I guess you find an identity wherever you find an identity.  When you are an immigrant or some kind of “second” (I’ll explain that TK), that is particularly difficult.  I envy those people who can just say “I’m from here.  No further information.”

I’m a “second.”  That means I was born in one place, moved to another and settled in yet another.  I know people who are from Europe, grew up in the Middle East and then settled in America.  My story isn’t nearly that complex.  I was born in Poland, I grew up in New York and now I love in the greatest place on earth, New England.

I joke with my mom that we are preppiest Polish people ever.  My mom and I have discussions about the word “summer” as in how to use it as a verb.  We’ve also had disagreements about patterns at Lily Pulitzer.  How we came upon this interesting identity is anyone’s guess.  I’ve always liked the preppies though, style-wise and aspired to them education wise.

And now I get to “summer” or in this case “weekend” where they weekend.  Is weekend a verb now??  Who knows??  English is weird after all.

Weekending in Maine.  With the rest of preppie brethren.  Now brethren is definitely a preppie word.

You know I bet there’s a guy walking around in the bible saying “kids these days!!!!”  Nope, I didn’t actually author those words.  They came from one of my idols, Roger Sterling from Mad Men, who isn’t even a real person.  He says them in an episode where he has to market coffee to the youth.  At the time, young people didn’t drink coffee.  They put Pepsi on their frosted flakes, Roger said.

I’m not that old, but I’m getting older.  I work in a school, so all day I’m surrounded by young people.  Really young.  Like using the example of “what had you done by 1995,” may be greeted by “I wasn’t born yet” or I just learned to walk.  1995 — hmm, yeah, that’s a year I remember rather well.  Really well.

But being around these youngs, as I call them isn’t the worst thing in the world.  Rather than making you feel old, they actually make you feel young.  You don’t feel a huge difference between yourself and them.  Unless you start talking about what you were both doing around 1995.  Let’s say I was putting Mountain Dew on my frosted flakes.  Or maybe Jolt cola.  Am I old??  Did I just date myself making that reference?

Anyway, youngs, you shall one day inherit the earth:

Usually I do a supermarket or store bonanza after I visit a new place, but I decided to add a restaurant into this particular mix.

Little towns in New England usually feature stores that sell all kinds of nautically themed weird things and Bar Harbor was no exception.  How many mermaids can one person possibly own???  Turns out, quite a few.  How much nautical stuff can you possibly buy??  Turns out, quite a lot:

On the tackiness front, this is just scratching the surface.  I also went to Geddy’s in Bar Harbor and ate this vision of New England deliciousness called the lobster bake.  In these magnificent interiors:

Thanks They Might Be Giants for the blog entry title!!!!

You pet them, tell them how cute they are and photograph them of course:

Its that time of year.  Its the time of year when I write about how incredible summer in New England is.  I do this every year, I know, but it just is.  Accept it.

I kicked off summer in an exceedingly charming place called Mount Desert Island in Maine, where I had last visited 25 years ago.  Of course there will be entries about stores and the views and all the rest of it, but this first entry will be about something yet more charming.  All the kids running around!!!!!

You walk down the street of a place like Bar Harbor and you see loads of kids.  Some of them want you to take their photo and they even pose for you:

That edgy, urban Bar Harbor!!!!

Oh and these kids.  They were sitting in the window of a coffee place and just started waving at me when I walked by and I decided to take their photo:

Wake up and be awesome!!!!  That is my motto too kids!!!!

Every once in a while, I write about my actual life up here.  Somehow I always thought something bad would happen if I revealed too much about myself up here.  Blogs are public and open to the world and anyone can see them no matter what.

However, when I wrote about my professor at UMass Boston, Pepi Leistyna dying, suddenly everyone paid attention to this blog.  I didn’t write about him for that reason, but it felt good to write about someone I knew and get my true feelings out there about him.

I guess Pepi opened the floodgates for me about writing about myself and in particular my experience of going to UMass Boston.  What’s making me suddenly so philosophical?  I had my graduation dinner from my program yesterday and I snapped some photos of my lovely classmates, which I will post in below.

But first some musings.  The graduation dinner was in Marina Bay, in Quincy, where I have never visited before, despite living in this city for seven years.  Never been there??  Check it out:

That first photo is of the UMass campus from the restaurant we were eating at.  My parents were with me and as I looked at the campus, I told reminded my mom about how it had always been my dream to study in Boston.  We also reminisced about how when I was 18, we’d come to Boston for me to go to an accepted candidates weekend at a university that shall remain nameless and it was so terrible that we actually left and sat in Harvard Square for the rest of the day.

A dream delayed I guess.  But I did end up studying in Boston at UMass Boston, a school I didn’t even know existed until I lived here for a while.  I guess we gotta get back to the title.  I cannot stress how little I actually wanted to back to school after graduation school one but the past doesn’t matter and you don’t know anything.  When I showed up to my first class at UMass Boston, all I was worried about was getting all the work done for a subject I had no clue about.  I had little to no knowledge of linguistics going into the degree and was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to be able to learn anything about it.  You don’t know anything about how things are going to turn out.

As I went along in the program, I got to read about things I liked and was interested in and write papers on topics that fascinated me.  I started to look at the world through the lens of language and culture and power.  The ideas were learned about in applied linguistics program were things that I had thought about for years but could never put a name to.  Suddenly, there was an area of study and names to all of these ideas that I knew were valid.

Studying applied linguistics also took me out of the political frame of mind I had always been in.  I had always seen the world along political lines, liberals and conservatives but suddenly none of that mattered.  It was who had the power that mattered and that made the world a lot easier to understand for me.

The program also affected me on a personal level.  I found some really excellent friends that helped me through some tough times in the program.  In the first class I ever took in the program, my professor told us not to talk to anyone else in the class about our midterm.  I thought to myself “who am I going to talk to???  None of these people are going to be my friend.”  It turns out that one of the people from the class has become a very dear friend.

The program was a welcome respite from my work life too.  When I was doing the program, my work life got turned upside down and inside out and school was a place I could go to excel and shine when I felt down about work.

I guess my dream to study in Boston was a dream delayed but a dream ultimately fulfilled in a different way than I had thought.  It all turned out OK in the end!!!!

Congratulations to my fellow classmates!!!!

I guess graduations always bring out the philosopher in all of us.  Commencement.  We’re ending but we are beginning again as well.

For me this year’s graduations have a particular poignancy about them.  I’m a teacher in real life but I don’t share too much about that up here, but this graduation is making me want to share that a bit more.

In 2010, I became a teacher and in 2011, something else significant happened.  A large group of students from Saudi Arabia arrived in the school I work in.

It turned out that these new arrivals would mark the beginning of a new chapter in my life.   This was a chapter where I really had to learn how to be a teacher.  I had to really learn how to negotiate with people and adjust to a culture whose intricacies were much more complex than any I had ever encountered.  Along with way, I forged excellent friendships.  There were bumps in the road, but it turned out to be quite an significant chapter in my life.

Today one of the first students I encountered from that cohort graduated from college.  His name is Hussain Aloufi and I’m writing that on here for the first time because I’m so proud of the fact that he graduated with top honors from Suffolk University.  Moreover, I’m happy to have been a part of his journey as a college student in the United States.  I thought that as well with the students from Saudi Arabia, that we were part of such a significant chapter in their lives.

Congratulations Hussain!!!!!!  Not only did you graduate with highest honors, but you also got to shake hands with the absolutely awesome Elizabeth Warren!!!!!!!!!