I have to pace myself to see all of Kingston! I'm used to larger cities where I can never see the whole thing in one or two weekends.
In Kingston, I feel like a foreigner because I'm so used to living in larger cities now. BUT I grew up in a town of a similar size just on another side of the lake. unlike travelling, I feel like I eerily know all the codes of this town, and yet I am a stranger. It's a town where people are freer to talk to you even if you don't know them, telling you that you don't have to pay the parking meter on holidays, talking to you in line at the grocery store, saying sorry and thank you more often than I've heard in the past 10 years. Maybe it's just tourist season, but I feel as if people here take more time to tell you things and explain things. Just today I went into Cooke's fine foods asking for Jaffa Cakes. I feel in a larger city they'd say no, sorry and then move on to the next customer but here she explained why (when they get them they're close to expiration and so they didn't sell enough for it to be worth it, but if I come back around Christmas they might stock them because it's a sure sell then).
In conclusion, Kingston is not my home and yet it eerily is, being in Central Ontario, I've never been more "home" than ever before, if home means where I grew up. Meanwhile, where I grew up is has been sucked into an endless cycle of new housing development which is all part of the huge growth of the Greater Toronto Area.
In Kingston, I feel like a foreigner because I'm so used to living in larger cities now. BUT I grew up in a town of a similar size just on another side of the lake. unlike travelling, I feel like I eerily know all the codes of this town, and yet I am a stranger. It's a town where people are freer to talk to you even if you don't know them, telling you that you don't have to pay the parking meter on holidays, talking to you in line at the grocery store, saying sorry and thank you more often than I've heard in the past 10 years. Maybe it's just tourist season, but I feel as if people here take more time to tell you things and explain things. Just today I went into Cooke's fine foods asking for Jaffa Cakes. I feel in a larger city they'd say no, sorry and then move on to the next customer but here she explained why (when they get them they're close to expiration and so they didn't sell enough for it to be worth it, but if I come back around Christmas they might stock them because it's a sure sell then).
In conclusion, Kingston is not my home and yet it eerily is, being in Central Ontario, I've never been more "home" than ever before, if home means where I grew up. Meanwhile, where I grew up is has been sucked into an endless cycle of new housing development which is all part of the huge growth of the Greater Toronto Area.
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