I really like the look of Canadian houses. They look so livable, so much charm and character. I went a bit nuts on the weekend and took heaps of photos. Here’s one.


Here’s a link to more on my flickr.

I went snow tubing on the weekend. It was freakin’ awesome!! Really made me think seriously about working on the snow fields next winter, somewhere outside of Vancouver to avoid the Olympic crazyness. Be a good opportunity to learn how to ski and snowboard. Here’s a couple of photo’s and video my English friend Alex took of my snow tubing. She forgot to press stop… can’t be bothered learning how to edit it. I think I mention something about almost choking on my tongue towards the end there.









I got the job at Stanley Park! I really wanted the night time job, as it means less responsibilityGood and bad news.

Good:
- more money than tim hortons.
- Better hours than tim Hortons
- Less soul destroying and degrading than Tim Hortons
- No Tim Hortons uniform or hat

Bad:
- Wont get to travel with Rich in May
- Similar to teaching – means more responsibility – nervous that teaching isn’t really my thing, this eliminates most planning, reporting etc, this means being in charge of children though. This will be a good test to see if teaching is really not where I wanna be.

To do list:
- see ice hockey game
- go ice skating
- Science World
- Go skiing


Suzanne Peterson, a teacher who I worked closely with last year passed away last week. Really shocking and sad news. I can’t imagine how people at school must be feeling. It’s so weird being away from it all. This really naïve silly part of me secretly thought that I’d come back to Australia and everything would be exactly the same as when I left.. That’s ridiculous though.

It's my blog and I'll swear if I want to

I have finally decided that I shouldn't feel guilty for swears posted on my blog. If people don't like swears, then too bad. Swears are a part of me, they represent me. I'm not gonna stop for nobody...

That aside... here are a few exciting things that happened today:

1) It really shits me how on public transport people sit in the isle seal on buses and leave room next to them, making it difficult to get a seat. It's okay if there's no one on the bus, but when it's busy, be a little considerate please, move over, make room for others. That being said, I think there are right and wrong ways to go about asking these isle hogs to move over, or to aquire the spare seat. On the B-line bus this morning (6:30am) just as I hopped on the bus I saw a guy (Sir Shovealot) launching himself over this other guy (Mr stabby) to get to the window seat, from what I've gathered Sir Shovealot had asked Mr Stabby to move over, but Mr Stabby had head phones in and didn't move, I didn't see any of this though, I just saw the shoving.. Mr Stabby's face was totally mushed with this other guys bag. So anyway, Mr Stabby totally over reacts to this. He starts shoving the guy with his arm, like a five year old with no confrontational skills. This goes on for a few minutes. Then he gets the worlds smallest pocket knife out of his bag and makes pretend stabbing motions towards Mr Shovealot. Mr Shovealot is not happy. He asks Mr Stabby something, I'm not sure what, presumably.. are you gonna stab me you cunt.. then he pushes past Mr Stabby and goes and dobs to the bus driver. The bus stops.. we all have to wait around a bit. I couldn't hear the conversation they had. The bus waits for ages, you hear passengers at the front making mention of someone with a knife. Finally knife guy takes a hint that this isn't a pleasant situation that's going to go away and gets off the bus. I yelled out that he'd gone, was tempted to stay around and help out... I was late for work though, and hopped on the next bus.

People can be damn silly. It's not cool to shove people.. it's not cool to make stabbing motions at people with a miniature pocket knife. It all could have been avoided if they both hadn't been arse holes though.. *sigh*

Real tempted to do a re-enactment using my camera.. see if I can convince April and Trina to participate.

2) Had a job interview for this job. It's with the Stanley Park Ecological Society. I'm not real sure how I feel about it. Part of me thinks it would be awesome, hanging out in a cool park, teaching kids about the environment. Part of me says it will be a little bit too much like teaching, sounds like a fair amount of responsibility. It'll be just me, no one else running this group. The kids will be a fair bit older than what I'm used to teaching. I'll have to drive some kind of van, which makes me nervous. It also means I won't be able to travel around with Rich, dude I met at woodford. Which makes me sad, we can always do it in July though I guess.

There's also a night one, which means sleeping in a tent at Stanley park 3 nights a week, maybe it's two nights though. That sounds pretty cool too though, I'm not sure.. could mean a lot of non sleep. It means less responsibility in the way of actually teaching kids things and is more like showing them how to put up tents and stuff like that.

I find out next week. I wont worry too much until I hear back from them. Anything beats Tim Hortons, it'd be hard to say no to this.

So much crazy

I was doing my thing at work this morning. It was about 6:45am. Served a girl her coffee, looked up and realised that it was Charis, a German girl who lived at my house for a few weeks while Eliza was travelling OS. Holy freakin jesus. It shocked the shit out of me. Just kinda stared at her with a weird look on my face for a few seconds. She had to rush off, I gave her my number though. So much freakin crazy. Makes it feel like a fairly small world.

