There is nothing quite like fun in the summer. Trust me on this one. My name is John LeJeune. A big and tall young Black man of Haitian descent living in the city of Ottawa, Ontario. I was born in the city of Cap-Haitien, Republic of Haiti, but spent most of my life in Canada. I take Criminal Justice courses at Carleton University and hope to become a police officer someday. The summer of 2010 is here. It's been a really tough year. I decided to spend my summer vacation in the United States of America. Canada simply blows. I get mad bored in a town like Ottawa. So I went to stay with family members in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts, for a little while.
I stayed with my mother Astrid's big brother, Uncle Vincent Valeur, his wife Myra Jean Valeur and their two daughters, Mala and Vera Valeur. Both are students at the University of Massachusetts in the city of Boston. I guess it's cool when you have family all over. I have family all over Canada as well as in American states like Texas, Massachusetts and New York. My parents, Jonathan and Astrid LeJeune live in a nice house in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans in Canada. Dad is a police officer and Mom is a professor at Algonquin College. They don't like the U.S. too much. They claim it's too wild for them. Whatever.
I guess that's where my parents and I significantly differ. Personally, I love the U.S. Especially the town of Boston. I like to visit every summer. It's bigger and more diverse than most cities in all of Canada. The only Canadian cities which come close to having American cities vibrant diversity and sheer size are Toronto and Vancouver. The rest are small, lily-white and boring. Also, I find Americans a lot friendlier and open-minded than the covertly bigoted residents of Ottawa, Canada's capital city. Canadians are so two-faced, bigoted and insecure it's not even funny. In America, you know your friends and you know your enemies. You know where you stand.
In America, I wanted to make up for lost time. Romance isn't easy for me. Never has been. Partly because of my upbringing. I had the academic privilege and social misfortune of attending Cadmus Academy, an all-male military school. Upon graduation, I was immediately accepted into top schools around North America like Canada's very own Carleton University, and more well-known American schools like Harvard University, Boston College, Brandeis University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Hampton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and the University of Houston in Texas. I was really tempted to seek higher education in the U.S. but Carleton University was offering me a full academic scholarship. I couldn't turn that down. So my ass stayed in Canada. Sad but true.
