Saturday, June 27, 2009

My Airport Year

Apologies for not updating in two months.
A lot has happened.
So since my last post, I have completed my second year of Journalism at Concordia, signed up for French classes in Montreal that I didn't really need, received a surprise e-mail in the middle of one of the said French classes, found myself on a bus back to Toronto the next day, and then on a train to Jonquiere, QC a week later.

This is where I rested for five weeks.

And of course, in those five weeks, I met the most dazzlingly interesting young people in Canada, picked up a good basis for conversational French, hung out in several distinct and artistic cafes, hiked up more mountains than I thought was possible for my little body, learned the full effects of inappropriate footwear, and left swiftly and silently, asleep on a bus with the country roads falling fast behind me.


Tomorrow, I take a very long car ride back to Montreal (the dotted liasonal world, it seems, between me and everywhere else I want to go), to board a plane, to fall asleep and wake up in the City of Lights. The past half year has passed by so quickly, and it hasn't really hit me that I'm leaving so soon. I don't think it will hit me until I get there, and then it'll just fly by again until I return back to Toronto. Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Switzerland, London, back to Paris. This is all beyond belief. I keep reminding myself that the worst thing that could happen to me (discounting natural disasters and the slight chance of like, kidnapping or whatever -- but I'm a smart cookie so I'm sure I'll be okay) is that I will actually learn something about myself. I feel like if I don't take advantage of my current financial position and my youth and do something crazy by myself, I won't be able to do anything I set out to do later. I'm living actively.

I've been thinking about life lately. I'll give you the full report when I've deciphered all my thoughts and organized them neatly (or messily) in my notebook, sitting in the Jardins de Luxembourg or in an actual Paris cafe. Perhaps then I will know what it is like to stop thinking and start living the life.

Right, well then.

Wish me luck!

Au revoir, Canada!