In limbo

I've begun my summer vacation! So, has it been days of relaxation, tanning, and shopping? Not exactly....

We've moved out of Fox Creek without a glitch. Cleaned the apartment, had the dream out-inspection (where the apartment was deemed to be pristine and spotless), and drove down to Edmonton. We've been here three full days now, and we're stuck in a rut.

I've looked at an apartment, and put a deposit on it. It should be available any day now, and I'm just waiting for the phone to ring to tell me that it's ready. Of course, I'm the only one in a hurry. The property manager is probably taking her sweet time calling my previous landlords and doing the credit check.

I'm torn: I could either fly home now and come back to move into the apartment later, possibly in August, or I could stay put and wait. There are also other factors involved: M has been here to help me view apartments and shop around for furniture, but she may hit the road soon because these days in hotels cannot possibly stretch on forever. She needs a place to go, which we would have if I could move into my apartment now.

These are some of our bags, hauled all the way from Fox Creek to Edmonton. We have nowhere to haul them to now.... 

Oh, and my new apartment has light pink walls, which I really do not like. They were going to repaint it another hue, but I said I'd take the suite as-is because it would mean an earlier move-in date. I wonder if I should have just taken the August move-in date and gotten the new paint colour....

Ring, phone, ring!!!!!!!!!!

Who's going to assemble my furniture?

It's my last weekend in Fox Creek. The two suitcases I came with are now getting close to full as I'm packing away my stuff, and the cleaning begins tomorrow. On Tuesday, right after work, the property manager will be coming in to do the out-inspection, and then we'll be driving to Edmonton.

There are a few photos of the town that I'd like to post, but that'll have to wait. The memory card I have the pictures on has been packed away already, and I'm not about to fish anything out of my suitcase. The rule right now is, "In good, out bad."

So far, I've booked an appointment to view an apartment on July 1st. I'll book more once I'm in Edmonton. Although I'm guaranteed a spot in residence on campus, I'd really like to steer clear of student-housing if I can help it. The unit I've applied for in residence is less than 300 square-feet, and it does not accept cats. Although my parents have definitely grown fond of my dear Duncan these months (my current apartment here does not take pets either), five months of abandonment is enough to drive me into feeling immense pet-owner guilt. Plus, it doesn't help to get a call telling me that Duncan has managed to dye one of her legs purple while in my parents' care in Vancouver.... (That's for another post altogether!)

On July 2nd, we'll be going to the opening night of The Lion King in Edmonton. After that, who knows.... I may extend my stay in Edmonton to continue the hunt for an apartment, or I might trek across the Rockies to my parents' house to relax a bit before resuming my frantic search.

I'm also debating whether to ship my furniture from Vancouver to Edmonton once I find a place. I had sold most of my stuff when I moved from Inuvik. The only two things I would love to have in Edmonton are my bed and my digital piano. The thought of buying yet another bed or of not having my piano for two years is painful to me at this moment. However, the thought of paying hundreds of dollars to transport two items might prove even more unbearable.

Regardless, I'll have to buy a couch, a table, a desk, a dresser, and other knick-knacks in order to create a new home. (My Fox Creek apartment is furnished and comes with everything I need other than my suitcases of clothes.) The most gnawing question at present -- Who is going to assemble my new furniture? In Inuvik, I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to put anything together. The instructions on how to assemble the futon were cryptic to me, and I literally attempted for weeks before my friend K came to the rescue. My double-dresser wasn't any easier. M and E pitched in and figured it out for me. My "Inuvik Dad" helped with my table and chair set, as well as the digital piano.

I don't have an "Edmonton family" that would swoop in to help me out of sticky situations. I'll be on my own, with only Duncan and her purple paw....

The final countdown

The past week and a half has been a bit disquieting. I've been sick with something like the flu -- started with a sore throat that prevented me from getting any sleep, to feeling stuffed up and sneezy, to coughing up a lung. I'm mostly better, and cannot believe that the school year has come to an end. Senior high classes ended yesterday, and I have just one more junior high class to teach tomorrow. Then comes supervising final exams, cleaning up classrooms, doing the year-end inventory, and finishing up the last report cards.

