Whistler/Victoria

Guys I'm really sorry it took me so long to write about this. I don't even have a decent excuse this time. I just didn't feel like writing. Also though my stupid new laptop wouldn't let me upload photos straight from the card, so I had to do it the long way. Anyway, here's what's been going on.

For my birthday (23rd here, 24th in NZ) I went to Whistler for a night. Whistler is a beautiful little village and ski resort a bit north of Vancouver. I had to catch a bus that took the best part of three hours to get there, but it was worth it. I fell asleep for a little bit of it, and then when I woke up, all of a sudden, snow!

This thing I saw in the mall on the way scared the crap out of me until I realised it wasn't a real person.

It was about five pm when I got there and I was exhausted straight away. Travel does that to you somehow. I never figured it out. Anyway I checked into my room, spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to log on to the wi-fi (the French girl in my room said the password had a 'double-v', meaning 'w', as I eventually figured out), and then pulled on a pretty dress and some make up before going out to meet my friends. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of myself all prettied up, but there is one glorious shot of the three of us on facebook, me with my eyes closed and mouth open. I love it.

So I got a bus down to the village and met up with Rob and my very good friend Eilidh. We went out to dinner (chicken ceaser salad - pricey but delicious) and then back to the UBC lodge, after a very precarious trek up a snowy ski hill (I was in flats, so yeah, not my choice. But I was already a little tipsy so they swung me round. I didn't fall.). The UBC lodge was fun and cosy and filled with old familiar faces and new friends. Everyone there was a post or present UBC student (obviously) and most of them were other exchange students as well. We ended up with quite an exotic group going out that night.

The second day in Whistler was spent collecting last last minute gifts in the Whistler village (EVERYTHING SO EXPENSIVE OMG) and generally enjoying the snow. It was my first time experiencing actual falling snow. I was a big fan for about a minute. Then it was just like soft rain and as I did not have a hat or a hood or umbrella, it got old fast. Similarly it turned out my impenetrable boots were not so weatherproof after all. I had to buy clean socks for the way back and my feet were still numb some four hours later. Nonetheless, FUN! Here is the first ever snowman I made with Rob.

I got back to Vancouver at about 7.30, just in time for Christmas eve dinner and to totally crash. Christmas was a quiet day, characterised by rain and failing internet, which after a couple of hours of pretending we didn't need it drove us all to the nearest Starbucks in search of wifi :P I also got some really lovely things from my family (here and back at home), including The Big Lebowski, an album by the glorious Mountain Goats, and like a lifetime's supply of body butter.

So a few days after Christmas, on the 30th, I set off with a few other people to go back to Victoria Island for take two. I'd been wanting to go back for quite a while and I'm really happy I got the chance to, since it is one of the most beautiful places I've encountered here. The people I went with this time were all from the UBC exchange students facebook page. We had two Aucklanders and two Germans, which was... interesting. We saw some of the things I'd never gotten round to the first time, like:

And we were there for New Year's eve, which was quiet, since none of us felt like braving the bars and it turned out there weren't going to be any fireworks out on the harbour. We went back to our youth hostel (WHICH, BTW, considered a 'double room' to mean one twin bed with about six inches of space on either side of it [and a leaking heater. Unrelated, but still worrisome, right?]) and shared some of our favorite youtube videos and got a relatively early night. Sort of. Actually I stayed up till about four am talking to the other girl from New Zealand, which made me pretty cranky at breakfast the next morning. We caught the ferry back at one, and after a long bus trip on either end and then the skytrain and then the seabus and then another bus (North van is faaar) I was finally home.