Let’s represent Canada on the world stage

Posted by admin on Apr 13, 2010 in Arts & Culture | 0 comments

Well here you are, it is the end of the year and you are not sure what to do with your summer. You are tired of school and you want some adventure. So what do you do?

Your summer opportunities are not limited to just what is in your hometown, a whole world is out there, waiting for you to encounter.
Last year I did not know what I wanted to do. I was bored with home and felt like university was something that could wait so I thought of what I could do.

I ultimately decided on doing a working holiday. A working holiday is when you go on a vacation to a foreign place, find a job and have an extended holiday. I decided to live in London, England and after some difficulty finding a job, I ended up working full time at a little photo lab in Fulham, West London. It was great. I would work with some very cool people in the mornings and explore the city in the evenings.

I went to church at Hillsong Church London, a massive church of around 9000 and made loads of friends there and was amazed at the amount of Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and Americans that I would meet. The sad thing was how few Canadians were around. In spite of the Student Work Abroad Program (SWAP) that is run by the Canadian government, there is still very few of us floating around discovering what life is like in different cultures. I am very proud of where I come from and would not permanently trade the life I have in Vancouver for another city, but there is tons of fun and experience to be gained by living in a different part of the world.

The nicest part about working in a different culture is that people are genuinely interested in learning about what Canada is like and what makes it significant to the world. In our post Olympic world I relish an opportunity to discuss how great the Great White North is with others. Especially when all the rest of the Commonwealth seems to be doing the same thing.

As with every experience and choice to be made, there are negatives to doing a working holiday. One is obviously the fact that you are separating yourself from your bubble. It is nice to live in what we know and it is never an easy thing to jump away from what we already appreciate and go to to something unknown but the reward is definitely worth the risk.