Being back in Canada is phenomenal. We’ve spent all our time so far at my house in Riverview but we’re getting ready to shift around a little bit. Here is a tentative schedule.
Tomorrow, March 15th, Emily goes home to Saint John. At the end of this week, I’ll join her in Saint John until about Monday, when we’ll be moving back to Fredericton. We’ve been a little shaken around and we haven’t made a lot of solid plans yet. It is exciting to think about seeing close friends again though.
Wow. Being back in Canada is still a surreal feeling. It’s almost like living in Asia for eight months was a bizarre dream I just woke up from.
We left Zhubei at 5 in the morning, having had almost no sleep the night before (we were too busy packing!). There was torrential rain, and everything was dark. Miraculously, we carried Rufus, and all of our luggage onto the High Speed Rail and made it to Taoyuan, where we hopped onto a shuttle bus to the airport.
Our flight to Tokyo was a little bit turbulent, but otherwise comfortable. The Tokyo to Detroit flight was awful though. Turbulence the whole way, and the three movies they showed were The Blind Side (True story, but borderline racist in its presentation), Twilight: New Moon (simply terrible), and The Invention of Lying (Ricky Gervais bleak view of the world revealed). As the plane bounced around in the middle of Twilight, I began to w0nder if the last thing I’d ever see would be vampires making out. Thankfully, we lived.
The Detroit airport was really bad. We were late, so we had 40 minutes or so to make a connecting flight, but when you enter the US you need to go through citizenship/immigration, a lengthy security check, and a probing interview about your possessions, employment history, finances, and general views about freedom. We got through everything, picked up our luggage, and got a new flight booked to Newark.
When we got to Newark, the same thing happened again! We missed the connecting flight because of “runway traffic” (I think), and so we had to book a new flight to Halifax. My dad was planning to pick us up at 8pm, but we didn’t get in until after midnight, and they lost our luggage.
The bright side to the whole thing was – Rufus didn’t make a sound. Not one meow. He was so terrified by the ordeal that he stayed perfectly silent for almost 30 hours. Emily took him out of his carrier for two security checks, and he scratched and scrambled to get back into it.
We’re happy to be home. Asia is a fantastic continent, and it has a unique and beautiful way of running, but there is something about Canada that strikes a chord in me and makes me feel comfortable in a way I haven’t in a long time. The ubiquitous spoken English, the trees everywhere, and the general sense of space makes me feel at home.
Quick reminder – I’m going to keep this blog up. It’s going to go back to a regular update schedule in the future, although I’m not completely sure when. I’m also not completely sure about what to write about, but I think I’ll find something.
HOW TO CUT LEMONS 