My boss has been super nice, which makes me feel bad for searching for another job. We'd had a chat about how much rent I'm paying, and how much pay I'm going to be getting. Yesterday she told me that she's shooting herself in the foot for saying this, but that I should go and find a better paying waitressing job. I'm only here for two years, make the most of it etc. Also said to put Tim Hortons down on my resume, and she's act as a referee. What an absolute champion! So hopefully I'll have more luck finding a job soon.

House of the haunted children

I went to Wreck beach the day I moved into my new house. It's a nudy beach at UBC (University of British Columbia), where I was staying with Beck. It was certainly no Australian beach. It was real cold, there were these logs everywhere, and the sand was a yucky dark colour. Needless to say, I tookk some photo's and got the hell outta there.


Working at Tim Hortans has got me thinking that maybe I just wasn't meant to work. I'm not sure. I sure don't like this, and I haven't liked any other jobs I've had before, and I cant imagine really loving bar work, or office work, and everything else is too specialised to let me in. I dunno what to do.

One of my aims for coming overseas was to become more gutsy, take up more opportunities and be less indecisive. I don't think I've really made a big effort with any of these yet.

House is going pretty well so far. Living with two girls, Trina and April. April is an Aussie and Trina is from Victoria (I may have gotten this wrong, and I'm still not sure where it is). Trina's only here for a month, but April's here for the long haul. We're living right near Commercial drive. People kept telling me that Commercial drive is the place to be and live in Vancouver, I haven't really been convinced yet. There's a lot of homeless people around, and the pubs and shops are okay, but they're not awesome. They're just missing some kinda spunk/character/charm. I'm really struggling to not keep compating Vancouver to Melbourne and think how much cooler Melbourne is. Everything I seem to see or do I think, Melbourne does that better. I did live in Melbourne for like 6 years though, and I'm sure I just need to give Vncouver more time, get to know it more.


The location is pretty good though for my new house, right near the sky train to down town, right near the bus line that goes along a main street to Tim Hortons. It could be a lot worse, I know.. I visited a few houses before I found this one. I made a video to show you around:



April seems to be friends with a lot of interesting people. Today we went to this Art space thing with two friends of hers. One was this Character, Fish. He was pretty crazy, real active and zippy - hippy/ADD/crazy. We drove there in this right drive van, no seat belts in the back, or seats, listening to this blue grass/Techno music. Pretty wild. He was all over the shop, reminded me a bit of Ray Wholohan from highschool. We're all going to some crazy music thing tonight. Will keep you posted.

Katie the donut lady

It's been two weeks since I touched down in sunny Canada. I am still glad that I chose to come on this overseas adventure.

I've found a new house to live in. Everyone in Canada moves into new rental houses on the 1st of the month, which seems quite strange to me. How do people move out of their houses for the 1st of the month deadline when they can't move their stuff in until the first. It prob means all the rental trucks are booked a fair time in advance for the 1st. Rediculous!
So yeah, today being the first of March means that I'm saying farewell to Hugues and Becks place and hello to my own. I've had an ace time with them, but it'll be real nice to sleep on a bed, spread my shit every where and (hopefully) not be an inconvenience to anyone!

My first job interview was at Tim Hortons, a Canadian donut chain. I was given the job and uniform on the spot and asked to start work the next day. Yikes, full on. I didn't really have time to think... 6:30am starts, Mon to Fri... $8.35 Canadian an hour. Sounds pretty damn shit. I almost quit before I'd even started. I've worked two shifts now and figure I'll continue on until I find something better. It's good motivation to find better work.



I got me a mini computer. An acer. The keyboard and screen size are annoying, especially coming from a 22 inch monitor. It's a bit slower too.. damn sight better than no computer though.



Went to Granville island yesterday. I'd been getting worried that Vancouver was a bit of a dive, no where near as cool as Melbourne. I still don't think it's as cool as Melbourne, but Granville island reasured me that there is definitely some cool shit to see. Had some awesome fish and chips and then went on this Granville Island Micor brewery tour. The beer in Canada seems really awesome. Granville island beer has seasonal beer, so they bring out a winter beer, and a spring beer etc. Makes beer drinking especially exciting. I love it!



I walked outside today and though, wow, it seems warm. I came back inside and checked out the weather forecast, it said that it was currently 8 degrees celcius in Vancouver. I never thought I would see the day where I thought that was warm. There's a first time for everything I guess.



My plans for the rest of my stay overseas are vague but here are a few ideas:

- Kids camp over the summer holidays somewhere in Canada
- Road trip/camping journey around states with Rich, dude I met at woodford folk festival, to sus out American sights and music festivals.
- Travel around States with dad, perhaps around August
- London? Perhaps stay with dude from Essex who I met on Intrepid trip around Japan, or Kellie? From there go to Berlin to visit Eliza?? Oktober fest???