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PJ: So I remember, you know, I remember all of those. I remember going to Georgetown, the foreign student office, because I hadn't gotten my housing assignment. And walking into the, the office said "Office of Foreign Students" or "Office for Foreign Students" or something. And there was this guy there, and I said, "My name's Pramila Jayapal, and I'm a foreign student, and I didn't receive any of my housing assignment." And I think all he heard was "foreign student." And he says to me, "Do you speak English?" And I thought he, I just couldn't believe it. I said, "Uh... yes, a little, but if you answer me -- that was a prepared speech, and if you answer me back, there's, I'm not gonna know what to say back." And then he suddenly realized, and he got very embarrassed and apologized.

But I remember being amazed at how little people knew about the rest of the world. And I had chosen Georgetown in part because it was in Washington, D.C. and it was cosmopolitan, and people just had no clue. I had this roommate next to me, her name was Cricket Telesco. And she had these little Dorothy red shoes, kind of red glitter shoes, and her family was very, very wealthy and they had this private jet that they chartered. And I put up -- on the first or second day of being there, I was so homesick, and I went into Georgetown and I bought this big poster of the Taj Mahal, that said "India" on it, and put it up. And she came in and she said, "Is that your home?" And I thought she was kidding. I, 'cause I'd, it never occurred to me that people would not know one of the Wonders of the World. [Laughs] And plus, it said "India," it was clearly a poster. And she, and I said -- so I thought she was kidding, and I said, I said, "Well, actually, it's the servants' quarters. The house was to big to fit there, and I'm actually a princess, and I'm just a little embarrassed to be called Princess Pramila." And she went away, and I just thought she knew that I was kidding. And then about a week later at some party, somebody came up and I introduced myself and they said, "Are you, are you the real live princess from India?" [Laughs] So there were all those things that would happen that I just remember being so amazed at, because when we were in Indonesia, we knew countries, you know? I mean, I knew Yugoslavia and I knew... I mean, wherever it was, Thailand. And it was stunning to me that there were these really educated, wealthy people who didn't know where India was, and would ask me the strangest questions. So, yeah, it was... some of the, some of those...

AI: Well, it seems like some of your early experience there at college was really seeing how these other students -- Americans -- perceived you and getting these, their strange range of reactions to, to you or what they thought about you.

PJ: Yeah, yeah, very much. Very much so. You know, because in Indonesia, the thing is that we were all visitors, and everybody was kind of, in a way, trying to figure out the lay of the land, and looking around, and here it was very much like I was the outsider, and I looked different, and Georgetown didn't have the diversity of international students that it has today, even though it was very international. And again, class was a huge issue, I think as it is in all private schools like that. Class was a big issue, so a lot of very wealthy, but not particularly literate about the world. Which surprised me; I guess that disconnect just surprised me.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.