Expansion Three: The Working World

Today's tidbit before the real deal is: I got my letter to my dad back in the mail today. This saddened me a bit, but the good news is that it was returned because it couldn't be forwarded to the right address, not because he did not read it and returned it himself. So, round two with a different address begins tomorrow. I hope it works out better.

So, on to the main topic. I'm in a strange state this year, it's official. I don't feel ready to venture out into the world, but the tediousness of gen. ed. classes is wearing me thin. I rush to get done with simple reading and writing assignments, and find myself with little real time to commit to my design work. I have great hopes to complete some real work of my own this semester, but I also have great desires to see the other projects I'm working on come to fruition in the best possible way. In some ways, it's frustrating because I feel like I don't have quite enough effort to go around. In other ways, it's refreshing to have responsibilities in my workplace that are purely focused around my field of study. This is my first year without a desk job that fills my time with peaceful but irrelevant tasks. Any work that I'm doing outside of the classroom right now is definitely a part of who I am and where I want to go in life.

That said, I still haven't quite nailed down the "where I want to go" part...A month ago, I was ready to start applying to the JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching) Programme, which would ship me off to a school in Japan for a year starting next July or August. It's a rigorous application process, but it's a wonderful opportunity to see the country and to be immersed in the language. After only a day of listening to my family speaking rapidly back and forth in Japanese, a part of me felt at home again, and even more determined to push my education further.

About a week and a half ago, however, I was reminded that I had expressed interest in helping my program director start a gaming business right here in Burlington. There are many things about this plan that appeal to me. I love Burlington and the Champlain community. I want to make games with a meaning or a message that is more than just entertainment value or driven by profits. And I want to stay tied to the college community in a way that may allow me to help expand the possibilities for Champlain students to the point that I'm painfully jealous of the opportunities available to them. This would be a pretty big feat, given how lucky I think I've been in my own college experience, but it's one I'd be happy to strive for.

Then there's the down side...is it a good idea to stick so close to what has quickly become my home? Should I be getting my feet wet out in "the real world"? Am I going to be missing out on opportunities of my own by staying? I can't answer any of those questions, which is part of the reason why it's so easy to commit to Burlington. And if I don't reach out, no one's going to reach in and pull me away, that's a guaranteed fact. As more and more of my friends and colleagues begin to take wing, I'm sure I'll be wondering even more than I am now.

But no matter my conclusions, I must remember two things...I'm young, and the future is vast. Even five years in Burlington would be a drop in the pond (I hope) by the time I'm done with my professional career. And given my track record so far, I know that amazing opportunities can pop up right underneath your feet. So, I'll be holding out and chugging along for the next eight months, and here's to whatever comes next!

Expansion Two: Thoughts from South Africa

Before I delve too deeply into the emotional hurricane that was the South Africa trip, I have new and exciting news (as ever). I will be going with Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen to Seattle in March for the ACRL 14th National Conference, where we will be leading a speaker session based on our proposal, "Percolating the Power of Play." 230 applications were submitted this year, and only 19% were accepted. Admittedly, I have never been so thrilled to be involved in the library space. Now I only hope that the game(s) we have to show will help us prove our points!

I am still not sure I'll be able to put into words all the wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking things I saw and experienced in Cape Town, but I will do my best to try.

Flying over and into the country, I definitely felt like I was on my first trip overseas. What I saw below me was something so different from everything I knew...I was so excited to see more. Very quickly, the economic diversity of the country began to show, as miles of townships were painted into the foreground of the picturesque Table Mountain.

Going into Langa on our first real day there, we were greeted by throngs of smiling children. They all clambered to have their pictures taken, posing for us and grabbing our hands as we walked down the streets. Some pleaded for small things that we carried, others simply wanted to say hi.

This behavior was almost scary to us - what parents would let their children run in the street with adults from another country? But we quickly found that it was due to a strong sense of community, that every pair of eyes looking out from the houses and shops might as well be the eyes of mothers and fathers, whether they actually were or not.

The feeling of communal love is something we don't often experience in our own culture. Maybe in my backwoods hometown in New Hampshire, and maybe a little bit within the community at Champlain, but in neither of those places is it so prevalent in the atmosphere as it was in the Cape Town townships.

Despite this overpowering presence, there was still sadness tearing them apart. Many things were hurting the people of these small communities: from the half-rennovated hostels that housed as many as three families in a single bedroom,

to the all-too-common poor driving that hurt this girl and kept her at home all day.

The thing that struck me most, though, was that talking about violence, abuse, and gender inequality was not necessarily casual, but it wasn't taboo as we might have expected. It was spoken of as if these things were just a part of life, to be accepted and to submit to. There was no sense of power in the bright young individuals, and even in some of the sharp-witted adults, that we met each day. There was no feeling of empowerment, independence, strength of voice, strength of choice. These young adults were intelligent, expressive, creative, complex, and completely helpless in their own minds to change anything about the world around them.

We found some points of inspiration, some nodes of empowerment in each community. But there is not enough support for them, and there are not enough of them to change every young man and woman's life, to keep the majority of kids off the street and out of crime. It is easy to see why they perceive change as something impossible, because their numbers are so small.

But change has to start with one person, always. Someone has to be willing to speak out, no matter the consequences. They are fortunate that they have such a powerful role model as Nelson Mandela in their recent history. They have fought so much already, and I can see in their faces that they have the strength to fight onward. The only question is if they have the time...

