Hong Kong – I was born and spent the first 8 months of my life here, where my family is from. Aptly described by Michael Kors as "Beverly Hills on steroids," Hong Kong is a vibrant and exciting place that requires a certain level of street-smartness to survive in. In fact, months before I visited Hong Kong for the first (and so far, only) time when I was 10, my mom and aunts prepped me for weeks about how to navigate through dense crowds, how to find a seat on the subway, how not to mess my clothes up eating street food, etc.! It's also where Cantonese is widely spoken - a dialect that is not pretty to listen to at all but is very close to my heart, because it's very colloquial and cheeky. :) Being from Hong Kong also creates a unique cultural identity in me, because my entire family (with the exception of my younger cousins) were born there when it was a British colony. I've found that it's nearly impossible to describe to people who don't share a similar situation what it means to be bicultural - especially, I've personally found, if they're from Europe. And for me, my situation is even more complicated because I grew up in Canada! Which brings me to my next place...
Toronto – I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, which are safe and peaceful. I’m very proud of being from Toronto, and I self-identify first and foremost as a Canadian. In fact, I've been known to raise my hackles when
people sh*t on Canadians. :P I’m now back living in my hometown after stints in the following places:
Rivière-du-Loup – I lived here, a teeny, tiny, little town, for five weeks when I was 17 years old. I was participating in the Summer Language Bursary Program – now called
Explore – a fantastic, government-subsidized program for youth to learn French (or English, if you’re from Québec). It was a lovely experience but it also re-enforced my belief that I am an incorrigible city girl. It was such a small town that you could literally walk around the entire place in under an hour.
The photo above is a picture of "downtown"! Everyone was so bored that at least a quarter of the program participants ended up getting a tattoo and/or a piercing. Apparently, it was so boring that people resorted to mutilating their bodies!
London, Ontario – I know. I too am flummoxed by why this incorrigible city girl chose to attend university in another tiny town, thereby committing to live there for a few years. Then again, I suppose there aren’t a lot of choices in Ontario to begin with – the only universities in a major city are all in my hometown and I wanted to go away. I guess I could’ve gone to McGill or UBC, but hindsight is 20/20! Not that I regret it though, because I made some great friends there. But living in a small “city” pretending to be a Big City that also happened to be located on the snow belt of Canada was trying!
Nice, France – When I was 21 years old, during my final year of undergrad, I went on exchange to Nice. Originally, I wanted to apply to go on exchange to Hong Kong because I’d only been there once since I left at 8 months old (whereas I’d already been to Europe 2-3 times at that point), but the only credits I had left to complete for my degree were French literature, so France it was. It was a wonderful learning experience but, um, I would’ve preferred Paris, or any other large, cosmopolitan city. Nice is pretty but it’s more of a retirement town and, I kid you not, I only saw TWO good-looking boys in the year that I lived there. When I went to visit my friend in Paris, there was an abundance of hot guys. Granted, she went to a private business school that was attended by royalty and aristrocrats from all over the world, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee stude body hotness. But all there were in Nice were old people who’d whip you with their canes in public transportation. Also, there was barely any ethnic food, the pace of life was extremely sloooooow, and everything was super expensive because, like many Mediterranean cities right on the sea, it was also a playground for the Haves. So it was nice, but I would’ve preferred living in a bigger city with more going on. To read more about my experiences living there, click
here.
Madrid, Spain – When I was first returned home from living in France, I suffered from intense, violent, and frequent waves of wanderlust. They say that coming home from living abroad is anti-climactic, but it was nearly traumatic for me – I just wanted to be anywhere BUT my hometown. The thought of finding a Big Girl Job and settling down was completely unacceptable to me at the time*. Also, as
I've mentioned before, I briefly toyed with the idea of going to law school, and I didn’t realize until after applying to a bunch of places and going through all the motions that I didn’t want to be there – but my family was packing on the pressure. So I followed my heart to Spain and, conveniently, escaped law school. It wasn’t all rainbows and cupcakes, but it was one of the best half years of my life! To read more about my experiences living in Madrid, click
here.
*funny how quickly having tens of thousands of dollars in student debt can sober you up though!
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