Mont-Tremblant, QC, CAN
“Fuck Off!”
“Traveling” during a worldwide pandemic.
As you all know, we are in a worldwide pandemic, if you don’t, well sorry to break it to ya! Anyway, around April 7th my mom got very sick, she was very nauseous, weak and had crazy painful migraines. Fast forward to June 9th, when my 2 younger sisters and I found out that our mom had a benign brain tumor. Yes, benign, but still scary, especially when your mom is a single mom. So now, fast forward to July 11 and the pandemic situation is getting much worst, in the USA. My mom has now been out of the hospital since June 15th and is recovering slowly. She decides that we should drive to Canada. Let me explain a bit further, by “we” she means ME because she can’t drive for the next 3 months haha. Yes, the Canadian border is still closed, however, as Canadian citizens we are still allowed to cross the border. So “we”, my mom and youngest sister, drive up to Mont-Tremblant and settle into our 14 day long mandatory quarantine. Surprisingly not as bad as you’d think after having basically been quarantined in an apartment in NYC since March 10. Not having ever lived in the suburbs I have never truly been exposed to “neighborhood watch”, you know, the neighbors that watch your every move and like to inform you that your doing every, fucking, thing wrong. Soooooo, on day 2 of quarantine we noticed a white mini van driving by the house, very slowly, uncomfortably slowly, and staring at us! Then 2 days later cops show up at our door, they tell us that they’ve received numerous phone calls from a neighbor insisting that they come check on us. The cops were very nice and as soon as we told them that, no, we did not hop the border; that we are Canadian citizens, they told us to have a nice day and they left. Ugh, then a few days later we had another, lovely, nosey neighbors come pop by. She just wanted to let us know that '“she is the best doctor in the region and that we HAVE to take this seriously” because she doesn’t think we are. Anyway, so we changed tactics, instead of just ordinarily self quarantining we put bilingual signs in our car windows, thanking the neighbors for their concern, and we haven’t heard anything since. We are now out of quarantine, and have changed the signs to let the neighbors know that we have successfully completed our quarantine. What’s with this nosy neighbor business? It’s fucking ridiculous! This is my uncle’s house, I’ve been coming here my entire life, and I’ve never met any of the neighbors. You’d think that in a time of social distancing that they would keep their distance, no? Have any of you met your neighbors for the first time, since the pandemic, or are you more of a see the neighbors in the elevator type of person? I know this isn’t really a “travel blog post” but in light of literally not being allowed to travel, this little trip across the border has been the only traveling I’ve been able to do.
Travel wise I’ve truly been blessed throughout my life. I’ve never stayed somewhere longer that I’ve had to and I’ve always been able to go wherever I want. No, I’m not the New Yorker you’re imagining, the one living off a trust fund, and my parents money. I save all of my money, for travel, over the years my family has collected a lot of travel points and working online and not being in school allows me to travel on a whim. Meaning that I can travel when others don’t, so cheaper flights! And of course hostels!!!! Always hostels! In my opinion, hostels are the best place to stay when you’re traveling, especially if you’re like me and prefer to travel alone.
I named the “blog” Where’s Effing? because the most common text I get is: “where are you now?”, “are you in the city?”, or “again?” as in, ‘you’re gone again?’ Also, in college people referred to me as ‘Effing’, obviously! Hence, Where’s Effing? get it?