Sat 13-Jun-09

I have officially been in ES for two weeks. It seems like I have been here for months. For the last couple of days I have had a sore throat that just wont go away, I have been monitoring my temperature. No fever, no body aches, therefore no piggy flu. (I think)

Yesterday Alice and Ritha had their first day at CIS. I was excited to meet them and was relieved when I was welcomed with their warm smiles. Alice has been extremely wonderful by bringing items that my mom has sent for me (excluding the family size shampoo that my mom was trying to get her to smuggle in for me, seriously the size of this thing was ridiculous). I talked to my mom in the evening, she told me how my little sister took an instant liking to Alice and would not let go of her hand it's so adorable but Alice does have a benevolence about her - I could definitely see my two year old sister bonding with her

We finally started our training for the English School. I find that our group of teachers is very eclectic and we all have a genuinely goal in mind – liberation through education. Our day mostly consisted of getting to know each other and learning more about CIS. I think however the highlight of my day was when Rachel held the York Interns back to have a small meeting with them. We had an opportunity to exchange ideas and it was refreshing to hear Ritha rant about the same things that frustrate me about the Hispanic community in Toronto. We both believe that there is a scarcity of resources for youths, and that the community is more interested in party party party rather than moving the community forward from a stagnant situation. The Hispanic community in Canada has no active MP, the drop out rate keeps escalating, and the youth keep feeding into stereotypes. The same stereotypes that Ritha and I have been able to over come.


Who am I?

During our initially training yesterday we had an opportunity to pair up and find three things in common. I was paired up with Nick and we both found that our mother's call us by a different name.

My mother calls me “Jenny.” Typically when I introduce myself to English speakers I say “Yenny” but when I introduce myself to Spanish speakers I say “Jenny.” So where does this ambiguity lie? Typically in Spanish the letter Y is pronounced as palatal affricate with a complete stop closure. (Like in the word judge) in English however Y is a velar fricative, by raising the back of the tongue toward but not touching the velum. (I am so glad I passed linguistics :) But my name is more complicated than that; when my mother and I travelled illegal to “el norte” my name went from being spelled Yeni to Yenny my last name some how went through a transformation either deliberately or not. I now use my mother's maiden name, meaning that in ES I do not exist by this name.

So I am now back in the country trying to grasp my roots and finding who I am but just like my name I believe there are two sides of me. What is my culture and where do I stand?