Whenever people have asked me how my trip back home went, I have answered something like, "It was so great! It was wonderful to see everyone, and I had a great and mostly relaxed holiday... but Edmonton is sooooo big!! I had forgotten what a big city it is."
Seriously, every single time I got in the car to go anywhere, all I could think was, "Has Edmonton always been this big???" It felt like I had to be driving for 15 minutes at 60 km/hr (37.5 mph for you Brit readers who can't convert km/h to mph without using google) in order to get somewhere. I mean, anywhere. The grocery store, the shopping mall, anyone's house, the pool, anywhere!! Whenever I brought this up during my visit, people would invariably respond, "Ah, yes, but you can get anywhere in the city in under half an hour." How is that true? I mean, experientially, yes, it's true, but doesn't that kind of not make sense? And yet, it's mostly true! You can invariably drive from one location in the city to any other location in under 30 minutes!!! I feel like Jerry Seinfeld right now! This is blowing my mind!
Which brings us to this morning: the second blowing of my mind.
I met a woman who happened to come from Saskatchewan - she has lived in the UK for 18 years now, and has that half-and-half accent. You know the one. When we started chatting about Canada, it came up that we had just returned from a visit. And I, of course, brought up the size factor. And she responded, "Everytime I go to Canada, it strikes me just how small of a city Cambridge is."
Whoa. Mind = Blown.
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