Ok, I wasn't born here (and by here I mean Canada). I'm sure people know that from the horrible spelling and grammatical errors in every single one of my entries. I was born in the Philippines and I migrated to Vancouver with my family when I was 13 years old. Although I learned English in a school back home known to produce Politicians, English and Art majors; I still had a pretty thick accent coming into Canada. Which made things ... um AWKWARD.
Of course, it didn't help when the Filipino population of your new high school was
0 wait... 1 (me!). Ironically, my high school was right in the middle of Richmond (also known as Chinatown v3.2 release 1a) only had a very small group of Asian kids.
So let me paint you a complete picture (if you haven't painted it for yourself by now), in a high school of predominantly white kids, I was the
only Asian kid with a Spanish-sounding accent. When they asked where I was from I would say that I came from the Philippines, a country in the southeast of Asia. Standing out was never something I took well growing up but back then, I was literally the miscellaneous demographic of the school.
I decided that I needed to learn English by watching MuchMusic and an insane amount of Jenni Jones. I eventually developed a valley girl accent which further confused every single person in the school.
Teacher: So Ritchie you're presenting tomorrow Ok?
Me: Like, ohhhh. my.. GOD! Like you're totally not serious right? This book is like totally boring! Like, nuh 'uh you gonna get me to present in front of this class girlfriend. Nuh 'uh girlfriend!
*this is where everyone in the class just looks at me in complete horror like I just ate their children*
Me: Yes, Ma'am. I will do it. *slithers back into the dark corner of the room*
Ahh, thank god high school is over. Not to mention the awkward teen age years.
