I am blessed to know two countries, two languages, and two ways of living, however there is a saying in Italian: non si possono avere due paradisi: uno di qua e uno di là. You can’t have two paradises, one here and one there. You can’t have both at once. I’m back in Canada, dreaming under the blue skies of Alberta and for the moment, it is paradise. Perhaps one day, many years from now, I’ll have the same feeling of belonging, the same tears, when the plane lands in Milan. Of this, I am uncertain, but there is one thing that I know for sure- you will never catch me yelling across a crowded piazza upon glimpsing the tricolore, the Italian flag. That’s something I’d only do and will always do…for a maple leaf. ​- by Jasmine Mah for EXPLORE CANADA, Peace Collective 

For today's post, I'm sharing some of my photos that my friends and I took in Banff National Park this past weekend. You may have already seen some or most of these if you follow or , I've been posting a ton over these past two weeks so make sure to join me on those sites as well! 
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First off, I have to say that this is not just about Italians, but about people in general.  I hate when people comment on things that they know nothing about it, in my opinion, if you have no knowledge base on a topic, you shouldn’t really be commenting on it. The very least you could do is read a Wikipedia page about Canada before telling me about my country. I have come across absolutely every assumption about Canada during my two years here in Italy. The only thing non-Canadians seem to know about Canada is that it is cold. That’s usually the first comment after I answer the question “di dove sei?” (where are you from?). And yes, it is cold. But it can also be NOT cold. People think that it is eternal winter in Canada, across the entire country that is the second largest in the world. The knowledge of Canada ends right about here, after the cold and the eternal winter bit. It frustrates me that a country as beautiful as Canada doesn’t get the attention that it deserves, although on the other hand, maybe we should keep Canada a secret. This is due in part to media portrayal as well. Italians love to fantasize about cities like Los Angeles, even though, let’s be honest, the greater part of L.A. is not how it looks on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.  
 
Another thing that people tend not to know about Canada is that it is home to modern, North American cities. With skyscrapers and shit. Shock and awe, yes, exactly like in the United States. In fact, exactly as if Canada were in North America! I don’t blame foreigners for not recognizing the name of my city- Edmonton. However, the immediate assumption is that it is a hamlet, a village of a thousand people dispersed in the Arctic tundra. That’s fine to assume, but this line of thought continues even after I explain that actually, Edmonton is the capital of the province of Alberta that Google tells me has a population of over 932, 546 people as of the 2016 census. Milan’s population is 1.3 million and Turin’s is 870, 702. So yes uninformed people, the population of the hamlet town of Edmonton is a bit under that of Milan’s and more than that of the teeny-tiny village of Turin. Next, I’m usually faced with describing the fact that we have a downtown that doesn’t look like the far west with tumbleweeds blowing around. This normally has to be supplemented by photographs because people continue to imagine something akin to the The Wall in Game of Thrones, with all of us shuffling about in furs like Jon Snow.  Then I talk about how Edmonton also has the longest stretch of connected urban parkland in all of North America: the city’s river valley is 22 times larger than Central Park in New York City. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

It’s consistently said that travel is the cure to ignorance and I understand that travel, especially across the Atlantic, is not economically feasible for everyone. But inform yourselves the old-fashioned way. Ask questions, read books or at least scroll through Google images of different countries. Do all of this before telling me how relieved I must be to be “out of the cold” and living in a “real city”. I live in Bergamo, it’s 115,223 people. Remember Edmonton’s number? 932,546. I think it’s safe to say that I was living in a real city before as well.
 
The final cherry on top is that people have asked me when I am going to “bring over” my family. They don’t intend it in the vacation sense but in the “when are you going to save your family from the hard life they are enduring in the third world country of Canada?” When I tell them that they are not planning on moving here, everyone gets really confused. They don’t want to move here?! No, they don’t want to leave upper middle-class North American suburbia to live in Italy. Shocking, I know.
 
This has been a bit of a rant but it’s only because these are the kinds of comments that I’ve heard consistently having been an expat since 2014. I was actually inspired to write this post after accidently stumbling upon an old video of Jim Carrey doing stand-up comedy and making fun of the same issue.

Check it out here (there’s also Italian subtitles!):

Oh and visit Canada when you get the chance. We promise it's not always cold and it's kinda pretty. 
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So sorry for being MIA on the blog these days, however it's been a whirlwind coming back, heading to Vegas, and re-coming back to Edmonton a second time. I hope to do a post with a few Las Vegas photos soon depending on how soon I can tear myself away from my two newest addictions: The Mindy Project and walking under the snow. In fact, it's so pretty outside that I'm fully prepared to write just a few more lines and call it a day here. I never would've thought that I'd be so enthusiastic about shovelling snow but it's my favourite pastime since I've returned to Canada, I can't get enough. A few days ago I took my camera out and about my neighbourhood and here are the results- I hope they give you a sense of where I'm from (I'm a full-blown ice princess, like Elsa but with black hair and the inability to sing).

International love stories are way more common than I would have ever imagined. I think this is because in Italy, I've been acutely more "in-touch" with the expat community and the inevitable reasons why they are here (the overwhelming response is per amore). Isn't that lovely? Just the thought immediately warms my heart. I wish I could recount all the amazing stories I've heard since moving to Italy, they all belong in books to be read by future generations in those rare instances when you lose faith in love. 

