I have never met either of my grandfathers but their legacies live on in me.

My dad’s father was a compradore in Shanghai for Bayern. As a compradore, his role was to act as a liaison between the foreign managers and the local suppliers and workers. The role of a compradore historically was to bridge the language and cultural gap between foreigners and locals for practicality and later evolved into a position of segregation between the two groups. My mom’s father worked for Nedlloyd managing the Chinese crew that cooked and cleaned on ships for the Dutch officers because it was seen as inappropriate for the foreign (read: white) folks to be in such close contact with the masses (read: non-white). Colonialism is never pretty.

I was born under a colonial regime that put their stamp of approval on my passport and documents. I grew up in a culture where people were at once angry yet supplicant. I was raised in Asia but schooled by Americans, recreated at the American-run youth program, unwound on weekends at the American Country Club, and prayed at an international Catholic Church. My family moved to Canada because of the fear and insecurities created by a system that traded countries and its people like goods and refused to provide its citizens with the nationality that our hard work helped to build. I moved to a country where my skin color masked my ability to speak English more fluently than my white classmates; where my mother gets told by customers that they do not understand her perfectly understandable English just because they feel like they have the right to.

My grandfathers straddled the world between their cultural roots and their inherited structure of oppression. They were the ones entrusted to scurry between the two worlds interpreting, translating, representing. They had to live in and profit from an unjust system that reinforced notions of inequality and separation.

As I reflect on my life as a Chinese-Canadian this new year’s eve, I recognize that I too am complicit in this system that my grandfathers had to live in. I too profit from an unjust system that ascribes me a status that I did not earn solely because of my race. I too straddle two different cultures, interpreting, translating, representing. I am proud of my legacy and the struggles my ancestors have lived through but my hope is that the legacy I put forth to my children in the future will be a differnt one.

I’ve had this blog for (wow!) over 7 years now. I’ve never purposely cultivated a readership nor tried to maintain one really and now that everyone is on twitter or Facebook or just bored of blogging in general, I’m pretty sure my readership has dwindled to just one (hi, eclectic!).

I’ve been pondering what I should do with this space as the blogging environ evolves. This blog has shifted streams often, never quite finding a comfortable identity; a little like myself, I suppose. The peak of activity around here was during grad school days when I had nothing to do, no accountability for my time and minimal human contact. My life was online and it was great. I felt creative and entertaining.

Working has changed all that. Not being depressed and angst-y has made a difference in my proficiency too. There’s still a continuous narrative in my head but it takes too much effort to type it out and edit, especially now with my 14 hour days and countless “reflections” I have to write for school. I guess I’m wondering what this site’s next stage is. Perhaps it’s time to retire.

So tell me, is anyone still out there? If you are, come say hello. I don’t bite.

Hug someone you love today and get off the dang computer.

I suppose I should say something about the past four weeks of my teaching practicum but so much happened that I don’t know how to summarize it properly. What I do know, is that I had a whole hell of a lot of fun and it turns out, I really do have a knack for this.

The highlights:

- I can’t get over how the kids call me Miss zuhn or Miss all the time. 4 weeks later I still find it amusing.

- 4 days into it, one of my students gets accidentally outed and then gets kicked out of the house and threatened with death. I spent a significant chunk of time helping the guidance counselors and the social workers finding gay-friendly support services and shelters for him. There was a relatively happy ending to it all and on my last day he pulled me aside, gave me a hug and genuinely thanked me. It was the best moment of all.

- Sadly enough, he was not the only student that I had who was kicked out of the house during my four weeks there. Why do families do this?

- One of my kids kept missing my grade 9 class and one day was in the classroom talking on her phone. When I pulled her out into the hallway, she tells me that she has to pick up the phone because it could be about her son. She’s 15!

- There are more of these crazy family stories. I’m not generally an empathetic person but the stories of some of these kids breaks my heart. Including how some guys were pimping out their girlfriends for $10 blow jobs in the bathroom last year.

- Towards the end of my last week, I learned that there are a bunch of rumors swirling around the school about me. One of my kids came up and asked me if she could ask me a personal question. This was, verbatim, what she said, “Miss, I was wondering if you’re…. Are you…. Oh, this is awkward…. Because someone in my other class said you’re…. I just wanted to know if it’s true….” I interjected in the middle of that and asked, “I’m…what?” and told her in the end that she can feel free to ask me again some other time when she works up the nerve.

- Speaking of that girl, my last day there, I picked up some donuts on my way into school and saw her at the Tim’s. Realizing that teachers exist outside of the school looked like it completely blew her mind.

