Goodbye Canada
Hi guys,
Sitting here at a hostel in Seattle, Washington. An AWESOME city!!!
I'll summarize from when we left Nelson and headed back West to Vancouver.
From there we went North to Squamish and Whistler - they are just STARTING to prepare for major ski season(you can ski all year round there in the mountains) so it was really dead - beautiful though!
Unfortunatly, it was a mission to find a place to camp because we're almost into Winter now, all the campgrounds are shut down. We found a little place under the powerlines though (I HATE CITIES) and settled in for a few cold nights!
We then went even MORE West, by jumping on the ferry accross to Vancouver Island.
We stayed with friends in Victoria - B.C's capital. A gorgeous city on the Pacific - how strange it was to be in the Pacific again! There are sea-lions and Killer Whales all around the island and it's very common to see them - very cool!
We travelled the island in the storm season. We went out to different coasts and little towns that had been shut down at the start of October. Some seemed like ghost towns - Tofino, Ucluelet, and Nanaimo. The surf was incredible out there though, even though the water was so FREEZING!
After the island (and some more painfully cold camping experiences!) we started to assess the possibility of tommy not receiving his NZ visa at all due to medical crap (let alone before October 31st, when my Canadian visa was up). So I booked my flight to Australia for October 31st, and we headed back to vancouver to sit and watch the phone and wait for news on tommy's visa.
While in Vancouver it was Halloween weekend - CRAZY celebrations. About 10,000 people came out of the woodwork to crawl vancouvers streets in a Parade of the Dead. We went with a group of people and Tommy's friend Kala (who we were staying with) went to school for Movie Make-up. She used latex which actually wrinkled our skin to "age" us so that we looked like we were 80 or 90 years old!
After adding some granny and grandpa clothes from the Salvation Army (and Tommys tasteful addition of a Trach-Tube) we were ready to go.
That weekend we also got the call that we'd been waiting for! Tommy has been approved and now all we're waiting for is our car to sell. So i leave North America (it was sad to leave canada yesterday!!!!! :( ) and will wait for him down in Aussie until he sells the car - hopefully that wont take more than 2 weeks.
Anyway,so we're down in Seattle!
Neither of us had ever been here before and it was cheaper for me to fly out of here, so we headed down early to check it out.
It's GORGEOUS - Boston-like red brick buildings everywhere, SanFrancisco-esque streets, the ocean, the biggest farmers market in North America, Jimi Hendrix's Grave (he was from Seattle), the EMP (Experience Music Project) which is a huge Music Museum also dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, the home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and grunge music in general as well as an insane Jazz and Blues scene, Seattle is also home to the very first Starbucks ever - the original logo had the mermaid bearing her breasts for the world to see - they shouldnt have changed it!
There is also more crack-heads here than usual, who seem to entertain us day and night with their antics - not just urinating on everything humanly possible, but screaming about blackpower and swapping narcotics at main intersections aswell.
SO i fly out tomorrow!
I'm doing a favour for my dad in Aussie (he lives on the Gold Coast), and will be looking after his business while he goes away on holiday..
It's quite a tease to be so close - in Australia, but not to be home yet. The plan is to be there for a month to hang out, work, spend some time with dad and prepare to head home, so hopefully we'll be landing in NZ, the first week of December.
That's the plan.. but you know how plans are!
It's SUCH a weird feeling to be leaving Canada after a year and a half - and just North America in general. SO much of my time has been spent up here in the last few years that has definatly become my 2nd home.
I'm so pleased that I really did Canada "justice" and travelled the country top to bottom, east (almost!) to west.
And I'm so happy that we did it in the hardcore way! Camping every night, in a little two man tent, just us two, for 5 months, through summer and into winter!! OUCH
There were some majorly hard times, like when it would rain for days and days and everything - the tent, clothes, blankets etc. were saturated.
Or when we found out about the chance that tommy wouldn't get the visa due to the cancer.
Or driving all day and all night in the rain and when we'd have to pull over off the highway at 2am and try and pitch the tent in the muddy ditch in the rain and darkness haha! jesus....
at least I can laugh about those times now!
Some of our most incredible times included seeing (and being tormented by) all the wildlife up here - we saw COUNTLESS bears - grizzlies and black, Moose, deer, elk, wolves, beavers, sea lions, sea otters, picas, arctic foxes, coyotes, golden eagles, racoons, squirells etc etc.
Another awesome time was when we realised that we had an awesome system going on: When we'd pull into a campsite, get firewood and start a fire, pitch the tent and make the bedding and have dinner cooking, all in 15mins.
I really loved the Yukon. Dawson City was a town that I will remember forever, because of the crazy people and the 24hour sunlight. Other major buzzes included living in Nelson for 6 weeks, the Arctic and the Northern Lights.
I'll miss my second home in the little town of St. Catharines,Ontario most though.
Our first apartment, our friends and all of Tommy's family made it an incredible time.
I'm really excited to heading back home to start a new life all over again! Terrified as well - of course! I can't wait to get home to my family, dogs, old friends, potential new friends, university, the beach and just my country in general!
SO to everyone I've lived with/hung out with up here for the last year and a half, I'll MISS YOU, and to everyone down South -see you soon!!!!
Lots of love,
Bec
My details when I'm in Australia will be:
Home phone (and business) is 07 55047005. (07 is the area code)
Mail address is: 9/103 Salerno St., Isle of Capri, QLD 4217, Australia
Sitting here at a hostel in Seattle, Washington. An AWESOME city!!!