I admit that I always dreamed of a love without borders, the kind that you read about in the travel literature section. Forged between two countries and two languages, a sophisticated, wrenching kind of jet-set relationship emerges whether you wanted it or not. Happy moments captured all over the world also fail to convey the hardships of leaving...leaving each other, leaving family and friends, leaving jobs, leaving home to build another. It's the crazy, stupid love that does it you know. Massi and I have been living our crazy, stupid love story for 7 years now (as Facebook reminded me) and so here are some of our very worldly moments- can you guess where we are in each of them?  Also, if you have an international love story to share, please do! Leave it in the comments or e-mail yours truly! x

I promise Sicily photos are going up soon, hopefully this weekend, but in the meantime here's a little ode to my roots in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada- backroads and blue skies galore. I can't think of a more authentic Albertan moment than this one: beer in hand and getting ready to ride horses! The only thing missing are my cowboy boots! 

I'm pretty sure yesterday hit somewhere in the 30 degrees C range here in Bergamo. I rode around in a cotton crop top and floral skirt and was near boiling point. Today it's supposed to storm and possibly even hail, what a great start to the weekend eh? This sudden change of weather reminds me of Edmonton- it's said in Alberta that if you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes. Here's some photographs to "cool off" that were taken by one of Massi's best friends, Simone, while him and now-wife were visiting us in good ol' Alberta. Anyways, this weekend Massi has a bachelor party and I'm off to the Italian Riviera with the fabulous Michela, a fellow Canadian and likely the ONLY other young Canadian expat currently living in Bergamo. This means we became instant friends, hence our fabulous friends trip to go ogle yachts in Portofino. See you all on the flip-side...that's Monday in my books. If you want to see what I"m up to on the Riviera without waiting for Monday's catch-up blog post, follow on Instagram and be a creeper like I am! 

Photographs taken in Banff National Park in December. 

Since this blog is a love letter not only to my adopted home of Italy, but also to my forever motherland of Alberta, Canada, I've been curating lovely photographs taken by friends and fellow Albertans of where I used to live.  The photo above is of one of my former classmates and pharmacy colleagues, Chanelle; see more work by the photographer on Instagram . Also, yesterday, the field right outside Massi's parents' house was being worked and there were actually bales of hay and tractors in the mix. It was fun to see the Italian farmers out there, shirts off. It's not like they had the flag tattooed on their backs, but the men here somehow inexplicably exude "Italian". Maybe it was the long hair, tied back into a high-fashion-magazine worthy pony tail, the lack of plaid, or the vintage-cool tractor? Boh (that's Italian for "dunno" but ten times more fun to say, give it a try and you won't be able to stop!). Have a great start to the week and if you happen to be from Alberta and have some killer photographs to share, send me an e-mail or tweet me up and I'll share. 

This is so off-topic (as in nothing to do with Italy) but as I've mentioned in previous posts like this one and this one, I've kind of been overly-obsessed with my country music because it reminds me of home. Also, the Calgary Stampede is coming up in July. Never heard of it? It's only the best time you'll ever have with your cowboy boots on (refer to above photo) North of the Dixie line. Found this quote by my/pretty much every female's current country love, Sam Hunt. Thought it was cute and the last line really resonates with me.

Hunt says some [songs] were inspired by a woman he dated after moving to Nashville. "She's sort of somewhere in between a city girl and a country girl," he said. "She absolutely fit in when she was hanging out with me in Georgia, and she lived in a liberal, kind of hippie town that had an art school, so she fits in right there too." That woman might represent a significant portion of Hunt's listeners — young people in high school, college, or just beyond it, who can relate to the culture of both small towns and big cities.

I'm not a full-blown country girl by any means, not like some of my girlfriends who were born and raised in small town Alberta. But I've always felt like a city girl with a country soul which explains my love of country music, cowboys, backroads, and you know, there's always something bout' a truck. In case you don't know Canadian geography so well, Alberta is the second province from the West and it's all prairies and canola fields between its big cities. It's really gorgeous, but the kind of gorgeous that maybe you can't appreciate until you don't get to see it everyday: an endless blue sky kissed by the brightest yellow fields. It's Canada's version of The South in the USA (the photo above was taken by Massi in Texas)- part of the school physical education curriculum is learning how to line-dance and two-step to Fishin' in the Dark. Being in Italy, there's just absolutely nothing reminiscent of the countryside that I knew growing up or the music we would blast from speakers in the summer. I'm going through a kind of withdrawal. It just goes to show that no matter where you are, don't take it for granted. There's an Italian saying that you can't enjoy two paradises. We've chosen Italy as our paradise, but if you're reading this and wishing you were somewhere else, just think that there's someone out there dreaming of driving down a dirt road, wind in her hair. x

There is a scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love with Julia Roberts where she is at dinner al fresco in Rome with a group of international friends and they decide to give each city a word. New York is ambition. Rome is sex (how presumptuous indeed!). I thought I would do this for each new city I visit as well as some from past travels. Toronto’s word is transitioning.