Almost every summer my family and I leave the States for about a week on vacation. It’s nothing fancy or seemingly special, but Prince Edwards Island (P.E.I.) Canada will always be one of my favorite places. It’s a small island province on the East coast with red sand, rolling hills, and more cows than people. I’ve always preferred a more urban setting and I’m a person who likes to keep going and just hates sitting still. However, P.E.I feels like the only place I can just sit and relax. The air is so much cleaner than at home and the sunsets are like nothing else. Spending a week in Canada always clears my mind and allows me to just breathe.
My grandparents have a small house on the northern side on the water with a cottage across the street. Every summer my grandparents, cousins and aunt, and my family head up for a week or two and my cousins and I have the best time together. We don’t live too far from each other, but life gets insane, and the island seems to be the only place we stop being busy and just chill and hang out together. The four of us are around the same age, but being on the island is really the only time we hang out, not as just family, but as close friends.
In the mornings we head over to the house from the cottage and have a big breakfast together looking out at the water, and then get ready for the day. We usually end up swimming or paddle boarding in front of the house or going to different little cute shops during the early afternoon. We then clean up and go for a drive either to the boardwalk or into Charlottetown (the province’s capital and only city) and have a big dinner at the house or in town. After dinner, one of our relatives usually visits, and the four of us “kids” either play cards or a board game.
Obviously everyday is different, but this is basically what we do while we’re up there. While we stay in different houses, we spend most of our time in the bigger house hanging out. We typically spend a lot of time playing board games, reading, and swimming and it’s one of the only times of year we take a break from our phones, and ignore our responsibilities outside of P.E.I. It’s very rare we just sit on our phones, and we really only use electronics when we do movie nights together. It’s so different from when I am home or at school because everything revolves around our phones or doing work on our laptops, but on the island, it feels like nothing exists outside of it. It does not feel like school, work, or even home friends exist when I am up there. Then when I am home P.E.I. feels so far away, like a different world. Even now, writing this and looking back at photos, it feels like a dream, not somewhere I go every year.
I love P.E.I. Canada so much and I already miss it though I was there less then two months ago. I feel truly free from all responsibilities and I feel like I’m still a kid when I am there. I only just turned 19, and there is so much pressure put on young adults, it’s nice to be unburdened by everything on the island. When I am not there, I miss the rolling hills, the red sand, dirt roads, the lack of commercial products and industries, and how untouched it is from people. I will always have a strong love and sense of connection with the island, because when I leave the country, I leave my problems behind.