First week in Canada: Tim Hortons, friendly strangers, and the surprising poetry of prairie sunsets.

Everything here is bigger and friendlier than I expected. My apartment overlooks the North Saskatchewan River, and I've started taking evening walks along the trails. Canadians really do say "sorry" as much as the stereotypes suggest, but it creates this atmosphere of perpetual courtesy that feels almost magical after European reserve.

The graduate students in my department invited me for coffee (Tim Hortons, naturally) and spent an hour explaining the intricacies of Edmonton winters. "You think you know cold from Sweden," laughed Maria, a fourth-year from Winnipeg, "but prairie cold is different. It's honest cold—no ocean to moderate it, just pure mathematics of temperature."

I'm both terrified and excited to experience it.

There's something endearing about how everyone assumes I'll struggle with the winter, not knowing that I spent four years in Stockholm. But they're right that this will be different. Prairie cold versus coastal cold, like comparing two different languages that both describe the same fundamental experience of making peace with darkness.