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Anna Overseas

5/12/2005

I've apparently decided I need to watch a bunch of Scottish-based films, in an effort to prepare myself for my time over there. I don't quite know when I decided this, but yesterday before work I watched the first hour or so of Braveheart, and thus got to not only listen to some very strange "Scottish" accents, but also mock the movie. Always a fun night!

Does anyone have any recommendations of "good" or actually good Scottish-based film? I'm going to have some spare time coming up, what with the whole not working for much longer thing. And heaven knows how well I handle inactivity.

(I recently had the thought that if I lived in the country, and thus had even less to do every day than I do now, I'd start howling at the moon, until the neighbours left politely worded notes that I was scaring the sheep.)

In unrelated news, I read a book yesterday that was the complete antithesis to Bridget Jones' Diary. It's called The Bride Stripped Bare, and it was the story of a 30-something woman who realizes she's restless and out of sorts about her life, and wants to do something to escape it. This is something I find a lot easier to understand than endless angsting. It's written in a very odd style: 2nd person, present tense, short entries like a diary. It's very engaging and thought provoking, and it's left me feeling a lot less alone in the world. The author said she chose to remain anonymous so she could write whatever she wanted, without fearing what would be said to her or her family. I want to recommend it, but I'm not sure how much anyone else would like it.

Anyway.

Countdown to last day at work: 13 days...

Anna stopped here at 4:54 AM

5/11/2005

The Top Three Reasons I Would Make A Horrible Parent, an expanded list, by jo

1. Horrible Bedside Manner

So, I'm with a friend of mine who needs to go to the hospital once a year and have his heart examined by really big machines. I guess I was invited as moral support, or perhaps just as a distraction, because I really wasn't much use as anything else. But, we're sitting waiting for the results, and the following conversation ensues:

Me: So, you've been coming here at least once a year since you were five?

Him: Yup.

Me: You've been living with the knowledge that at any point your heart could just burst open and kill you instantly since you were five?

Him: It's not the heart, it's the aorta. And yes, basically.

Me: So, how do they explain that to a five year old? "Well, kid, everyone dies some day, you're just gonna die a lot sooner."

Him: That's not quite how it went.

Me: What, did they explain that death is just a land of magical fairies and chocolate?

Him: I-- No, no, that's not it. As a note, I don't think you'd make a good doctor.

Me: Hey, I think it's a great idea!

Him: See previous comment.

So, yeah... perhaps not so much with the good parenting aspect.

2. Children need actual care.

Unlike my cat, who I can lock in the apartment, going home long enough to feed, water, and pet him on my weekends, I would actually have to take care of a child. My understanding is they need someone there all the time.

3. I like toys too much.

And anything that was purchased for the kid, I'd end up playing with. I have a collection of toys I have to get around to giving to the children of various friends of mine, that I got in China, but they're so darned cute! And yesterday I bought myself a stuff bee that for some reason I insist on wearing around my wrist and have named "Killer". I am so strange.

I've been advised I should also add "wanting to name my daughter Antigone" to the list, but I don't think that would make me a horrible parent, just an eccentric one.

In unrelated news, I gave my notice at work yesterday with a letter that went mostly like this:

Dear (boss man):

I quit.
Formal letter to follow.
See you tomorrow night.

Hugs and Kisses,
Anna

Okay, not quite, but I gave my last day as the 25th.

God, it's all happening so fast now.

Anna stopped here at 6:49 PM

5/10/2005

And so time runs away from me so quickly some days, and it feels like it's a million years until I can go, and yet it's coming up so suddenly, this artificial deadline I put out there of June 6th. It feels like it will never come, and that I'll never be ready anyway, and what the heck am I doing all of this for?

It feels like making this choice, to live in Scotland, in Ireland, to go to live in as many places as I can, never staying too long, feels like some sort of rejection of so many things. Like a rejection of my mother, who at this age already had my brother, was trying so hard to have me. A rejection of the person I was a few short years ago, who could see nothing better in the world than having a home of my own, a white picket fence with a garden in the back, a couple of kids and a dog. It feels so much like deciding to do this is a rejecting of a lot of my friends here, friends I want to stay close with but at the same time I just don't understand how they don't feel this wanderlust, this need to see the world in a way that tourisim doesn't.

