Craig & Mel's World Tour: June 2011

So we are now 7 weeks into Vancouver and we have been gone from Australia for like 2 ½ months!!!! We are settling in to Vancouver very nicely and really loving life here. I finally cracked a job shortly after our last blog and have just finished my 4th week there. Lucky me – I only work 4 days a week now which is super awesome and I am getting paid pretty much the same money as I was at home, so no complaints here!!!! I am working for an Orthopaedic Surgeon at St Paul’s Hospital, which is only about 300m from our house. I really could not have cracked a better job so I am super happy about that. Dr Pinney is very nice and easy to work for. It is certainly no where near as busy as my job in Australia but I think that is a good thing for me because it means I have time to learn the Canadian health system (which I might add is completely confusing and stupid!!!). So far everyone that I work with are nice and I am constantly getting the ‘are you from Australia or New Zealand’ by all of our patients. I of course reply ‘Australia!’ with an insulted look on my face and they always say ‘oh I always get Australians and New Zealanders confused’. My reply to that is ‘Yer, its just like us getting Canadians confused with American’s’ – I think they are equally insulted when I say that!!!! Lol

Craig is still working at the hostel and he is also starting some shifts back at IGA. He thinks that the work at the hostel will only last for another 4-6 weeks and so, if he keeps his foot in the door at IGA, he will still have work if worst comes to worst. I think the lady at IGA is in love with Craig because she could not be more accommodating for him. He must have made a good impression…….. lol His plan is to try and find a job with a air-con/refrigeration company here in Vancouver although, his qualifications from Australia don’t completely count here. It would be great if he could crack at job just as a TA or Laborer with one of those companies and go from there. So fingers crossed he can get something, which I am sure that he will, it just might take time.

A few weeks ago we went out to a Geeks and Freaks Party for Elaine, a girl that we met at the hostel. She was moving to Banff and so, we dressed up and went out. It was a great, long Friday night into Saturday morning and we had an awesome time. We have met so many people here already and because Craig is working at the hostel, he is constantly meeting more people too. Mick has been at our house nearly every night and we have dinner together. He is still at the hostel and hates it there so he comes here to get away. We are looking at getting our own apartment here in Vancouver with Mick and another guy Joel that we have met. We don’t mind living in the share house but we would also like our own place so that we can basically do what we want and not have to consider other people all the time. We have a great group of friends now and so if we have our own place, we can invite them over and not have to worry about our ‘roommates’ all the time. Mick and Joel are good fun and we all get along really well, plus, it won’t cost much more, if any to have our own place so fingers crossed we find something soon.

The weather here in Vancouver has been completely miserable!!! Nothing but rain all the time. Its like Brisbane, oh and Koh Samui!!! It’s like we cannot escape it! We did finally have a sunny Sunday last weekend and so we went to Grouse Mountain with a guy Craig met working at the hostel Luke (who is from Brisbane – Mt Cotton/Cleveland to be exact) and his house mate and finally seen snow for our first time here in Vancouver. On the weekends here in Vancouver all the trains, buses and ferry tickets are a flat rate of $2.50 to go anywhere and so, Grouse Mountain is about 45 minutes from where we live and it only cost us $2.50 to catch the seabus (ferry) and then the bus up to the mountain. When you get there, you have 2 options to get to the top of the mountain. You can either catch the gondola or walk up the mountain. (ha, walk – I should say hike!) It is about a 2.5 km walk and it is steep and hard!!!! I made it 500m up there and gave up and took the gondola. I wasn’t prepared for such a walk on a Sunday morning!!! Lol Craig and the other boys trekked on and did it in close to 2 hours. Apparently someone has done the whole thing in 26 minutes but that just sounds too good to be true!!!! Craig looked like he was minutes off dead when he made it to the top but still managed to make the smart remark of ‘Grouse Grind – you mean Grouse Fairy Walk’ lol Anyway, when we finally all got to the top and finally got to see some snow and some Grizzly Bears!!!! They have 2 in a closure up on top of the mountain and they were so cool to see! They were sleeping though, which was a little boring but it was still just amazing to see a real bear!!!!

Money has been a bit of a problem here since we arrived because of the stupid banking systems here in Vancouver. As I have said previously, they are so behind the times here and another thing to support that is that you get paid by cheque! Not only is that stupid and ancient but because we are new to Canada and have new accounts – it takes over 5 business days for our cheques to clear into our account. I have also had problems with my pay and so, for a while there money was VERY tight!!! Lol It was also because we were refusing to use our Australian cash because we get changed so much to withdraw money. Finally on Monday though I got paid and Craig’s cheque cleared from his work (just in time to pay rent – YAY lol) and so, we are back on track and things should run smoothly in the money department from here on in. This weekend is going to be huge because we have been looking forward to going out after our alcohol free weekend last weekend and I am going shopping tomorrow on my ‘lady of leisure’ day off!!!! Haha Plus the weekend is meant to be fine weather and so, Sunday will be another adventure somewhere!!!!

Hockey season is going off here in Vancouver. Last Tuesday night we watched the Canucks win against Tampa Bay to get into the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 17 years. Granville Street and pretty much the whole city went crazy because of the win…. They close Granville Street down after every game and so, we walked down there just to see the commotion – it was like a festival in the street. It is amazing that so many people are out and about at 10.30pm on a Tuesday night all because their hockey team won – they are serious fans here in Vancouver!!! Lol We got back to bed by about 11.30pm and then we woke ourselves up at 2.30am to watch the Origin game live. We live streamed it on the Internet and it was worth only getting 4 hours sleep that night to see it!!!! It was such a good game and so good to finally see some football. We can’t wait for the next game – GO MAROONS!!!!! Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup and so the next week or 2 of games are going to be huge. They are playing the Boston Bruins and it is best out of 7 games and they play every second night. We watched the first game of the finals last night and it was scoreless until the last 20 seconds when Canucks got a goal and a bloody good goal at that!!!! Again, it didn’t take long for the streets to get crazy and I am sure it is only going to get worse as each game is played. Game 2 is Saturday night – GO CANUCKS GO!!!!

We are also looking at getting a car (maybe a little van) so that we can start doing some weekend trips. Originally we were thinking that we would stay in Vancouver for the Summer and then head to a ski field to do a snow season for the winter but now that I have got the job that I do and if Craig can get a pretty well paying job, we are thinking of staying in Vancouver for longer and then we can just drive to the ski fields on the weekends. It seems more realistic because we can still live in the city and have a home etc but still have fun skiing and playing at the ski fields on the weekends. We would only get paid minimal wage if we worked at the ski fields and if we get a car and a season pass, it won’t cost us much each weekend to go there from the city instead. We might still do a snow season next year or something but at the moment, that seems like the plan. Hopefully we get a car soon but either way we are planning on going to Seattle in a couple of weekends time even if we don’t have a car yet. Its only about $50 each return on the bus to get to Seattle and its only about a 4 hour trip. So we can go down on Friday and home last Sunday afternoon/evening. YAY my first trip to America!!!! Also, plane tickets to other places in America like Vegas are really cheap and so, I can’t imagine it being too long until we start doing more trips into USA!!! Might be a good idea for us to see some more of Vancouver/Canada first though.

Its been so good to catch up with people on Skype and hopefully we will talk to you all again soon. Hope you are all well at home and we will blog again soon J

Love Mel and Craig xoxoxox