A Love Letter to the Kings and the North.

by Anna Laudares (Brazil)

Making a local connection Canada

Going to study English in Canada for three weeks, one thing I did not expect: to fall in love. Love happens all the time, but that time, I didn't fall for a person. I fell in love with a team, with a idea. The kings of the north, the Toronto Raptors. I never cared about basketball or sports at all until that cold January, where I enjoyed the cold so unknown for a Brazilian living in the southeast. So, what was so special about that team, that place, that made me feel like that? I guess everything. You enter the arena, you see people. Toronto is a multi-cultural city, and coming from a small town where everyone looks the same, you feel in a different world. You see people gathering for a common goal: supporting a team. And there I felt like I belonged. That day we played Boston, which I learned held a little rivalry with Toronto, I also learned the Raptors were seen as underdogs and people barely paid attention to them. I related to that feeling, and knowing that even as underdogs a whole country was behind them, I felt less lonely in the world. You never expect to make a local connection that hits so hard in your heart, but that happened and that changed my life: as a fan, a supporter, a friend. Because when I started caring for the Raptors, I could see them in my life. Getting knocked down, getting back up. Getting knocked down, getting back up. And finally winning, after 3 years since my one and only visit, you see yourself up there: you know you can make it that far too. That's the thing they won't tell you about going to places, about travelling and discovery. How out of nowhere, you are caught with a new passion. And it's good. Until you feel it, you don't know what is like: to like a place so much, to find something so far from home that makes you feel like you never left. It's beautiful, it can be also be addictive. And I can't wait to feel it again.