more active game. There are chairs for all but one person, who stands. Everyone else sits. The person standing calls out something, and the others react. For example, the person could say, “Everyone who is wearing shorts, stand up.” Those people who are wearing shorts would stand up and try to find a seat that they were not sitting in or next to, and the one person left standing would say something else.

Freshman Jovan Kellough says his favorite part of the club is “meeting new people and learning about their culture.” He said he joined because he is new to the school, he is Filipino, and he wanted to meet new people.

Junior Min Kang is President of the ASA, which she has been involved in since her freshman year.

Kang, who is Korean, said she thought, “it would be interesting, since I’m Asian,” to join and that her favorite part is that she “gets to boss people around.”

Her secretary, fellow junior Tricia Restum, who is Filipino, said this is her third year in the club. Restum and her friends “decided to join as kind of a hangout thing.”

Ms. Carlos, the sponsor of the ASA for three years, said she decided to sponsor the club because Asian students “want to meet Asian friends as well as people every Thursday, and since I am Asian, I said ok, let’s try.”

She says more people are joining ASA, which has been around for about a decade, especially ninth graders because “they thirst for friends.” Ms. Carlos says ASA members learn about their Asian culture so they can show it to the world.

The Asian Student Association meets Thursdays from 3:20 to 4:20 in Room 234.