On being Canadian (for a summer)...

Because we want to move abroad, and in honor of JJ/Lisa moving to Canada (and starting a blog!), here is an old journal entry I wrote after summer school at Regent (which I LOVED and would recommend to anyone!! It's amazing...)

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After two months of cultural immersion in our neighbor to the north, not only do I have more of an affection for maple syrup and the phrase “eh” than ever before, but I’ve come to some other realizations…

First of all, any travel mag could’ve told you this, but Vancouver is an awesome city! I have appreciated it SO much in my short 2 months here. The design is really awesome and public transportation is great here, which not too many US cities can boast about. I love all the parks and trails and water, so even though you’re in a metropolis, there are still untainted stretches of land that you can feel are your sacred spaces. And the beaches are great! Who knew?! The restaurants, culture, museums, fashion, nightlife and access to outdoor activity abound here…

However, there are things that stress me out, such as the high taxes, and major 2-way roads with no dividers (which give us Americans at least a semblance of safety.) Also, the blinking traffic lights give me a headache, as does getting an interrogation while crossing the border. The most bizarre car-related thing I noticed, was that right at 3pm every day, out of nowhere, comes a mass of tow-trucks, which swarm around downtown like vultures looking for prey. Beware… Don’t say I didn’t tell you. Luckily I escaped being one of their victims.

I guess I used to think of Canada as the U.S.’s “little brother to the north” (embarrassing to say, but true.) I am glad that I got the chance this summer to get to know how different (way more liberal!!!) it is, and how a different government than ours works, including hearing about socialized medicine (which can be really awesome (free surgery) or really sucky (when you go to the E.R. and wait forever)). All in all, it was a great experience; any place that has the French language on their groceries and that invents it’s own holidays “just because”, like B.C. Day, is just cool. Why don’t we have Seattle Day? Or California Day? No work, just because you happen to live there… Someone should start this up in the States, I’m telling you…