#10 Canterbury Road

Beginning the world

"True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility. If you love something, you want to look after it."
~ Philip Pullman

Yes, this subject line is the title to one of the chapters in Bleak House, but it's also an Innocence Mission song:

Aren't you bursting with butterflies
on the fourth of September?
Like you'll have to get on the bus
in your tartan dress, with your lunch box.
Though your body is twenty-nine.
Though your mind is an old thing.
I mean, don't you ever sigh?

I guess what I'm trying to say is...I have an announcement. Through a very interesting series of events (which only began about two weeks ago), I'll be moving back down to Colombia to teach English at a primary school towards the end of next month. This just happens to coincide with a trip to India that my roommate will be taking at about the same time (although she'll only be gone until mid-May...for me, it may be two years)--so we'll be closing up shop soon.

No one knows yet but for family and a couple close friends--who are all much more thrilled than I would ever expect them to be. (Of course, my family is on cloud 9. :) Colegio Bureche is a tiny school in Santa Marta, on the northern coast of Colombia (on the Caribbean). I have dual citizenship, so I don't need a work visa--only to renew my identity card.

The past couple weeks have been nuts, as I'm sure you can imagine. I've run the gamut of emotions on this one. I've always known that I would someday love to return to Colombia to teach or work with children--to do anything worthwhile there. The work I've been doing on Deborah's documentary has only increased this longing for the other half of my identity. (In fact, her original idea was was to explore what it meant to be bi-cultural and have a father who was an exile in her own country. It soon broadened into an excavation of the displacement issue in Colombia--of people who have become exiles in their own country.)

Yes, I've been nonplussed by how this amazing opportunity comes just as I've stiffled my nagging demons on the question of grad school. Obviously, I've waited two years--what's a couple more? But it has taken so much effort for me to arrive at the place where I was ok with myself to merely apply! (This fall, the program at the University of Durham that I wanted to apply to was "reorganized," and with the retirement of their T.S. Eliot professor, I was left in the lurch. But I kept working, settled on three schools, and am finishing up my applications this weekend. If I get in, I'll defer.)

Yet the upside to this is that I'll be getting some teaching experience. Getting an MA would've only taken one year, and then what? I had no idea as to what I would do afterwards. My choices were: teach high school English (with an MA, but zero experience) or find my way into a PhD program (more school, and then teaching first years with zero experience). I know having a class of 18 six-year-olds isn't exactly the same thing, but hey--a girl's got to start somewhere. And then I will know more if this is what I truly want to pursue.

I also realize that this will change the course of my life and challenge me in unimaginable ways. But at this point, I welcome it with open arms. Nothing could be worse than the hell I've been living in for the past two years. I desperately need change...and to be able to focus on the needs of others; to step outside of my own head.

Thank you for the encouragement you have always been to me. You've given me hope that "the world is tall and wide," and that possibility is still alive and well.

This is not goodbye. I'll have internet access there, and will continue to maintain my online presence as much as I can. I appreciate your thoughts and prayers during this transition (esp. regarding my English profs--I don't know how I'll tell them). But after all,

We know good enough
is a thousand miles from grace.
~ Over the Rhine

posted by amcorrea @ 2/18/2005 05:09:00 PM