Amanda Justiniano

Pocahontas, hispanic, and Japanese: the things I am told I look most like. My
father is Filipino, and my mother caucasian, so I have darker skin that most
caucasian Americans, but people can’t really figure out what my ethnicity seems
to be. I lived in Japan for thirteen years before coming to the States for
college, but have no Japanese blood in me. My last name is hispanic, passed down
from conquistadors who intermarried with local Filipina women sometime in
history, but I’m not really hispanic, either. I’m about 1/64 hispanic, and about
the same amount Chinese, because Great-Great-Great grandfathers on either side
of my dad’s family tree were Spanish and Chinese. On my mom’s side I’m all kinds
of European blended together. The popular American image for multiculturalism is
a tossed salad; I’m more like chunky cookie dough with a few obvious elements
like Chocolate chips that darken things up, but I’m pretty much a blended
amalgam of objects/ethnicities that can’t be identified any more. To shake
things up I’m nearly fluent in Spanish and Japanese, but have so many
international friends that I know smatterings of Thai, Korean, German and
French. A random linguistic talent of mine is that I can write in the
international phonetic alphabet and truly enjoy doing it! But I’m weird anyway
because I always liked school, and not just for the friends, sports or amazing
cafeteria food. I love learning and especially like trivia. Math is certainly
not my forte. I’d challenge you to basketball in a heartbeat, because it’s one
of my great loves in life. I’m the middle child, have an older sister who’ll be
21 in May, a brother who’ll be 17 in June and a sister who’ll be 12 in
September. I played percussion for 6 years but can’t play Drum Set. I like humor
and don’t know how to drive, for my birthday my mom makes me a double fudge cake
or pumpkin pie, I hope to see Macchu Picchu in Peru for my honeymoon, and don’t
have an appendix. The end.