just jaime

This May, Asians across the globe will be celebrating Asian Heritage Month, more commonly known in the USA as AAPI heritage month.   This felt like the right time to rehash one of my favourite essays that I had the opportunity to write while in university about the misrepresentation of Asian Americans (and Asians in Western societies) in media.

It's been over a week since I've arrived in the Netherlands and it's been a couple days since my parents and I parted ways: them back home to Canada and me back to my residence in Maastricht. It's strange to be away from home. Throughout the week I had my parents by my side to help navigate through the towns and through living abroad. Now that they're a 9-hour flight plus a 2.5-hour train ride away, it's suddenly hit me that I now have to navigate this alone. Although there's a huge international student population here in the city (meaning I'm probably not the only kid who's homesick after a week), it feels like everyone I've met is eager and excited to be here. Meanwhile, my brain is trying to convince me that coming here was all one big mistake. I know that in a few days -- or weeks --  I'll start to adjust to life on my own, but right now, it seems like an impossible task. Even though my parents have said that if I wanted to come home...

Happy 2018, everyone. Hope your New Year's Eve was safe and fun and that you were able to enjoy the day. That you were able to look back at all that has happened in 2017 and reflect on how you pushed through the hard times and savoured the good. That you learned something new, whether through school or new experiences. That you looked, and continue to look, towards the new year with hope and aspirations, big and small. I hope that in 2018, you discover new things: - new music - new books - new friends -- or old friends coming back into your life - new information - new goals - new details of yourself I hope that in 2018, you find love: - self-love - friendships; platonic or romantic love - in nature - and any other love you may come upon or fight for. I hope that in 2018, your dreams become reality, and if they don't get there quite yet, there is still time. I find that looking back on what happened in 2017 helps to not only discover what I need to work on,...

I don't know if it's odd that I don't really tell people about the fact that I'm leaving for exchange. I only started out telling a few friends what I was doing (or trying to do) because if I had been rejected, I would have had to tell everyone I didn't get in. When I got nominated by SFU, I used the same reasoning. "I got nominated, but I haven't been accepted by my host uni yet!" When I got accepted I said, "Well, what if for some reason my student visa doesn't work out and then I'm not allowed to study there?" -- my student visa has been recently approved, by the way, so that's good news. When I got automatically enrolled in the Formal Exchange Program (FEP) and people asked me about course selection I deflected and asked them what courses they were planning on doing instead of talking about me.  When  I was told my leave of absence of work had been approved,  some coworkers started asking questions and I almost felt...