Renne Jin

 

Summary

Catherine Mendoza is a retired teacher who had taught English for the most of her working life. She started to live in New Westminster since 1981, which was about thirty-four years ago. Attracted by the traditional style of architectures here, she also thinks this is a great place to live because New Westminster is a nice and quiet community. Besides, life in New Westminster is also convenient since everything is quite close to people’s homes. There are also some lovely gardens here, which are Catherine’s favourite places. When she retired five years ago, her life had changed a lot compared with how it used to be in the past. However, she is still quite busy working as a volunteer at the Century House and the library. These very enjoyable experiences are quite different from working, and she sometimes feels like retiring from retirement. Having more time to look after herself, Catherine also goes swimming twice a week and does some exercises if she has time.

Childhood

When Catherine was a little girl, she was quite stubborn and naughty. Her father used to take the whole family out to go walking around and to see the beautiful landscapes in the countryside near their home. Once, when she was about four or five years old, he took them to a rocky hill which was ideal for hiking and scrambling. There was an old observatory on the high top of the hill. Half way, when Catherine was hiking and climbing, she stopped to sit down on a rock and told her parents that she was waiting for the bus. This place was actually quite far out of the bus loop, but she just sat there and claimed that she was waiting for the bus. Her mother came by and encouraged her not to give up at this point. Finally, though Catherine doesn’t remember how they managed to do this, her family persuaded her to continue the trip and they finally arrived at the top of the hill. It was a quite clear and also ridiculous memory for her.

Life changing event

Just like other seniors who have experienced a lot, Catherine has had plenty of life-changing events; upon reflection, she found that her most important one was the death of her husband, which had changed her life in a completely different direction from what she had expected. Her husband passed away from cancer only a couple of years after they got married. Always being a romantic person, Catherine had thought her future would be getting married, having children, and building her own family– everything that an ordinary woman does in her life. However, the ideal path suddenly crushed in the real world. With the money her husband left and the insurance she got, Catherine made a brave but unregretful decision to buy a house for herself; she could not think of anything better to do with the money. After this, she made up her mind to travel to Japan and stayed there for some time. She also learned a lot about herself in this experience. She is always an independent person and she proved that she could do things by herself quite well. Besides, Catherine also got stronger and gained an insight into different ways people live in the world.

Five years in Japan

One of the most important factors that contributed to Catherine’s decision to leave for Japan (or in other words, to physically get away from Canada), was the death of her husband. Meanwhile, she is also fascinated by Japanese culture, which is hugely different from the Western countries that Catherine had once visited before. Therefore, thirty-five-year-old Catherine bought herself an open-ended ticket and went on her journey with no job and only one contact.

Catherine was quite scared when she first arrived in Japan. Suddenly she was surrounded by a different language and people who looked different. At first, she stayed in her room in a hotel for about four or five days. But after that, she realized that she had to make an attempt to explore the country; therefore, she decided to get out of the hotel room. Starting with a walk down to the hall and then back into the room, Catherine kept trying–it was almost like being a baby again, but at last she got used to living in Japan. She finally went outside and managed to find a job in a private Japanese high school with the help of a lady who turned out to be a friend. During her five years in Japan, Catherine usually came back to Canada in summer to get away from the terrible Tokyo heat and then went back in September. This was quite a memorable period for her because she got back into the profession that she had before her husband died. Before she went to Japan, she had been teaching in an elementary school for about eight years. These years struggling in Japan also taught her how to survive in a society where everything was new and no one understood you. As a result, she learnt that you should try to make yourself understood by others and build communication with them to survive in a new environment.

After her time in Japan, Catherine discovered that she really missed the familiar environment and the sense of being in Canada, which were the things that she really wanted in her life. Therefore she came back to her homeland five years later. She also decided that she would continue to pay visits in Japan– she wished to know more about the culture, the music, the art, and so on. Small but exquisite items were another factor that keep Catherine fascinated about Japan. Small items found in markets like old traditional combs and paper fans could be so beautiful that one would definitely want to take them back home without no hesitation. Of course, there existed some aspects of the Japanese culture that Catherine did not like, but what she had discovered was only the surface of the fascinating culture. She would be quite willing to go on exploring the Japanese culture in her free time.

 

Life after coming back from Japan

After Catherine came back from Japan, she found that she was interested in teaching English as a second language due to her teaching experience in Japan. She became quite fascinated by the whole idea and went back to Simon Fraser University to finish her degree. In order to graduate from her fourth year in the university, forty-year-old Catherine took back her old student number from almost twenty years ago, which was sixty-six. She started to study hard in libraries, pulled up her GPA, and earned herself better grades. Though she really felt being old among students who were around eighteen, she managed to focus on her courses again as she did decades ago and ended up with a Bachelor in Education. After this, Catherine gained the chance to continue being a teacher teaching English as second language instead. When she visited the learning center, she met her second husband, which she was something she was not expecting. She never thought that she would get married again; after that one day, her life path changed a lot. Now, Catherine has been married for twenty years; she had continued with teaching until she retired five or six years ago. For the last fifteen years of her teaching career, she learned a lot about different cultures and earned a lot of precious memories with her students from various cultural backgrounds all over the world.

Her advice to her twenty-year-old self is that, first, she should trust herself. Second, she does not need to worry so much, neither about her future life nor about what other people think.

 

Most meaningful present

Catherine’s career as a teacher not only earned her a lot of memories and experiences, but also earned her the most meaningful present that she has ever received. She has received a lot of presents from her students. During the last part of her career, she was teaching English at a beginner level and her students were mainly new immigrants who were scared and afraid because they hadn’t been to school for a considerably long time. These adult professionals were quite scared and did not want to be in the class. Catherine’s job was to help them with their learning process and build their confidence in using English to perform daily conversations. Apparently, she performed her duties quite well. One group of leaving students pooled their money together and bought a special picture for Catherine. Their leader, a lady who was an immigrant, chose this as a gift because she thought that when students first came into class they could not fly. But after Catherine taught them some basic skills, they learned quite well and gained the confidence to fly, just like the white swans flying in the picture. Catherine picked this picture to be her most meaningful present because she could recognize the student leader’s choice from the picture. She also likes the first nation totem-poles on the picture as part of the decoration in the background. The student leader stood out from all Catherine’s memorable students and her story about the picture is deeply impressed in Catherine’s mind. Catherine does not miss other details and daily routines about her career; however, she misses the contact with her past students very much.