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Michelle Yang
12A, Bilingual Department
In the end, all our preparations were useless. Our four handy
flashlights-with their bright new batteries-were left in the car.
The Ziplock bag with our Band-Aids zipped but did not stay locked
against the water. After a forty-minute walk from the parking lot
with vague signs, we found ourselves shuffling forward in temporary
blindness, the icy cave water lapping against our knees. It was
one of the best experiences I had in Canada.
* * *
For six weeks from mid-July to late August, I was a student worker
at the University of Ottawa Hospital's Eye Institute. To say that
it was an enjoyable and educational experience would be to make
a severe understatement. Dr. May Griffith and the people in her
tissue-engineering lab were kind and generous to their rookie worker
from Taiwan.
They guided me through the basic procedures involved in processing
human corneas, and then helped me begin an immunohistochemistry
project of my own. Dr. Carty, Dr. Sadiq, and Ms. Loreena Marciel
at the National Research Institute offered much guidance and encouragement
to us four high school students from the National Experimental High
School. In addition to the hands-on lab experience that I had craved,
I also had an extremely comfortable stay with Ms. Sylvie Couture,
my Canadian hostess. It was both my first experience of actually
living in a house and of living with a host family. Sylvie and her
friends, the Ferriers, separately took Won-Ron Cho and I to places
such as Montreal and the simply enormous Gatineau Park outside Ottawa.
On our last weekend in Ottawa, Diane and Rick Ferrier invited
us for a trip to the Lusk Caves in Gatineau Park. That day trip
encapsulated the best parts of my stay at Canada: the constant display
of Canadian hospitality, the natural beauty of the land around Ottawa,
and the sense of discovery-in both the laboratory and in Nature.
Though our miniature expedition did not begin smoothly, I confess
that I enjoyed groping around in the dark, scraping my knees, and
wading in chest-high water. Like my entire time at Canada, it was
something new, an exciting challenge for an untested teenager.
We went through the caves three times. The last time, the loan
of a flashlight allowed us to actually see our way down a slope.
It was an intimidating drop that I would never have attempted had
I known how its actual steepness. However, in the darkness, it had
been merely a short slide down a few large boulders. Likewise, I
had lived my forty-two days in Canada one at a time; only now do
I realize what an overwhelming experience the entire trip was. In
a sense, crossing the Pacific Ocean for six weeks in a totally unfamiliar
environment was very much like going down that drop. I will always
be grateful for that unforgettable summer in Ottawa.
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Won Ron Cho