Days Off

Besides the broken back, the nothing but good times continue. There are just so many things to tell about!

I got paid! That's always reassuring, that I'm not actually being mistaken as a volunteer. We all wondered about monetary materialization for a while. My fears are gone, and so should be yours...

My face wash smells like Sprite. Here in Canadia boonies I think of Sprite more than I have in my whole life. And that leads me to think of Italian sodas that my family makes now and again and it makes me miss those occasions. Hey out there, family that rarely reads my blog. Love you guys!

So, in the week of Feb 1-6 I only worked two days. So, with four days off in a row, Seth, Merilee and myself went to Victoria Island. It took a two hour bus ride connected to a 15 minute sky train to a 1 hour wait to a 45 minute bus ride to another hour and a half wait to the hour and a half ferry ride to another hour bus ride just to freaking get there... So that you don't have to think about how long that was, I'll just tell you this: we started at 9am in Whistler and arrived in Victoria Island at 6:30pm. All that transport was very tiring.

So first thing we did was call Dispatch to tell them we would be needing an extra day in order to see anything at all, since at that moment in time we had only that day and the next off. It would be horrifically unhelpful to just go home the next day at 10am. They told us we could have another day. Yay! So, we checked in to our hostel, added an extra night, and dropped off our crap to go to dinner.

We walked for many blocks to an Indian restaurant. It was pretty good. We got food and ate it. Then we left after we paid for it. Pretty basic.

We went around the town a bit then, looking for ice cream mostly, but seeing many other things in the mean time. Like buildings, stores in them, windows in the front of them, and whales and totems and eagles, oh my! on the street. Finally we slipped into a conviently placed store filled with all the junk one needs at 9pm or later and got a little tub of vanilla brownie fudge ice cream and three spoons. We went back to our hostel, ate it, played some pool, did some yoga while I wasn't the one playing pool, and THEN we went to bed. The room was awesome! Well, it was a room. With a bunk bed, a mirror, a small desk and a chair. But the ceiling was like twenty feet up. Two more bunks could have easily made their way up there. But as it was was sufficient for sleeping, which we did.

Then we went to breakfast in the AM at a place called the Sour Pickle. It was yumesome! No, didn't have any pickles, sour or otherwise, and yes, it was the typical breakfast all day place, our order taken by an asian lady that we couldn't understand who kept coming back to ask, "is anything all right?", another asian-looking man taking off an apron and going out the front door, either to smoke or get more ingredients for his kitchen...it was the beeest. Really. I do recommend it.

Then off we walked for many many many blocks. Many. We saw the world's tallest totem pole with a living, sitting eagle on its top. We saw a beach with an ocean attached to it. We saw many rocks worth picking up to admire on the beach. We got more ice cream and that was enough to fill our ice cream quota for the week really. Those fast food ice creams go right through me usually. Yeah, I don't like to hear about it either. Okay, so we kept walking. Oh, we walked through a park! Beacon something park. Lovely place. Did you know there are black squirrels? There are. Did you know there's a peacock in Beacon park? Birds just don't even know how beautiful they are, don't you think?

Ah shoot, I have to finish this post now. Okay...we had a lovely day, rewound that hectic travelog, made it home for prison dinner and slept. I woke for the 0415 shift the next morning. Yay. 12 hour shifts are the most delicious. Oh yeah, so just in case you didn't know, I'm driving motor coach buses up here in Whistler Canada, transporting the security personnel to and from venues where they can protect people. It can get super boring, but it's beautiful around here. I haven't fallen alseep at the wheel yet. So...more later. Cheers!