My
name is Ryan Belbin, and I grew up in Pasadena, a small town on the west coast of Newfoundland. A few years into a degree in English Language and Literature
at the province’s sole university, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Corner
Brook’s Grenfell campus), I moved to St. John’s in 2009, to finish my degree at
the main campus there. Having immersed myself in the local music scene and
journalistic writing for The Muse, The Independent, and The Overcast, I was sure that when I
graduated, Tom Power was going to fly in from Toronto and offer me his job
at CBC.
That
didn’t happen.
So,
I turned to travel. It started as an excuse, running away from something that, in hindsight, was really
a sense of uncertainty; of not knowing what that something was, because it was
by definition a lack of anything. Even though I had my degree, I enrolled in a
few more courses at MUN in the fall semester of 2011 – except that the courses
were at the university’s tiny satellite campus in Harlow, England, a 45-minute
train trip from London. For three months, I had classes on satire with Canadian
comedienne Mary Walsh, saw some really fantastic performances on the stages of some impressive West End theatres (and developed the gall to insult some of the terrible ones),
and got so accustomed to life in London that I ended up travelling beyond
there, to Scotland, Spain, France, and Sweden. Oh, and I saw a Katy Perry
concert.
After a return to reality for 2012, I got accepted into law school at the University of New Brunswick in September of 2013, and spent just about every waking minute before classes started that year exploring the bounds of mountains, rivers, oceans, fields, and myself in New Zealand, a tiny blip on the other side of the map that now houses a sizeable chunk of my soul. More than that, I took the best parts of the experience with me, and even though every day it becomes more of a memory, more of "that thing I did when I was in my early twenties," it's still always a thing that I did.
I'm finished law school now, if that's any indication of where the time has gone. Unreal. But before I did that, I wanted one last sojourn, so off to Europe I went on an exchange semester – to VU University, a campus located on the cusp of Amsterdam, one of the most beautiful cities I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. It also happens to be very close to Schiphol Airport, so it wasn't just canals on the agenda for the autumn of 2015.
After a return to reality for 2012, I got accepted into law school at the University of New Brunswick in September of 2013, and spent just about every waking minute before classes started that year exploring the bounds of mountains, rivers, oceans, fields, and myself in New Zealand, a tiny blip on the other side of the map that now houses a sizeable chunk of my soul. More than that, I took the best parts of the experience with me, and even though every day it becomes more of a memory, more of "that thing I did when I was in my early twenties," it's still always a thing that I did.
I'm finished law school now, if that's any indication of where the time has gone. Unreal. But before I did that, I wanted one last sojourn, so off to Europe I went on an exchange semester – to VU University, a campus located on the cusp of Amsterdam, one of the most beautiful cities I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. It also happens to be very close to Schiphol Airport, so it wasn't just canals on the agenda for the autumn of 2015.
For now, my top five list of cities around the world includes Wellington, London, Amsterdam, Dubrovnik . . . and, right there on a chunk of rock in the North Atlantic, a hop skip and jump away from Cape Spear, St. John's. Here's the site of my post-law school articling, the next big thing in this unfolding story. Stay tuned though, because sitting still has proven to be a difficult thing for me.
Cheers,
rb
No comments:
Post a Comment