On the first day of fall break, I flew from Baltimore to Toronto to visit my best friend, who is studying engineering at the University of Toronto (popularly abbreviated as U of T). The last time we saw each other was in July, during the final leg of our grad trip in Seoul. It had been about two months since then, which I realized was the longest we’ve been apart — that’s the thing about high school, you’re never really separated from your best friends for more than the two months of summer break — so, after many tearful phone calls, she finally convinced me to visit her.
I would consider this my first real visit to Toronto. (According to my parents, we came once when I was one year old while they were scouting for a city to settle in after immigrating from China to Canada, but, because it was the dead of winter, they chose Vancouver instead.) The flight from BWI to Pearson was supposed to take two hours, but only took one. After I breezed through the Canadian Citizens line, the customs officer glanced at my passport before saying, “Welcome home.” It was strangely comforting, even though Toronto wasn’t really home.
My friend lives in Chestnut Residence, home to most of U of T’s first-year engineering students. A fifteen-minute walk from campus, it’s a renovated three-star hotel that directly faces a much fancier DoubleTree by Hilton. The security guards are strict there. You have to wave your daily colored guest pass or room key every time you line up for the elevator, or they will call you out with an irritated “hey” or “excuse me.” My yellow guest pass somehow worked for three days straight without being checked, which made the whole routine feel somewhat pointless.
My friend carved out time from her hectic nine-to-five class schedule to give me a tour of downtown Toronto. On the first night, I helped myself to three orders of heart-shaped mango pudding soaked in mango sauce and condensed milk. For the first time in months, I had congee, which I had yet to find in any Chinese restaurant in Baltimore. I saw the right type of custard buns (the runny kind) on the menu and was given chopsticks instead of forks with my takeout. I walked under office buildings, past yoga and Lagree and pilates studios and botox clinics, by chain hotels and through Eaton Centre while sipping Molly Tea.
On campus, I waited at food trucks with lines around the block and snuck into a chemistry lecture with 300 other students. Between classes, I sat in libraries with crammed tables and eavesdropped on arguments during group project meetings. Everything seemed a lot bigger and livelier there. Even the drama was interesting. One night in the common room, my friend pointed out all of the “opps” she had already made in the first two months of school.
I suppose my other reason for visiting my friend was because I subconsciously wanted to escape. I was halfway through my first semester at Hopkins and felt stuck in the eat-study-sleep schedule I had fallen into. The closest thing I had to comfort me was Instagram reels with comments from lonely classmates who felt the same thing and promises from alumni that it would all get better by graduation. Still, I couldn’t see myself here for four years.
I thought it would all be better in Toronto, and in a sense it was. But this alternate life that I lived for four days didn’t feel the way I thought it would. Even though my best friend was by my side, I couldn’t help but feel like a trespasser in every space we visited.
At U of T, I really didn’t belong. I didn’t instinctively know where the card readers were on the wall or how many seconds you needed on the microwave. I didn’t know their café’s equivalent of Kitschenette’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or which soups were the least salty in the dining hall. I didn’t recognize anyone we walked past in the dorms. All of these things I know at Hopkins, and maybe I don’t need to wait until graduation before I feel like I belong.
Angel Wang is a freshman from Vancouver, Canada studying Writing Seminars. In her column, she writes about the people, places and passages that help make sense of what’s in her mind.
