Please Hold On-Reflections on a Voyage Back

Please Hold On-Reflections on a Voyage Back

After 2 years away, I finally made it back to the Vancouver, BC area. On March 17th, the 2 year anniversary of me leaving canada during a wild twist in my freshman year of college, I landed back at YVR airport. I worked my way through the terminal, customs, and out to the skytrain. 

God I missed the skytrain. I missed it so much. Being able to get around the area quickly while just sitting back and letting the trains go is so nice. It’s something I struggle to live without. Good public transit has become so important to me, and will be incredibly important for whatever city I choose to move to. 

When I got to my hotel in surrey, I was immediately reminded of what a microcosm of capitalism Surrey Central is. Homeless people sleeping in the shadows of High rises and luxury hotels that stand a couple dozen stories high. Consumption intersects with labor, boom intersects with bust, the ivory tower and the slum are next door neighbors. Surrey gets a bad rep, but it’s a fine city. So long as you can keep track of the human in among the wealth and poverty, it’s an incredible place. 

Good food is abundant across the lower mainland. The Vancouver area has a lot of wonderful local chains, small businesses, and so much outstanding Asian food. In a week I had Chinese, Japanese, and Thai food, and was impressed every time. The diversity of the population reflects the variety of food. Going from Boise, ID (90% white) to the Vancouver area (<50% white) is a radical shift in who I’m around. 

Being around the friends I made during my half a year in the area was incredibly refreshing. I’ve missed just sharing space and chatting with them. I cannot entirely quantify what they mean to me. But I know without them, Vancouver wouldn’t feel like home. 

Vancouver feels like home, but visiting as a tourist is pretty sweet as well. Science world rules. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC is fascinating. There’s no lack of things to do and places to see. Getting back to transit, the ability to get around without being able to rent a car is a necessity for all cities in my opinion. 

I’d be remiss if I wrote anything about Vancouver without mentioning Simon Fraser University. The university that brought me to the city for the first time over three years ago. The university that got me out of Madison at the age of 17. The university I still kinda love. The sustainable energy engineering program I started out in wasn’t for me. I’m not cut out to be an engineer. But it was great to be back in the SEE building and sitting in on classes I didn’t have to try to understand. The SEE building is sick as hell and I love being in it. The Burnaby campus is incredible too. Fresh mountain air, incredibly views, and more brutalist architecture than anyone could ever possibly need. Being back makes me want to apply there for Grad School. 

Though I’ve been considering grad school really since this semester started, being back on the SFU campus has really busted open that can of worms. However it keeps me thinking: am I considering grad school at both SFU and UBC because I really want to go, or because I want to live in Vancouver again? Of course I’m still considering grad school as a whole, and there are several American schools that have my eye (hey there Utah). Grad school is still a big question mark on my future. But then again my whole future is a mess of punctuation anyways. 

Returning back to Vancouver and being faced with the reality that I was only there for a week and would settle back down in Boise also opened my eyes to my attitude about Boise. For quite a while, I thought I disliked boise cause it couldn’t live up to the standard set for me by Madison. But really the standard that Madison set for me paled in comparison to just how much Vancouver feels like the right city for me. A large, multicultural city with good transit and incredible food that despite its size isn’t overwhelming is an unfair bar to judge Boise against. I’ve been unfair to Boise, I think internally the more that I hated boise, the more it affirmed that I had made the right choice by going to Vancouver for school. It made the regrets I felt primarily associated with having to leave, and not with the fact that Vancouver, despite all my love for it, was not at all perfect. I wasn't a perfect person living a perfect life while I was there. I made mistakes, I have regrets about my time there. But by erasing those regrets and instead attributing all of my sadness about Vancouver to the act of leaving I could absolve myself of blame for anything that happened there. There are things I should have done, there are people I should have talked to more. But we live and we learn. And I’m going to keep living and keep learning in Boise for the next couple of years. 

I’m just about to touch down in Boise. So my final thoughts are this: 1) Vancouver is incredible, the people, the food, the atmosphere, all incredible. 2) I’ve still got a lot to learn about myself and the city of Vancouver. And I’ll keep learning about myself through the city of Vancouver. 3) grad school is a big decision I’m gonna have to make pretty soon. 4) Boise is a good place for me to call home.