My summer plans have yet to materialize. I'm not trying very hard to come up with something this year. I've decided to let spontaneity lead me to something amazing, something potentially life-changing.

Here are a few things that have happened this past week-and-a-half:

1. I was asked by the principal to sit on a panel of interviewers for a new teacher. The person we had interviewed was hired, and I honestly think that he'll do incredible things next school year here. There is a deep sincerity about him. I have no doubt that he'll be frustrated with the students and with the school at various points, but his heart will guide him through it all. He's someone the kids will like and respect.

2. Last Thursday, in the midst of my worst flu symptoms, I volunteered to serve at a community dinner to benefit the school's breakfast program. The drama club performed after dinner, and that made it all worth it. One of the little girls came to give me a hug after her performance, and beamed when I told her she was just fantastically awesome on stage, and that she looked beautiful.

3. On Friday, a video that I had made of the school's activities throughout the year "premiered" at the school assembly. Unfortunately, I could not make it, as I was supervising my Grade 12 students in their Social Studies final exam. The principal came to me afterward and said that the video had made her cry, that I had captured the spirit that she wanted the school to have. I've since had numerous requests for copies of my video. I'm flattered, and would spend all those nights and hours tinkering away at video- and sound-editing again in a heartbeat.  (The principal has also asked if that was why I looked so tired all last week. Hmmm.... I didn't know that I wasn't my usual happy self. I blamed it on my flu.)

4. I received an e-mail from a second-year student in the Speech Pathology program in Edmonton. She advised that I should prepare myself for Anatomy class in the fall. Part of it involves working in a cadaver lab. I think I just about fainted when I read that. I'm the girl who could not dissect a frog in Biology class in high school. I avoided Grade 12 Biology like the plague because I knew that dissecting a fetal pig was part of the curriculum. I'm going to get some chicken thighs and debone them this weekend for practice....

This weekend, I'm going to go around town and take some photos (seriously this time!). Although Fox Creek has been my home for only five short little months, I don't want to forget it.

Theirs is the banner

"Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through." 

~ Ayn Rand

A few days ago marked an important anniversary. I remember watching the news with my parents in the living-room, a young eight-year-old child trying to understand what was going on. I knew something frighteningly shameful was happening. Now, twenty years later, I still fear the idea of going to China to explore my roots. Could I love a country that did such horrific things to its people? But, I realize that it's not the country that did anything; it's government, it's people inflicting such pain on others, on their neighbours, on their visionaries, on their young, on the hopeful, on the dreamers.

A good friend of mine teaches adult literacy to new immigrants, some of whom came from China. One is an older man who was a professor in Beijing twenty years ago. He is a respected member of the class, and he has been telling his classmates the horrors he had witnessed in 1989. His classmates, those who were living in other parts of China at the time, had no clue what had happened. Theirs is an awakening, a call to spread the truth, to remember, to hope, and to act.

Visit the Boston Globe's picture blog for a moving photo-essay that says it all better than I ever can. 

In this age of the "great firewall of China," people are finding ways to tunnel through. Where there are walls, people shall find ways to find a crack, to get over, around, or through somehow.

A bridge

This is a trestled railroad bridge that runs over the highway between Whitecourt and Edmonton. I've come to know it well. We drive under it every time we go down to Edmonton for a weekend getaway / shopping trip. 

However, the picture was taken three summers ago, when I was driving from the North toward Saskatchewan during a strange roadtrip, an opportunity to have an extended farewell to a friend who was moving there from Inuvik. Little did I know then that I would become familiar with this stretch of highway just a few years later, and that I would no longer be in the North.

In another month, I'll pass under this bridge once more, toward another phase in my life, toward growing more fully into myself and who I will become.

When you have nothing to do

What to do if you live in a small town, with nowhere to go over the weekend and nothing much to do:

1. Plan to catch up on some sleep. End up staying up late into the night doing practically nothing.

2. Remind yourself how great it feels to be engrossed in a book.

3. Forge on ahead with the French course you've started a while back. Tell yourself to be persistent enough to make it through this time.

4. Gather up the mountain of recycling that's on the floor in the dining room, a mound that has metastasized into a monster that's threatening to take over the whole apartment.

