Canada has been described by other exchange students as a mix of America and Scandinavia, a combination that really appealed to me. When my time came to choose the destination of my exchange, the decision was easy. University of Toronto, or ‘U of T’ for short, is a prestigious university with a lot of interesting research going on and it is located in one of the biggest cities in North America. All told, it is a great place for an exchange. Before leaving for this exciting adventure there are a few things that needs to be done.

The first thing to do, once you have been accepted to the university will be to find a research group where you can do your thesis project. This is entirely up to you, as the international coordinator at U of T can not help beyond answering questions. I would therefore recommend using your best friend, Google, to find groups that are working in a field that interest you. From there just email several groups and ask if they accept bachelor students (the coordinator at KI can help you with what to write).

When studying as an exchange student at U of T you are required to be insured through the UHIP insurance program. I would strongly recommend that this is payed in advance, which can be done through Western Union (you will get information on how to do this via email once you get accepted to the university). I did not do this in advance, and had to go through a quite Kafkaesque process since the UHIP office mainly accepts checks or money orders as payment, which isn’t something we use in Sweden.

If you end up doing your project at one of the hospitals affiliated with the university you might have to present a health certificate, which is something you will have to get before departure. I went to City Akuten at Hötorget to do this and they knew all about these sorts of certificates and were very helpful.

When travelling to Canada as a Swedish student you do not need any visa or study permit as long as you are not staying more than 6 months. All you have to do is to apply for an electronic travel permit, which was a very short process and costed less than 100 SEK.

I traveled to Toronto with Iceland Air, with a stop at Reykjavik. Although a bit more expensive than the cheapest options, it allowed me to skip any stops in USA which would have required extra travel permits. From the Pearson International Airport I took the express train into downtown Toronto. It costs around 10 CAD, and there are cheaper options including a shuttle bus, but it was money well spent since it took me to the hotel where I was staying the first few nights. I would highly recommend leaving for Toronto a few days before your project starts, as it will give you time to get to know the city a bit and to get over the jet lag.

The registration process at U of T was a bit confusing for me, since it differs quite a bit from what I was used to in Stockholm, but after an afternoon of running around to different places I got everything sorted out. One problem was that the orientation session that I was scheduled for with the Center for International Experience (CIE) at the university was cancelled. Instead I only had a short meeting with the international coordinator, which was very friendly but had no information about the exchange agreement with KI.

After getting set up at U of T I had my first meeting with my supervisor and got registered at the hospital where the lab was located. Here everyone was very helpful and it all went quickly. From there on I started working almost immediately and got adjusted to the life in Canada after only a few weeks.

Finding a good place to stay was tricky, not because of a lack of options but rather because of the opposite. U of T has some on-campus residencies and some off-campus ones, where the former is in reality only for full time students and the latter often expensive. I therefore went for the third option; finding accommodation on my own. There are plenty of ways to do this, I mainly used two websites (https://housinganywhere.com/ and https://www.homestay.com/).

I ended up renting a room near Danforth and Broadview, which is located about 10 min by metro from central Toronto. I shared the apartment with two others, including a shared kitchen and bathroom. For this I payed 775 CAD per month (roughly 4650 SEK). This seemed like a lot to me at first, but as I mentioned earlier the other living costs are lower than in Stockholm so it evened out in the end. A word of advice though: do not pay anything in advance unless you are completely certain that everything is legit. There are a lot of offers for accommodation and not all of them are sincere.

The lab in which I did my thesis project was located in the Peter Gilgan Center for Research and Learning, which is a part of the Sick Kids hospital and affiliated with the University of Toronto. My group shared a open concept lab space with a few other groups, and a common area with even more groups. This might sound crowded but there was plenty of space, and was actually a good thing since everyone, including people from the other groups, were really helpful. If you ever had any questions there were always people there whom you could ask.

Canada has two official languages, English and French and a lot of Canadians speak both. Toronto. however, is located in the English speaking part of Canada, so you do not have to worry about being able to speak French. As a non-native speaker of English myself, I found it quite tiresome having to constantly think about how I phrase my sentences. However, I quickly got used to it and even to the point where I had trouble switching back to Swedish when I went home again.

For my thesis project I used fruit flies as a model organism, which can be a bit quirky. I had to schedule my time around the life cycles of the flies, which meant that I had to sometimes work on weekends and evenings, but had some weekdays off instead. This made it hard for me to join many of the activities organised by the Center for International Experience at U of T. Instead went out with my roommates and coworkers from the lab, and in the end made some good friends there.

Toronto has a very active pub scene, with a lot of small breweries and brewpubs, so if you are a fan of really good craft beer then you will love the place. There are also plenty of concerts, musicals and similar things going on, all of which are cheaper than they would be in Sweden. I would also recommend attending a sports game where one of the local teams is playing. I went to my first baseball game and watched the Toronto Bluejays win over an american team, and it was an interesting experience.

In conclusion I would like to say that I loved my stay in Toronto. So much that I in fact would have liked to do my masters there, if it was not for that fact that it is so expensive to study there. Everyone is just as friendly as people say and the city has a lot to offer.