20th Century Part 2

20th century part 2

Frankie Aguinaldo continued writing his diary:

"Well, after Spain, I ended up in Canada. My friend Le E., the younger brother of my Latin teacher in high school, said they were looking for teaching assistants at the University of Alberta. He said one of his co-teachers, at FEU, Nestor D. got in. So I wrote and got in.

As fate or God's will went into motion, my father was assigned at ICAO in Montreal. On the way there, the summer of 1967, my mom, sister and younger brother came to Madrid. We stayed for a few days at the Colegio Mayor de Guadalupe and then I rented a car and we travelled all over Spain.

I took them to the airport afterwards to catch their plane to Montreal. I stayed behind. My flight wasn't till September, so I went to Lisbon, on my way to Fatima on a pilgrimage to Mary . That was good. I was blessed for a hopeful future I felt.

I arrived in Montreal the 1st week of September and stayed with the family for a few days in a hotel while dad was looking for a house. Then I left for Edmonton.

I was lucky to see the Borealis one clear evening in September there. The first impression when I landed was the smell of manure from the fields when I was picked up at the airport. I stayed temporarily in a host's house before I moved to Athabasca hall, a student dorm.

I stayed for only a year in Alberta. I went to the University of Toronto the next year also on an assistantship and an Ontario fellowship. I finished my MA there.

I looked for a job, and I got an offer to teach Spanish and Latin at a private high school near Toronto. I didn't accept because I wasn't comfortable teaching Latin and high school students to boot.

I went to the library and started browsing university catalogues in alphabetical order and writing the different Spanish departments. By the time I got to B, I got an offer to teach at Bowling Green State University as an Intern Instructor for a year. What that meant was I had to be a part-time student and take courses.

I was always interested in Speech and Drama, so I took graduate courses mostly in Drama. After my internship was over, I was offered a teaching fellowship to do a PhD in Speech majoring in Theatre. I took a few months to do my research in Madrid in 1971 . I met and interviewed dramatists who belonged to the Theatre of Protest in Spain, and I wrote about them in my doctoral dissertation.

I completed my PhD in the summer of 1973, and hurriedly took off for California."

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