This is me

My friends have often encouraged me to write a book or at least short stories about the things that happen in my life as I'm always telling them about some dramatic event that happened to me or my family. The stories that they've heard have included having my house surrounded by a SWAT team, being that girl at the office Christmas party, praying that our car will not explode after catching on fire with the whole family in it, having our roof blown off during a hurricane, bathing in the rain when there was no water in my house, getting lost driving to school even after 2 years practice, climbing up a steep grassy hill (cliff really) at the Plaines D'Abraham in Quebec IN HEELS, having a sketchy French guy really come on to me while staying in Montreal, and complaining about my family's love of going everywhere together even to get milk at the supermarket (we're 5 now 6 of us in the family AND one of my sisters and I are both over 21).

Truthfully, I don't think that my stories are all that different from many other people's but maybe if I tell you a bit about my life you will understand the background to the stories and thoughts that I will be posting...

I was born in Belgium to a Haitian mother and a Chinese-Jamaican father. I lived in an inner-city neighbourhood in Jamaica until I was eleven then we moved to a very different residential neighborhood. My move to the upper middle class area also coincided with my beginning high school, a high school filled with students from the upper echelons of Jamaican society. During high school, with my father's encouragement I decided to go to the USA for college. I left Jamaica at 18 years old to go to a top liberal arts college in the the middle-of-nowhere Iowa in the States. I did two years there before my parents success in getting approved to immigrate to Canada, prompted my transferring to a university here in Toronto. I transferred because I wanted to save them some money and also to live in a city and be closer to my family. It turns out that not much money was saved because I was getting a nice grant from my old school and I had failed to factor in other costs besides tuition into the picture when looking at Canadian universities. Anyways, I just graduated with a degree in Computer Science this past June. Yes I was one of very few females in the graduating class. I did a 16 months co-op as part of my degree. All in all with the transfer from the States and co-op it took me 6 years to graduate. I'm currently working on contract with the hope of going to France next year. Oh, another thing about me, I am constantly striving to become fluent in French and so I always try to do things that will bring me closer to this goal.

Today I decided to start my own blog and share my personal reflections and (sometimes) outrageous stories with the world. I may even tell you, in entirety, some of the stories I mentioned earlier.

Many people have big dreams and hopes for their blogs.

I just hope you like it.

:]