It’s been a little over 3 weeks since I left Canada, Although you wouldn’t tell by the coffee shop I’m sitting in, I could easily confuse for one back home. Is it the faux brick walls, or the soft jazz, or the 7 dollar coffee; If you were to drop me in here, the only real change would be my order from “a double double” too “coffee chu say oh”. Maybe it’s the internet, it connects everything. I can sit in a street corner in Seoul and facetime my sister back in Toronto. But for all these little creature comforts that remind me of home that I’ve searched out, there are 10 city blocks that remind me I certainly am not in Kansas any more.

The thought of traveling is something that has been on the back boiler plate for me for a long while. A little over two months ago I left my job in Montreal, I subleased my apartment, got rid of my car, sold anything of value, gave away what didn’t go, and decided it was time to set off. But like I said, I have 3 weeks worth of catching up to do, so where to start.

I left Toronto, (where I’ve always kept and called home base, despite where ever I’ve lived) and after 14 hours of daylight over Northern Canada, the Arctic, Russia and China, we landed in Incheon just outside of Seoul. We went through immigration, baggage claim and it was straight onto a bus down to Gwanju.

After the 4 hour bus ride, and coming to the realization the driver had played way too much GTA, we arrived in Gwanju for our orientation. 20 hours of straight travel from my parents garage in Canada to a hotel on the side of a mountain in the southern regions of Korea, I had arrived.