A Traveller’s diary #001
The start of something special….
Well…and so the journey begins. I landed roughly 3 hours ago, I’ve never seen so many people all packed into one space since I saw a London bar on Thursday night packed out by the finance bros. After various checkpoints, and a short treasure hunt to find my luggage, I made my way out of the airport where my driver was awaiting: He can’t have been older than me, probably a year younger at least and he was driving a somewhat surprising Subaru which caught my attention, later I found out he was the son of the owner of the company I’d been emailing that had arranged my host family and airport pickup which was a nice ‘family’ touch I guess. He gave me a quick run down of what to expect on our drive home and oh by the way….downtown traffic is definitely real too.
A small, quaint family residence shall be my home for the next month and my host family – well, I can’t really complain, kind, transparent and welcoming and they are just a true, gritty, honest and hard-working family; when I got in, the husband was the only person in and his wife came back from a 10 hour shift a few hours later despite her being almost 70 years of age and I could tell she was beyond tired, I suppose the struggle spans across the globe and yes that’s obvious but seeing the ‘grind’ in real time in a whole another continent definitely puts things into perspective about how universal and similar our struggles are regardless of where we live.
We sat around for dinner, A T-bone steak was thrown on the grill and we gathered around the table, the family had lived in Montreal for 36 years but had been unfortunate with children and so hence their motivation for taking on international students like myself. Broccoli, not my favourite but it’s nice to have a bit of green on my plate for once: It was quiet, I live alongside a 14 year-old Spanish guy who’s learning English at Mcgill university and a Filipino 20-year old man I haven’t met yet.
‘What this?’ Santiago asked, the Spanish 14-year old, and in his hands was a bottle of sweet chilli; he said he had never tried it before and once tasting it, he said he liked it: Again a reminder that even though we all live on the same planet our experiences of it are vastly different and something mundane to us could be completely new to someone else.
After dinner I returned to my room, somewhat still in shock I’m actually here in Canada – watching a lot of north American tv, it’s weird being where I used to watch my favourite characters act – because I still remember how things were before but I’m learning to appreciate the moment and be fully present more and more.
I guess as I age and grow older, it’s dawning on me that each moment is so special because you just will truly never live it out ever again. Life aye.
This was the first episode, I’ve only been here a few hours so nothing exciting yet, but I’m looking forward to documenting the journey now.
I feel excited, somewhat nervous because it really is a whole new world but i’m glad I did this because I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing and thus means that I will learn at least somethingggg on this trip. I also realised that I need to schedule this release for a different time because Canada is 5 hours behind..the joys of travelling.
Episode one in the books. Noice!
Efe/fa