A Week or so

I need to be honest with all of you: I've been in the country for a week now. Well, a week and two days. I landed at 12:45 EST in Toronto, Ontario and proceeded to collect my luggage.

I meant to get in touch with you a lot sooner than this, but time and tide ran away from me and I was left standing at Term. 2 departure gates with a heavy pack and a heavy heart. I had been intending, for about a month before hand, to hike around South Western Ontario for a couple of weeks packing in as many friends and family as I could before coming to rest on the home farm.

There's been a lot that's happened. Let me fill you in as much as I can. Be patient though, this might take some time.

I landed, like I said, in Toronto and from there I took the TCC into the city centre (that's Irish for downtown). I had forgotten how friggin big Toronto was. It was big, bigger than I remembered and bigger than I was ready for. Cork had no sky rises, no fast moving foot traffic and no roads big enough to be a car park (I later learned that they were in fact car parks, I had simply mistaken them for motorways).

Toronto did not have my house, my pub or my coffee shop. It did not have my supermarket, my buskers or my pub and it certainly did not have my pub.

I was small, alone and tired of carrying my big, stupid pack around.

But as I sat watching all this unfold in front of me, all these buildings, tree's, cars, people, buses, beer ads, Canadian flags, library's, university campuses, cabs, gas stations and bike lanes, as I watched all this unfold I realized that in a year plus two days I haven't been in a better position. In all the traveling I've done, all the places I've been, I've never been in a place that could be easier to navigate.

Toronto is still a foreign city to me, don't get me wrong; I was raised on a pig farm and hadn't spent more than a few days in the city. Despite being foreign, however, it was still Canadian. I had jumped into cities and countries knowing nothing of the culture, language or currency and made it out the other end; most often with scarce few marks resulting.

I took a deep breath. I was going to be okay. This isn't as scary as it might appear to be.

Yet still, somehow, I wanted to be on the next plane back to Cork.