I'll summarize from when we left Nelson and headed back West to Vancouver.
From there we went North to Squamish and Whistler - they are just STARTING to prepare for major ski season(you can ski all year round there in the mountains) so it was really dead - beautiful though!
Unfortunatly, it was a mission to find a place to camp because we're almost into Winter now, all the campgrounds are shut down. We found a little place under the powerlines though (I HATE CITIES) and settled in for a few cold nights!
We then went even MORE West, by jumping on the ferry accross to Vancouver Island.
We stayed with friends in Victoria - B.C's capital. A gorgeous city on the Pacific - how strange it was to be in the Pacific again! There are sea-lions and Killer Whales all around the island and it's very common to see them - very cool!
We travelled the island in the storm season. We went out to different coasts and little towns that had been shut down at the start of October. Some seemed like ghost towns - Tofino, Ucluelet, and Nanaimo. The surf was incredible out there though, even though the water was so FREEZING!
After the island (and some more painfully cold camping experiences!) we started to assess the possibility of tommy not receiving his NZ visa at all due to medical crap (let alone before October 31st, when my Canadian visa was up). So I booked my flight to Australia for October 31st, and we headed back to vancouver to sit and watch the phone and wait for news on tommy's visa.
While in Vancouver it was Halloween weekend - CRAZY celebrations. About 10,000 people came out of the woodwork to crawl vancouvers streets in a Parade of the Dead. We went with a group of people and Tommy's friend Kala (who we were staying with) went to school for Movie Make-up. She used latex which actually wrinkled our skin to "age" us so that we looked like we were 80 or 90 years old!
After adding some granny and grandpa clothes from the Salvation Army (and Tommys tasteful addition of a Trach-Tube) we were ready to go.
That weekend we also got the call that we'd been waiting for! Tommy has been approved and now all we're waiting for is our car to sell. So i leave North America (it was sad to leave canada yesterday!!!!! :( ) and will wait for him down in Aussie until he sells the car - hopefully that wont take more than 2 weeks.
Anyway,so we're down in Seattle!
Neither of us had ever been here before and it was cheaper for me to fly out of here, so we headed down early to check it out.
It's GORGEOUS - Boston-like red brick buildings everywhere, SanFrancisco-esque streets, the ocean, the biggest farmers market in North America, Jimi Hendrix's Grave (he was from Seattle), the EMP (Experience Music Project) which is a huge Music Museum also dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, the home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and grunge music in general as well as an insane Jazz and Blues scene, Seattle is also home to the very first Starbucks ever - the original logo had the mermaid bearing her breasts for the world to see - they shouldnt have changed it!
There is also more crack-heads here than usual, who seem to entertain us day and night with their antics - not just urinating on everything humanly possible, but screaming about blackpower and swapping narcotics at main intersections aswell.
SO i fly out tomorrow!
I'm doing a favour for my dad in Aussie (he lives on the Gold Coast), and will be looking after his business while he goes away on holiday..
It's quite a tease to be so close - in Australia, but not to be home yet. The plan is to be there for a month to hang out, work, spend some time with dad and prepare to head home, so hopefully we'll be landing in NZ, the first week of December.
That's the plan.. but you know how plans are!
It's SUCH a weird feeling to be leaving Canada after a year and a half - and just North America in general. SO much of my time has been spent up here in the last few years that has definatly become my 2nd home.
I'm so pleased that I really did Canada "justice" and travelled the country top to bottom, east (almost!) to west.
And I'm so happy that we did it in the hardcore way! Camping every night, in a little two man tent, just us two, for 5 months, through summer and into winter!! OUCH
There were some majorly hard times, like when it would rain for days and days and everything - the tent, clothes, blankets etc. were saturated.
Or when we found out about the chance that tommy wouldn't get the visa due to the cancer.
Or driving all day and all night in the rain and when we'd have to pull over off the highway at 2am and try and pitch the tent in the muddy ditch in the rain and darkness haha! jesus....
at least I can laugh about those times now!
Some of our most incredible times included seeing (and being tormented by) all the wildlife up here - we saw COUNTLESS bears - grizzlies and black, Moose, deer, elk, wolves, beavers, sea lions, sea otters, picas, arctic foxes, coyotes, golden eagles, racoons, squirells etc etc.
Another awesome time was when we realised that we had an awesome system going on: When we'd pull into a campsite, get firewood and start a fire, pitch the tent and make the bedding and have dinner cooking, all in 15mins.
I really loved the Yukon. Dawson City was a town that I will remember forever, because of the crazy people and the 24hour sunlight. Other major buzzes included living in Nelson for 6 weeks, the Arctic and the Northern Lights.
I'll miss my second home in the little town of St. Catharines,Ontario most though.
Our first apartment, our friends and all of Tommy's family made it an incredible time.
I'm really excited to heading back home to start a new life all over again! Terrified as well - of course! I can't wait to get home to my family, dogs, old friends, potential new friends, university, the beach and just my country in general!
SO to everyone I've lived with/hung out with up here for the last year and a half, I'll MISS YOU, and to everyone down South -see you soon!!!!
Lots of love,
Bec
My details when I'm in Australia will be:
Home phone (and business) is 07 55047005. (07 is the area code)
Mail address is: 9/103 Salerno St., Isle of Capri, QLD 4217, Australia