I’m sitting at a coffee shop on Hastings Street, one of six cafés within five small blocks. There are also 11 hair salons/barber shops and six sushi restaurants inside this half mile stretch from Macdonald to Willingdon Ave. I guess the demand is high enough, judging from the persistent tide of people and cars flowing down the road. In the rain the sidewalks are a sea of bright umbrellas, in the sun they’re a flood of strollers and shopping bags hustling to the bus stop. I don’t think I’ve seen the same person twice on all of my trips to and from; I sit in silence next to a statue of a person on the bus, tossing a seldom-heard thank you to the driver as I step off. This is often just how it is here, but standing beside my memory of small and friendly Kodiak it makes the city even larger and me even smaller. 

Yet this atmosphere also allows little breakthroughs to shine brighter. I was more than happy to engage with the older gentleman on the skytrain who asked me where I was from, and the couple I sat next to on the ferry who were excited to hear my thoughts on the two universities I was considering. I appreciate the man on the bus who deliberately moved seats to separate a young woman from a man who was clearly making her uncomfortable, the woman who made eye contact with me and said hello while she was passing by, the black and white cat who would repeatedly run up to me and wrap himself around my legs on my sunny walks home.  It’s the little things that make you smile, that make you feel seen in the mass of people. And when the sun is shining the city scenery becomes much more cheerful. It unveils the garden in the middle of downtown with benches for sitting and reading a book, and encourages spontaneous adventures to Lynn Canyon way over on the north shore. It shares the beautiful 12th-floor view of lofty buildings backed by snow-frosted mountains and the sight of the city skyline down a narrow back road. It’s a different kind of pretty. It’s a state of mind, which is probably the most important thing I can pack on my trip. Because coming from Kodiak, sometimes it’s hard to see how other places and ways of life can compare. And that’s the thing: they don’t have to compare, you just have to find the little qualities that make a new home feel more familiar.