Another hiking day, this day was especially interesting, I gained alot of insight into Toronto culture and lifestyle. I convinced my friend Karen to come climbing and she brought her friend Patrick. Karen in the most amazing girl. She's 27 and is the definition of the word free spirit. After univeristy she broke up with her long term boyfriend and backpacked around Europe alone, then she moved to the Cayman Islands where she bartended for three years. Apparantly this type of service industry work equals big time bucks in the Cayman Islands and Karen lived on the beach in an apartment with it's own pool and fitness complex. After her years of exotic living in the South, she took a long vacation(by herself) and backpacked around Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. She's a citizen of the world.
Her friend Patrick is also well travelled. He's lived in the Middle East, Switzerland, and Asia. His family is spread out all over the world(his favorite brother is now in the Middle East). While travelling he became an awesome snowboarder, a hiking enthusiast, and he can now speak several languages. After teaching here for a few years he plans on climbing Mount Kilamanjero(or however it's spelled) in Africa. Pat plans on circling the globe as often as he can.
They were telling me their uber interesting life stories(I often feel very dull and small town compared to the people I meet in Korea), and we somehow managed to get seperated from the main group. Pat, Karen, and Myself ended up trekking through wild bush, off the beaten path, with several Koreans(who didn't speak any English). We all got massively sunburnt and were scratched to pieces by thorns, and eaten alive by bugs. After hiking for about five hours we came to a giant temple and from there we decided to climb down the mountains, sans our Korean mountain guides, we basically found a path alongside a stream and hoped that it would lead us down to Seoul. It did. Once we reached the bottom of the mountain we found an outdoor patio and sat in the sun sipping wine coolers and eating a bucket of complimentry almonds and rice cakes.
It was an amazing day.
The coolest thing about Pat and Karen is that they've decided to entirely drop out of the rat race and have seemingly won or defeated the rat race because of this decision. Pat was a computer programmer in Toronto and says that he was really caught up in the idea of owning material things. He graduated from University and went to work for IBM, got a pretty girlfriend, put a small down payment on a fancy downtown Toronto Condo(one that caught 300,000$). Then, in his own words, his life began to suck. The condo payments and car payments were so high that he had to start bartending at night in order to keep making regular payments, he never got to see his pretty girlfriend, and because of the stressful schedule he kept, he began drinking way too much.
One day he decided that he had it. He broke up with his girlfriend, sold the condo, quit the job, and took off to teach ESL. He's been at it for years now and he hasn't looked back. The money he makes doing this job, the destressful nature of the work, and the traveling are way more fun to Pat than being caught up in life in Toronto. He wants to do this for life. Karen shares this perspective. Their only problem or doubt surrounding their chosen wandering lifestyle is that they both love Canada and it's beautiful mountains, fields, and free healthcare.
On one hand I totally understand this attitude. My lifestyle in Korea is one hundred percent better than my lifestyle at home. I can afford to go out for dinner every night if I want, I can do cool things on the weekends(In July I'm going to see Oasis and Weezer play live!), I can travel to other countries in Asia for only a few hundred dollars. I was always stressed about money on Prince Edward Island. I am never stressed abotu money or bills here. It`s great. On the other hand, I can't help but think that life doesn't have to be one of these two options(rat race vs. traveling forever), it can be a little more if you plan it right.
I suggested that living on the East Coast is a good way to both avoid the pitfulls of getting trapped into a super material driven lifestyle and enjoy what Canada has to offer. Karen and Pat scoffed at this idea, "yeah, but who wants to live on the east coast?", which is a fair question. To people living in Calgary, Toronto, or Montreal, the notion of living in the East probably does seem bleak. We don't have that same type of fast paced excitement. We also don't have traffic jams or crazy crime rates. Drugs aren't the same problem that they are in TO. We have reasonable tution rates at out universities and are surrounded by beautiful natural scenery. It doesn`t really matter if I don`t own a nice car(or even know how to drive) in Halifax. I can walk wherever I want to go.
I guess the whole point of this whole rant is that I keep rediscovering how much I love and appreciate Eastern Canada. I don`t think that moving back there is re-enlisting in the rat race, it`s like an option C.
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