My children objected to my calling them Monkey Girl and Monkey Boy in my blog posts. So, I told them to think of nicknames for themselves.

Silence and Violence.

Those are the names they chose.

I have to say, my daughter is not at all Silent, except perhaps in comparison to her brother, and my son is not at all Violent, except perhaps in comparison to his sister.

But they are not monkeys, either. At least, not most days.

Silence and Violence they will henceforth be.

We have been dithering all week in the Kyi household, trying to decide whether Monkey Girl should apply for late entry French immersion. Applications are due January 30th.

We are all sitting so firmly on the fence about this that we probably have little picket-indents in our butts. And while sitting on said fence, we’ve asked many passerby for input. Teachers (you have to follow the child’s interests), teacher friends (she’d be among motivated peers), babysitters (Kits Secondary sucks, so put her in a program that leads somewhere else), friends who went to French immersion (you have to live in France or Quebec to become fluent anyway), friends who are French (yes, of course, everyone should speak French), friends who happen to call at the wrong time (more than 30% of UBC undergrads are multilingual)…

The arguments against French immersion are mainly practicalities. We’d have to start driving her to school, she’d have to leave her friends behind, the French immersion school is being seismically upgraded, so the students are in portables, where there was a rat infestation in September.

These things are unrelated to Monkey Girl’s academic success, but they’re not small matters. I mean, rats? And driving to school? I dislike both of those things equally.

The high school Min went to was in the worst area of Surrey, and he still turned out okay. The high school I went to was my town’s only high school, and there were probably more girls getting pregnant than girls in the French 12 class. Incidentally, both Min and I won our school’s respective French 12 awards. Though mine was likely because there were few competitors, and Min says he won because he organized the school ski trip on behalf of the French teacher.

We may be giving too much weight to a question that is unlikely to affect the entirety of Monkey Girl’s life. But then again, saying that is a bit like my mom saying: “I smoked and drank all through my pregnancy, and you turned out fine.” To which I always answer: “but think of what I could have been!”

She will probably turn out fine without French immersion. But it is a very strange thing to look at your brilliant child, brimming with potential, and try to choose the direction in which to steer her. What if she looks back and says: “but think of what I could have been”?

Or, “de penser à ce que je aurais pu être!”

And yes, that was courtesy of Google Translate. Now, excuse me while I go back to my fence.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I take this blog to Burma one last time, because I’ve been pondering the changes that have occurred there since the last time we visited, a decade ago.

Burma’s borders have recently opened to foreign investment, construction has surged, and imported cars have rolled en masse onto the streets of Rangoon. Taxis have now replaced most of the five-passenger-plus-chicken moped loads. Shopping malls are edging out markets. Cosmetics ads have replaced propaganda billboards.

Ten years ago, when our van needed gas, the driver pulled behind an unmarked thatched-roof hut and boys with jerry cans filled the tank while the engine ran. This time, there were modern gas stations.

The roads are still hand-built by men, women, and children who crush the rocks, carry the loads on their heads, and stir tar over open fires. But if I understood correctly, the crews are now paid, and no longer conscripted from the villages.

And, of course, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung Sun Suu Kyi is no longer under house arrest. Her National League for Democracy has visible offices. Our children received NLD swag. People on the train read Democracy Times, and instead of referring in whispers to “our lady,” people talk openly of her work.

But despite all these changes, most of the country lives in crushing poverty. There are still bamboo huts on stilts in the ditches around the big new bank buildings. The government consists of the same men, now in different uniforms. And, as one outspoken friend put it: “maybe you can say what you want, and read what you want, but you still can’t do what you want.”

It’s hard to know how optimistic to be about the immediate future, when so many are working so hard with little to show for it. Thanks to the influx of foreigners and the spike in investment, apartments in Rangoon cost more than they do in Vancouver, yet many are existing on wages of $50 or $100 a month.

There is hopefully more change still to come…