Time Flies~

I'm leaving Toronto in exactly two and a half weeks. Wow, it's finally starting to hit me now. Three years of hard work is finally paying off and I'm heading to Japan as part of the JET Programme in early August. When I look back on the last three to four years of my life, I'm pretty amazed at how things have changed. In High School, I had no thoughts of leaving Toronto, or traveling to a place as far as Japan. In fact, I really knew nothing about the area, except that my parents were from Hong Kong, a city located in a place somewhere in "East Asia". My geography outside of North America was terrible, and it wasn't helped by the fact that Toronto High Schools never taught us a thing other than North American and European geography, history, and culture. In fact, I would have to go as far as saying I learned basically nothing in High School, but fortunately, I was able to get high enough marks to be admitted into a decent University. My fellow 2003 double cohort people know just how freaky that year was, but I'll save that story for another day...

Now how exactly did I become interested in East Asia, and specifically Japan? Well, after locking myself up in my room, and forcing myself to conjure up memories three to four years in the making, I've come to the conclusion that it was an accumulation of various things. In my first year of University, I had no idea what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I was interested in history, and Ancient civilizations, so I ended up taking an amalgamation of courses from various disciplines including psychology (OUCH..big regret there), politics, history, english literature, and greek mythology. I still had one space open, and had no clue what to take, so I asked my cousin who was also a University of Toronto student, what courses she recommended. She told me to take a course called "Introduction to East Asian Civilizations". Let's just say that that course ended up being the most interesting, and fun course I took all year. From being immediately captivated by cultures and histories I knew nothing about , yet felt a deep connection with, from there on out, I knew East Asian Studies was what I wanted to do.

At the same time, I had been working at a local community centre close to my home. Originally, I had only taken up a job there as a volunteer in their summer camp because it was a requirement for all High School students to do 40 hours of community service in order to graduate. Originally, I had no intention of staying more than 2 weeks (which would amount to 80 hours). However, it turned out to be the most fun and enjoyable experience of my life up to that point, and I ended up volunteering for the rest of the summer. Go figure. After that, I promptly applied for a job in their afterschool programs, and was hired without an interview - I guess they liked me..! Sweet. Since then, I've been working there for the past 5 years in the summer camps and afterschool programs. During my time there, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to people of various backgrounds. Downtown Toronto, and I mean DOWNTOWN Toronto is definitely a sight to behold. Being able to walk down the street and see Asians, African Canadians, South Americans, etc. is pretty amazing (and I'm taking a wild stab in the dark here, but I'll go as far as to say it'll probably seem even more shockingly amazing after I spend a year in homogeneous Japan).

My local community centre was a very interesting place, in that many of the children were from families that were newly immigrated from China and other countries. At the same time, there was a significant group of Japanese doctor/scientist families who had come to Toronto to work and study at various hospitals and institutions such as Sick Kids (Hospital for Sick Children). Who knew Toronto had one of the leading children's health institutions in the world?? I certainly didn't until just the last few years... There were also several children who's mothers had come from Japan on working holiday visas and had ended up liking Toronto so much they decided to stay and even get married to locals. I was fortunate enough to build some good friendships with these families, and that was a big reason why my interest in Japan increased over the years. It become strong enough that it convinced me to learn Japanese at university, and to switch my major from history to East Asian Studies. At the same time, exposure to various Chinese children and families ignited in me an interest to learn more about my own origins, and my family background.

Looking back at the last three to four years of my life, I feel pretty fortunate to be where I am right now. If a few things hadn't happened, or I had decided to go a different route in my studies or my work, things would probably be completely different at this point. However, I'm very happy how things turned out, and at this moment, I've never been so sure of something in my entire life. The JET Programme and teaching in Japan seems like a perfect fit - I get to work with kids, and I get to learn about Japan. And in terms of traveling around East Asia, Japan is a great location to operate out of.

So, farewell Toronto, thanks for all the good times and good memories. Thanks for all the bad times too, because without those, we wouldn't know what good times are would we?

So farewell, I have a feeling we'll be seeing each other again.