After years of letting my camera gather dust in my cabinet, I finally got an opportunity to bring it out of hiding. The past few years haven’t been pleasant to me, and all my hobbies had to take the backseat, so I was determined to make sure this trip went through. I’ve been itching to finally see the world again after so long like a convict locked away in some remote prison camp, and this was my only opportunity to do so before life hits me hard and fast again in the coming months.

Toronto in the late spring was a great teaser for what was to come in the coming weeks, with the weather going back and forth between frost warnings and clear sunny days. Regardless of the bipolar weather to match my equally bipolar tendencies, being there was an experience. The cold air nipping at my already chapped lips as I stood among a stream of busybodies moving between the food trucks and coffee shops that were dwarfed by the skyscrapers that towered over everyone. It felt great seeing myself so small in the big city, allowing my own issues to shrink to their proper size in the grand scheme of things. Or maybe that was just the ease of not having to bear an identity. The beauty of being a total stranger somewhere else. But that’s another story.

Nine days wasn’t enough to explore the city, especially with everything interesting the city had to offer being so far apart from each other. It is cool though how every corner of the city seemingly held another culture within it. Chinatown in Spadina, the Korean contingent in Christie and Bloor St. West, the Portugal neighborhood in Dufferin, among countless others. There’s plenty of reasons why I’m coming back to Canada sooner rather than later (if only I could turn “sooner” into “immediately”), and if I get to return to Toronto, it’s so that I can see the world with only a few taps on a PRESTO card.