We met so many of what we would call "broken families," without parents and with young girls and boys taking charge of households before they were even out of school themselves. We saw classrooms without teachers, we heard stories of people calling desperately for the police and receiving help hours later, if at all. And we saw the other side of the coin: rich young children, unaware of the tragedy just outside their neighborhood, ignorant of the conditions, more interested in games than even the people sitting next to them. In a word, familiar: more like us, too much like us.

Going into this trip, I expected to find answers, but I didn't expect to fall in love. There was something so simple about the beauty of Cape Town. No matter what troubles littered the city streets, it was so easy to look up to Table Mountain, to see the beauty of the world and pull it closer to your heart. But there's only so much that a pretty reminder can do for you. It's nice, but it's not enough, nowhere near enough for those wonderful, fortunate but unfortunate people. They need more, and if it's something I can give them, I'd like to try. I don't think I'll forget what I saw there for the rest of my life, for even a day or a moment. If I do, I'll spend the rest of my life trying to remember it again.

Expansion One: Family Time

While this post is intended to elaborate on one of the brief points I made in my last entry, there is something I have to say first about blogging - it's the strangest addiction I've ever had. Once I've written a post, even if it was something small, I find myself gripped by a strong desire to write again. In the face of ever-busier days and grueling nights, it's easy for me to lose sight of this urge, but if I even have enough time to click on my Google Reader and scroll over the posts of my friends and colleagues, I get the itch. Unavoidable, it feels, but I'm not complaining.

So, family. It's a beautiful thing, and something so special when you really think about it. We often induct people into the circle that we claim as family, but upon visiting my aunt this past month, I had to really wonder if those other relationships would be able to endure a decade of silence without showing any wear or tear. I'd certainly like to hope so, though I also hope I'll never have a reason to test it out. I'm glad to say that at least in the case of real family, it felt like I'd heard those familiar voices, seen their smiling faces only a day before.

There are very few things that keep me quiet in life (these days, anyway). One of them is a fear of inflicting pain. I was so young when my family started to crumble. I was too young to understand why it was happening, and too old to ask without thinking. I couldn't remember ever hearing a word of real explanation, but I could easily recall tears and frustration. So I held my tongue, even though my greatest pen pal, my aunt, hadn't written in weeks, months, years, and the last postcard we got from her trip to Japan hung gathering dust on the refridgerator, next to a picture of my two-year-old cousin's face.

In the long run, I had to hope those relics of a wonderful relationship were on display for a reason. At my ripe age of twenty-one, I also felt strongly that I didn't have to involve anyone else in my endeavors to reconnect. Of course, finding an address may have been a problem when I was ten years old, but the power of the Internet has matured just as well as I have. And thank goodness for that, at least in this situation.

A letter and an email later, I was relieved, overjoyed, heartbroken to have missed so much, anxious to learn so much more. But I was also still a little afraid of causing pain, uncertain as I picked up my phone to tell my mom the news. There were so many ways it could have gone, given my limited knowledge, but the emotional highway simply continued to speed off in the same direction I'd been paving it. Myself, my mom, my sister were all touched to see pictures of my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We were all electrified with desire to make plans, and for once I was ready to throw work out the window and get in one real week of vacation.

I did get that week, and it was probably one of the longest in my life. I can't say I really have a working memory of any other vacation that long - sad, I know. In some ways, it became a bit of a struggle towards the end to not go nuts wondering how my projects were doing. But the benefits of shutting myself off from life, cell phone service, and Internet access almost completely were immeasurable. In one week, I learned more about my family - my grandparents, my greatgrandparents, my dad - than I had in the rest of my life. I saw things that sucked me back in time in a matter of seconds, tasted things I hadn't recalled the existence of. I absorbed all the Japanese language I could, and yearned to see all the places my family had visited in their trips to Japan over the years. The only disheartening thing I took away from all of it was that no one has heard from my dad. I can't imagine living life without contact with my parents and siblings, as infrequently as I may call up my own.

Ba-chan is turning 81 on Thursday. She seems to despise anything that focuses on her, including a camera lens, so I'm hoping a simple card written in my rudimentary Japanese will be good enough. I wish I could give her the gift of a connection with her oldest son again. I don't know if I can, but I've started the process of trying. I mailed a letter to what I hope to be my dad's current mailing address. If I get a response, the mix of emotions will most likely be a bit more complicated than the last bout. If it comes back to me, I'll try a slightly different address I found. If nothing happens...well, there are bound to be complex feelings there too.

I'm Alive!

I've sat down to the computer several times to get out all the thoughts that go with the multitude of things that have happened in my life recently. I've come to the quick conclusion that it's just too much for me to process all at once. So, here are some tidbits from along the way, and I'll try to elaborate on one at a time.

First off, I love my family. I don't know how I ever went so long without seeing them.

Secondly, I love South Africa. It is such a different place, full of beautiful people.

Thirdly, the school year promises to be busy, and I'm itching for a job other than student.

Lastly, I love my division, dean, and program director!

I'm not sure whether this is a sad thing or not, but most of my time spent at the computer these days is spent on academic affairs. I'm starting a philosophy blog for my Critical Thinking course, a globalization blog for my Seminar in Contemporary World Issues, and a Japanese blog, if it'll let me write in hiragana, for my own personal practice with the language. Maybe somewhere in there, I'll have time to do some more creative writing and poetry...maybe!