Homeward Bound

Finally!

The end of a six week adventure looms close, yet I feel as if I have been gone for nearly a year. Travelling from one point to the next, staying at multiple homes, yet never feeling completely at home. My last destination is ironically my home in Markham before I settle into London, into a new apartment and my temporary new home for the next five months.

I am understanding more so this year what the phrase "home is where the heart is" means. And I would clarify that the heart does not refer to just one but both the host's and the guest's. It does take both parties to make a stay comfortable and safe. I've been so lucky to receive that, one point to the next from downtown Toronto, to Halifax, to Hamilton, to Huai'an, to Hong Kong, to Vancouver.

At the end of all of this, I can say that I feel - lucky.

I am a very very lucky girl.

I grew up in a generation that did not flee from China to HK and go from richness to near brokeness,  suffer in farming to raise enough money to send my children to school, working tirelessly in part-time jobs to support my own tuition, studying at every waking moment to achieve the marks to get to the next stage of academics, start new beginnings in a new country, switching from a promising social work career to the finance sector in another culture, learn to live in a new culture without family and friends - the closest being at least a 4 hour plane ride away, live a life to that point without knowledge of the security and hope of Christ - all this my grandparents and their children, including my parents, have experienced.

And all their experiences have lead to my birth into a middle-class immigrant family, well-adjusted to the multicultural Canadian city of Toronto, where I have the freedom to study until university without paying tuition, without the fear of not getting into university because of lack of money, with freedom to use non-studying and non-school times to participate in clubs, private piano lessons, swimming lessons, attending church, free to express my beliefs and to share with others, volunteering in the community, pursuing my passions, reflections all the time, holidays spent taking trips to the states and in recent years, plane rides to other countries to learn about culture... to  have chosen to attend medical school by my own will without pressure from my family, to enjoy medicine, to be in north america where global health departments promote travelling around the world to engage and broaden our understanding of different health systems, to be trained in a non-paternalistic culture where patients and doctors are partners rather than the parent and child, to live in a country that prides itself in full access to medically necessary services such that it promotes healthy lifestyles and preventative care, to live in a country that is not densely populated that when you enter into institutions, you can be known by name, and not literally a number, where people line up, where people are polite, where status has less emphasis and your personality more so is recognized.

I am a lucky girl.

For all this - I am thankful.