5. Take the recycling to the bottle depot. Have the cans and bottles be blown around in the wind so you can run to retrieve them and get in your weekly exercise to boot.  Remind yourself to never ever take the recycling to the depot on a windy day.

6. Read the flyers. Plan out what to buy on your "Saturday outing."

7. Walk up and down the aisles of the grocery store multiple times, pausing particularly long in the pet food section to examine all the pictures of cats and kittens on the packages.

8. Cook up a mish-mash of found items from the fridge and call it a "stirfry."

9. Figure out how to post larger photos on your blog. Feel accomplished that you manage to do this on your own when your technology IQ is on the low side.

10. Go to the school to play "scoops" and marvel at how this little kids' game could be so difficult.

Makeover

I've decided it's time this blog got a makeover. I was beginning to be annoyed that the column for blog posts was too narrow for most widescreen computer monitors, so I tinkered with the template a bit this evening. The photos on previous posts now look out of proportion (too small). I think I'll start posting bigger pics from now on.

No special trip for me this weekend, so I will post more Jasper photos from some weeks ago to test this out:

Cherries

When you've lived in the North, you learn to hoard food and other household products as though there will be an impending disaster. Each trip out, you would bring an empty suitcase, and fill it with assorted snack foods, juice-boxes, boxes of Kleenex, all tucked around precious fresh fruits and veggies. Once that mindset has entered your consciousness, it never fully leaves. Even as you move on in your life, you will still eye the aisles of a large supermarket with a frenzied, crazed look, pulling box after box of sale-priced cereal off the shelves and into your cart. Even when you now live in a town that has road access year-round. Even if you realize that you've thrown out huge amounts of food from the fridge because you somehow never manage to eat everything you buy, not even remotely close.

One day, you see a small package of cherries at your local grocery store for $12. You grab it without even batting an eyelash. You fork out that exorbitant amount of cash for those measly not-yet-ripe fruits, just because something in you compelled you to. There's a small part of you that would not live if you didn't buy those cherries. You get them home, and you tuck them into the crisper in the fridge ever so gingerly. You sleep well that night, knowing that there are cherries in your fridge.

Come morning, you contemplate having those cherries, but in your mad rush to get ready for work, you hold off. There's always tonight, you tell yourself.

Work is done, night falls. You're parked in front of the television, and your mind wanders to those cherries in the fridge. You take them out; you rinse them under the tap. You hold the stem of your first cherry this season between your thumb and index finger, feeling as though you're royalty. You tilt your head back, and with an exaggerated grand gesture, slowly lower the fruit into your mouth. As your lips gather around the small sphere, you pull the stem away. The first tastes settles over you. You think to yourself, Boy am I glad to have these tonight. What would I do without cherries?

Something, a flicker, a glimmer, a speck in the back of your mind taints this experience. They're $12 cherries, it says. Count the pits you've spit out: Twenty-four. That means each cherry is 50 cents. 50 cents per cherry! You muster up your Northern mindset, bat aside that speck of rationality, and take a deep breath. But oh, they're worth it!

Transitory

One evening last week, M and I drove to Whitecourt for supper. It had been a particularly frustrating day at work, and felt like a Friday even though it was the middle of the week. We perused the fast-food joints lined up along the highway, and shook our heads at the McDonald's, Dairy Queen, Mary Brown's, KFC, and A&W. We scrunched up our noses at Boston Pizza, having frequented it too often, and finally turned into town and took a shot at a brand new Korean-Japanese restaurant. We had miso soup, juicy fried dumplings, fresh sushi, and bibimbab (a Korean rice dish with veggies and egg). Then, as if that wasn't enough, we went for raspberry-truffle blizzards at Dairy Queen before driving back to Fox Creek, with the evening sun streaming in through the front windshield and blinding our full satiated selves.
 
This past weekend, the plan was to stay home. No Edmonton, no Jasper for us. Our savings had dwindled because of the multitudes of hotel stays we'd racked up since moving here. However, by late morning on Saturday, both of us were going stir-crazy. It was hard to glance out at the open blue sky with nary a cloud in sight and to realize that we had nowhere to go. We ended up driving to Grande Prairie to get an oil-change for the car, to roam around the shopping mall, and to eat Japanese food once more.
 
