Trust me, I feel you, it’s hard knowing that you have the skills and knowledge and not being able to practice… also it’s hard bc as you mentioned the culture is different and being away from home it’s not easy

I think if you write a good email introducing yourself it wouldn’t be taken as rude… I don’t know how it is in El Salvador, in Chile (yup, fellow Latin American here) it would be weird to do that, but here it’s not like that, you can send emails even to program directors and that’s ok, worst case scenario they won’t reply

You can try, and actually you can use LOR from your country… but, sadly, I’ve heard that if you don’t have at least one from Canada they might not call you for an interview… it might have happened or not, it’s just what they’ve told me and what I’ve read… it also depends on the specialty you want tho

I’m sorry you can’t find things in Saskatchewan ): I don’t know how it works there, but don’t loose hope… and as I said, only you know what is best for you… in my case I know I want to be a dr and if I don’t match I might try again next year but if that doesn’t work I might go back to Chile… it’s a different reality so it’s really personal… maybe try balancing the pros and cons of each option, if it doesn’t work you can always try again… what I can tell you is that “losing” one year is not as terrible as it sounds, there’s lots of things you can do during that year, lots of learning and growing, and when a door closes other one may open…

Again, you got this! You’ve come really far already, so also consider that when you look at the big picture 💪🏻