The Sunny Side

I just love these new templates available at Blogger. This drippy page represents the current weather here as I finish off my last official week of research in the Netherlands. You read me correctly...following this week, I will be on my way to Hungary for 10 days and then back in Rotterdam for only 3 precious days of research before my mother comes to visit me here for my final week in the ol' Netherlands.

This trip for my mother is very special because it has been 17 long years since her last vacation here. Some might ask why it was that I decided to choose the Netherlands, of all places in the world, to do my research and the answer to this question could be found in my family tree. My mother and (the majority of) her family were born here in the Netherlands (everyone can collectively say 'ah ha!'). They moved when my Opa recieved packing orders from his work, the cement company Ainsi in Maastricht, to relocate to Canada with a couple other Dutch workers (and their families). After organising things in Canada, my Opa collected up the whole family (only 7 children at this point) and brought them to the french speaking province of Quebec where they stayed for two years.

Many nights I've been regaled with stories about the immigration of my mother and her 8 brothers and sisters. Like some of the migrant individuals and families that I meet here, their stories were often about finding oneself in a new place and learning a new way of life. For example, when my mother and her siblings would march to the store in their small French Canadian town, they would chant :'Un pain blanche, un pain blanche' so that they wouldn't forget their order on their way to the bakery.

When the company moved my mom's family again to the english speaking province of Ontario in Canada, they were again affected by language, changing social networks, and the task of getting used to their new surroundings. Although Oakville, where she lives to this day, was outfitted with 'Dutch stores' I am now only starting to imagine how tough these moves would have been for both the children and the adults. I learn more everyday about the toll of immigration and its subsequent introducation and (subjective) integration into new cultures and langauges must have been like from others', as well as my own, experiences.

After some time (and this also seems to be the case with the people I meet here), I find that the story of immigration to a new country is often retold in a positive and optimistic light. Instead of seeing the rain, it is often the sunny side of experiences that is told. While I haven't experienced too much inclimate weather in my immigration experience, I can only imagine how I would tell my own story up to this point, if I weren't going back in less than 30 days.

With my impending departure, I've come to reassess my experiences here and have decided that they will always be different from the majority of immigrants around me because I'm english speaking, I'm temporary, mobile and for the most part, educated. My own experiences and learning the migration stories of others has definitely given me a new depth of understanding to those articles that I used to read in Canada about immigration. Wow. That's all I can say - Wow.