There are just three more weeks of classes with the senior high students, and then they will have their final exams. The junior high classes run till the end of June. Regardless, time is running out, charging ahead, speeding up from its lazy saunter through the winter and early spring. I've begun asking myself if I'll miss Fox Creek once I'm gone. I don't think I've gotten to know the town and its quirks yet; I have yet to have a favourite haunt here. I don't know the little trails through the woods. In fact, I could still get lost when I'm on foot, since the streets seem circular in this town. I have yet to sort out the "avenues" from the "streets." Whoever designed the street names here was probably set on confusing visitors and temporary residents such as me. There's "3rd Street," "3rd Avenue," "3A Street," and "3rd Avenue NW." I may be exaggerating, but I am seriously confounded.

One thing that I do notice here, more than anywhere else, is the trills of the birds. There are species that I've never heard before, and I absolutely love trying to distinguish them from each other. In the evenings, when my day's work is done and the balcony door is wide open, the sounds of the feathered creatures meld together into the most fascinating symphony. Some places harken visual memories; for other places, it might be scents. For Fox Creek, perhaps what will stay with me years down the line is the auditory feast.

Old school days

Something about being a teacher makes me look back on my own school days with ever-increasing fondness. Although I had lived in a large metropolitan city where high schools generally had more than a thousand students, I was lucky enough to be at a school that was small, with only about ninety students total, spread across grades eight to twelve. No one had forced me to attend that school. I had to get up early and take two buses in order to get there, but I knew that was where I wanted to be. I still wonder how I would have turned out had I gone to the high school in my neighbourhood.
 
My school was a liberal arts school, one that emphasized citizenship, political and social awareness, and personal responsibility. We had five teachers, all of whom went by their first names. I remember loving my teachers, not having any of the jadedness that I see in the eyes of my students nowadays. We devoured our teachers' stories, and felt a part of their lives. Our Social Studies teacher invited the entire school to his wedding when I was in Grade 8. My class went for dim-sum with our Art teacher. Every Tuesday, the entire school would gather in the Drama room for our weekly school meeting, where we would discuss pertinent issues such as school trips, plans for our annual school bazaar, ways to spend the money raised, and donating to our favourite charities.

The activities we participated in would be nothing short of scandalous in this day and in this town. For our English class, we took an end of the year "literature trip" to our teacher's cottage on beautiful Saturna Island. We had to take three ferries to get there, and on the last leg, we were the only passengers on board. For three gorgeous days, we sunbathed on the lawn, traipsed through the woods, climbed the rocks by the beach, scooped up purple starfish, and breathed in all the beauty that surrounded us. In the evenings, we would venture to the meadow where the blind horse was, and we would cling to each other, so dark was the night and so unused to the darkness were our city-eyes. We would walk down by the pier, reciting poetry the entire way, seeing how much of "The Lady Of Shalott" rolled off our tongues with ease.

In Drama class, our favourite game was "murder in the dark." We would fumble around that classroom with the lights off, all of us blindfolded. The teacher would select a "murderer" by tapping that student on the shoulder, and the "murderer" would "kill" his/her victim by a little squeeze on the neck with icy fingers. The victim would then give the most blood-curdling scream and fall to the ground. The game was at its most intense if there were two murderers in our midst. The two would often bump into each other and reach out to touch each other's necks, only to realize with slight annoyance that they were accomplices with the same goal of wiping out the rest of the class. After a few encounters, the two would come to recognize each other's footsteps, and would no longer target each other, but somehow psychically join forces against the others.

One of the older students was an aspiring film-maker, and would recruit the entire school, students and teachers alike, to star in his movies. We even used a teacher's house for the set. Another student created a community haunted house every Hallowe'en, and the school would show up in support.

We watched Disney movies en francais. We borrowed the school guitars from our Science teacher and picked at them in the hallways. We packed picnic lunches and walked the two blocks to the empty lot by the old abandoned house to have our meals.

I miss my high school days, but never as much as now, when I've become a high school teacher. I wonder what kind of memories my students will have of their time here. I hope that they will find those special moments to look upon fondly. There's so much more to school than the things we're supposed to learn in classes. And it's always the seemingly trivial that become so important later upon reflection.