Ever dream of taking a cooking class in Thailand? Making pizza from scratch with a nonna in Napoli? Drinking Malbec while waiting for your carne asada (a fortunately long wait) in Argentina?
I credit Toronto with inspiring me to eat my way around the world. You can almost do it by visiting that city alone. Pho Hung on Bloor Street introduced me to jackfruit smoothies and chicken pho’. Mother’s Dumplings in Chinatown was my initiation into har gow. Living in Koreatown was the reason I fell in love with kimchi jigae and bibimbap. The annual Hot & Spicy Food Festival, Caribana and The Real jerk restaurant on Queen at Broadview taught me all about Jamaican jerk and rice and beans. Italian was at Da Gianna e Maria (now closed) and Enoteca Sociale. Local food was Jamie Kennedy’s wine bar and the St. Lawrence Saturday morning farmer’s market. Pierogies and my first cabbage roll came from the market’s basement, and so did mangoes, rambutan, figs, dates and blackberries. No, I’d never had blackberries before.
I started cooking the dishes in my kitchen but all this eating made me want to go to the source.
I ended up writing a series on Asian cooking classes for FineDiningLovers.com, stopping off in Krabi Province in Thailand, Panang in Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. I visited markets and even made that pho’ soup with a non-English speaking woman who owned the Airbnb I stayed in in HCMC.
I found a round-about way of working abroad, but coming out of school, I was always interested in longer projects. I looked into jobs abroad, work/study programs, internships, volun-tourism projects (checking out the entry visa requirements and trying to discern the more reputable ones from ones that would leave me with an ethical heartache). I looked
I spent two months in Lima, Peru (no, I never went to Machu Pichu – there was too much ceviche and sushi to try in Lima, plus my fruit vendor Carlos at the Mercado Surquillo would have no one to laugh at if I left) and met former Peace Corps volunteers, medical students on exchange working with local research hospitals and studying neurocysticercosis and another working on a project for women with sexually transmitted diseases.
There are tons of ways to get abroad. As a Montrealer, I know about the work Visas that let young French professionals come to the province, essentially populating the Plateau neighbourhood. I have friends who went to Australia, where the inexpensive work Visa allows anyone from a country in the British Commonwealth to transplant their life for awhile.
Full disclosure, I was approached by SearchJobsAbroad.com and iVisa.com to add a link to their sites from my blog post, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think they were providing a service. There are lots of other international job search resources, and if you don’t find what you’re looking for at SearchJobsAbroad.com or the entry visa you need at iVisa.com, try another place. Montreal has an annual Go Abroad Expo at the Palais de Congrès. Most universities and even some high schools will have an international job/study/volunteer fair.
I often think about how much I’m really getting out of my travels. Is it selfish to spend a day motorbiking along a Malaysian coast in search of miracle fruit at a mountain-side orchard? I’m certainly not always doing it for the benefit of others, even if I taught a couple masterclasses in Lima and gave a few performances. But I feel like my life has expanded because of the different places I’ve been, ways of life I’ve experienced and people I’ve met. And there are so many more places to see. I’m a big believer in the idea that most of us need to get out of our comfort zones every now and then. Ever struggled in a foreign language? You’ll probably be stronger for it. Had to navigate foreign apartment renting? Missed Christmas with family? Made friends with people from four continents and roasted a turkey to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving together? Made soba noodles from scratch? Purple corn pudding with pineapple in Peru? Sambal in Malaysia? Boeuf bourguignon in France with colleagues? Pierogies in Poland on a Tinder date the week you arrive?
To-die-for gluten free cinnamon buns at the Ferry Wharf Farmer’s Market in San Francisco? Empañadas after your Spanish language class in Costa Rica? Been hit on by a kid 10 years younger than you with a machete selling you fresh young coconut off the back of a truck? Not saying I did all of those (I haven’t even been to Poland), but someone certainly has.
It’s not always easy, but it’s always been worth it. I hope you, too, get to have an adventure, whether you leave home or not.
Leave a Reply