- Being able to coach the girls volleyball team actually makes me miss being in high school a little and also all of a sudden I find myself thinking a lot about one of my high school crushes. She still makes me swoon. I wonder what happened to her.

- My associate teacher at the end told me that he noticed I have a particular cadence to my speech that’s soft and slow with pauses to let people think things through while I pace slowly around the classroom. Apparently it’s very soothing. Maybe a little too soothing for a bunch of rowdy, short-attention spanned, not particularly academic 14 year olds if you catch my drift. This tickles me so much that I can’t even be offended by it.

- I got myself a great evaluation and defied the expectations, which is damn fine for something I kind of decided to do on a whim. Now I actually have to make a decision as to whether or not I should quit my well-paying, low-stress job and pursue teaching as my new career.

There’s a lot more I’m missing but I’ve got so much work piled up I need to get to it.

I was flipping through my tv this morning looking for a movie to rent while I worked and found myself previewing documentaries about soil and it hit me all of a sudden that I’ve somehow started thinking like a teacher already.

Seven weeks into teacher’s college and we’re heading into our practicums. We’ve had a couple of observation days already this past week and while the expectation was that we would still be observing for the first week or so, I’m being asked to start teaching my Grade 9 geography classes on Monday. (Expectations are for fools!) I’m supposed to start teaching about soils, hence the documentary previews.

I mentioned before that I started this endeavor mostly out of boredom and also as a back-up career plan. I never expected to consider teaching as a valid profession for me and I don’t necessarily think that has changed all the much but I am starting to think that I might have a knack for this. I don’t want to jinx myself before I even start my practicum so I’ll just leave it at that.

The two questions I have heard the most thus far into the program are aren’t you exhausted? And, do you like it? The answer to both is an unequivocal YES! The 12-hour days are killing me a little after a lifetime of slacking. I feel like a childless single mom with the empty pocketbook and the zero hours of free time. I’m so tired I might finally start looking my age! Those days when I have my 8 hour class before I head off to work? Oy vey! The other day I was taking the subway home and didn’t realize I was going the wrong way until 7 stops later. It’s a time and focus type of exhaustion though and not so much an intellectual fatigue. It’s a really easy program academically, it’s just a lot of work. I think anyone who has ever gone to school can teach, basically. It’s the being ‘on’ all day and having to socialize that’s draining, which brings me to my next point.

If it’s so tiring, why am I enjoying it? Well, for the first time in my life, I’m actually surrounded by people who genuinely like me and think I’m awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever had that including family and the people I’ve dated. I sat at school one afternoon to do some work before a meeting and in that 90 minute period, more people came by to say hello to me than during all five years of my undergrad degree. It’s both sad and fantastic at the same time. Three years into this city, I’m finally feeling like I’m making friends.

My enjoyment of the program isn’t all about my social life though. I used to be that kid who had no friends and felt more connected and supported by my teachers than anyone else. I used to be that kid who used sports as a safe haven from bullying because people needed me on their teams. I used to be that queer kid in school that just really wanted some acknowledgment and positive reinforcement. I used to be that new kid in school from foreignlandia with the weird food. Being in this program has brought back all of those memories and replaced it with the idea that I am in a position to give something back. I can be that point of connection, provide that safe haven, or just simply show a kid that someone cares and thinks they’re awesome. The possibility of actually contributing to society is exciting.

Even up to a few days ago, I’ve been telling people that I can’t see myself teaching in a regular classroom every single day for the next 20 years. An alternative program, maybe. Something in education, definitely. But a classroom? Nahhhh. The school I’ve been placed in can be described I guess as “inner city”, which is the specialty program I’ve chosen. In my two days of observation I don’t even know how many times I’ve had to remind a kid to at least take out a pencil before they tell me that they’re actually doing work. One kid already tested me with the race card and I think I passed because he dropped it and went back to his seat. I’ve also heard so many stories about teachers who have completely lost it, rocking in a corner with knees tucked up against their chest, or student teachers who hit a kid, or teachers telling student teachers to never let the kids see you cry. All these stories make me actually want to teach and who knows? Maybe little by little, by the end of the month, I’ll actually be willing to take that massive salary cut and stability and throw myself into this new thankless career.

Until then, let’s see how the next four weeks go. Someone pray for me.

I can’t decide if these new Jeremy Scott Adidas cowboy boot sneakers are hideous or brilliant but it combines two of my favorite things and I feel like it is my destiny to own these:

(pic source: nitrolicious)

Now that I finally have something to blog about, my brain is too tired to write. Poop.