I still remember being so annoyed with the only tourist I really met in China, the one who stayed at only the highest class hotels, only hit the major tourist spots ("We were in Beijing yesterday, today we're going out to see the Terracotta Warriors, after that we're off to Hong Kong to do some shopping"), and insisted that my view of China was just wrong. That there must be other foriengers in Jiangyan. (There were, about a month later, but not at the time.) I don't want to see just what you can see in a quick jaunt through a country. I want to see what it is to live there, to get to the point where Canadian accents sound strange, and being on a bus full of people just like you seems far more overwhelming than the first busride in China ever could. I want to live like that, and somedays I don't understand why other people don't.

I talked to my mother about this a few days ago, and she told me that she couldn't help but be jealous. She wanted to do the same things I do, but it wasn't done when she was my age. She grew up in a small town in southern Manitoba, went to a one room school house for most of her public education, wore her jeans under her skirt to keep warm in the winter. Some days it feels like my mother and I have nothing in common, other days it feels like it's only a few years difference, that we could have been friends were we the same age.

I feel trapped by time right now. I'm giving in my notice at work, but I still don't have the 3000$. I should have it by Monday, but the idea of being trapped at that job an extra week makes me ill. As soon as I have the money, I get a letter from the bank, drop my application in the mail, and wait impatiently for 2 weeks for it to come back. In those two weeks, I finish off everything I need to do, visit my friends and family back in Vancouver, say good bye to everyone here, so I can purchase my plane ticket and be gone, and spend the rest of my life missing Edmonton in the spring, when the river valley is more beautiful than anything I've ever seen.

I was asked in an email from an old friend: "What is so wrong with Canada that you don't want to be here anymore?" I struggled with that, because some days I feel like this choice is a running away, a refusal to deal with life in the long term. And not too long after receiving that email, I went to see Pier 21, which is where so many people came to start their new lives in Canada, some dying with the need to get here, and I want to run away?

But it's not that.

Canada is beautiful, and I love it here. But it's easy to say your country is beautiful and wonderful if you've never experienced life anywhere else. I remember, still, thinking Manitoba was the most wonderful place in the world, until I fell in love with Alberta. It's easy to think some place or some person is perfect if you've never experience anywhere else. And I came back to Alberta after going to school in BC.

I want to see the world. I want to see it all. I want to touch the pyramids, walk along the Great Wall, go shopping in some out of the way place in Scotland, see the Parthenon with my own eyes. There are so many things in this world, and it's only miles and time that's keeping me from them. I can come back. Canada isn't going anywhere. And although I've been living with the knowledge that Edmonton isn't home anymore, that it hasn't been for some time, I know I can come back here, walk in the River Valley late at night and look up at the stars.

For me, at least, home only comes after a struggle, and I want to see where that struggle is going to take me.

Anna stopped here at 1:31 PM

5/9/2005

Number of jokes about pirates emailed to me over the past week: 12

Number of jokes I heard (per day) about pirates over the past week: 8

Percentage of these jokes that were some varation of the line "We just need to get you a parrot": 92

Heck, even my eye doctor said that to me.

The whole thing is, of course, incredibly funny. A lot of people figured I was just wearing the patch to be cute, but I just patiently explained to each one that I had been tuning my friend's harp and one of the string's broke and whapped me in the eye, leaving it damaged. Or I had a crossbow accident. Or I was running with scissors. I think my favorite was that I sent it away for cleaning, because one person went "Oh, I didn't know you had a glass eye!"

People are fun. *grin*

Anyway, the point is that I can look at a computer again without going cross eyed, so my life is a lot better. My glasses make me look like a librarian, which wasn't quite the look I was going for, but whatever. I can see, and they aren't terribly heavy.

Life, like people, is fun.

Anna stopped here at 6:05 AM

 mind the gap

A 20-something Canadian who used to teach English in China. There's lots in the archives about my experiences with teaching, with culture shock, and with my adventures in China. Occasionally it meanders into melancholy (part of the culture shock), which must be very dull to read, so you can skip that.

But right now, I'm back in Canada, and kinda determined to do something with the several thousand photos I took, as well as write more about China and other stuff.

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