Anna in Vancouver: September 2009

I'm gonna start at the very beginning cause some of you might not have heard anything from me since I left!
I flew to Vancouver on Saturday July 25th!!! The flight was really quite and exept for my sucky non-aisle-non-window seat in a 4 seat row the first part of the flight to Montreal was okay. In Montreal I had to change planes and also get my luggage there and check it in again for the next flight (suprsingly that went well, too, both of my bags arrived with me

) I spent my time at the airport (I think it's been about 3 hrs) sleeping on the waiting area benches

and particinpating on a survey a nice guy did with me about the airport and my stay there

On the flight to Vancouver I had a nice aisle seat and I sat next to two germans about my age and it turned out they'd been on the other flight too! The flight was supposed to last 5 hours which at the end turned out to be more than 8(!) The Air Canada plane was way convenient than the Lufthansa one. It had little touchscreens on every seat with lots of music and movies and stuff to choose from (I already forgot the movie I watched but it was agood one

) Anyways when we were close to Vancouver there was a thunderstorm going but we landed savely and on time and I was really excited about meeting Christine (my landlady) and seeing my room and everything and then the captain made an announcement that there is no free gate we can go to and that we have to wait for one (at that time he was talking about "some minutes"

and we waited and waited and waited and outside it rained and the thuderstorm was going on... it turned out that they has called out some kind of "red alert" at the airport which means everything stops and no one is allowed to do anything. So we spend the next 3 hours waiting inside the plane and I've been freakin tired cause I've been on my feet for almost 24 hours by then(it wasn't much of a comfort that there were 34 other planes around us stuck in the same situation)!!! You can propably imagine the chaos when finally plane after plane went to the gate and all the luggage coming out at the same time and the airport was crowded like hell so I couldn't find Christine so I decided to somehow get my luggage first. As this was not worse enough my prepaid card was empty cause I wrote some txts from inside the plane so Christy knew where I've been... But we made it somehow to fing each other (and my luggage *yaaay*) and Henry (Christy's brother in law) who drove us home! It was about 3 in the morning when I finally fell in my bed totally tired and overwhelmed from the whole situation emotion

The next monrning was awful to be honest. I felt totally uncomfortable and kinda lost and alone and everything I was thinking about was how to get back home as soon as possible! I somehow got myself out of bed anyways and Christy made me some breakfast. Afterwards she and Angel(her nice who is living upstairs) went out with me to show me around Brentwood Mall (which is just a 5 minute walk from the house) and downtown Vancouver! That was really nice and got my mind off a bit so I felt a lot better. The next day Christy showed me where I can go grocery shopping the cheapest(when I went back there(Metrotown) on my own for the first time - there's a huuuge mall there - I got totally lost before I finally found the store again :P and getting a shopping cart was a challenge for itself cause the putting-a-coin-in-thing is kinda different) and I got a bank account and applyed for my Social Insurance Number (that was quite funny cause the lady who recorded my data thought "deutsch" was my last name so I was kinda perplexed when the guy called up a "Anna Deutsch").

I can't remember everything from that on... I decided that I wanna relax the first week and get used to everything and settle in before I would start searching for a job! It was Christy's vacation and the kids where still on summer break so we went out for smal trips every day with everyone (Med&Kimo, my arabic roommates and Jenny a friend of the family) which was really great and made me feel comfortable pretty soon!!! We went to Alice lake which is about half way to Whistler (the ride there is awesome cause the landscape is beautiful!) and

Stanley Park (I've been swimming in the pacific ocean there for the first time ever :P)

I think it was on a wednesday when we went to the fireworks at English Bay. That's a big event every year which is sponsored by the banks. So every week there is a firework from a different country and at the end there is a big firework with all of them together and the winner is announced. The one that we've been to was from China so it was a lot of colors and really amazing (looks at the pics I made in my photobucket album).

At the end of the first week I started with applying for jobs. It's pretty convinient cause most of the companies have online application forms. So I applied to a lot of grocery stores, London Drugs, Tim Hortons, Starbucks and BC Place(that's a big stadium) but I didn't get any answers after the first couple of days. One day it came into my mind to look at craiglist.com and I was really lucky that I found the ad for a job as a "Coffe Shop attendant" or something like that at Burnaby Mountain Golf Course. After figuring out that this was just one bus from my home and pretty close I wrote an e-mail applying and got an answer right away and I was invited for a job interview *yaaay*

During the week we went all together to Burnet Park for picnic. It's at an inlet and there are lots of huge(well huge to me anyway... kinda of a smale plate size) crabs in there and people are fishing them.

The sunset there was beautiful...

Oh and while we where there I got a call from a grocery store I applied to for an job interview. So I had 2 now *yay* It was kinda embarassing cause I'm really not good at understanding people on the phone so the woman had to spell the street names for me and she was like do you really need me to spell "Nelson" and I was like okay I got it now :P plus I didn't have a pen so I had to write it in the sand which turned out to be a bad idea cause I couldn't figure out what the number was afterwards but luckily I found it in the internet later :P

Oh I almost already forgot that :P Before we left for Burnet Med told me he's buying tickets for the The Fray concert and he asked me if i wanna come so he bought me a ticket, too. I think it was on a wednesday but I can't remember. It took place at the UBC Thunderbird Arena which is the icehockey stadium from the University of BC. We met with Med's friends from school Karen (she's from somewhere at the Bodensee), Dolphine (from Montreal) and Juan (from Columbia I think) downtown and took the bus all the way to UBC (after it took us half an hour to find the right bus stop :P "we are closer..."*sing*). The location was great and totally cool that you could buy fries and stuff and take it inside the arena there. I think I've never been anywhere they allowed that before :P So it was basically the icehockey stadium and at one end was the stage. We waited like two hours or something till The Fray actually came on stage but some of the opening acts where not that bad so it was okay. The concert was freakin awesome! I loved it! The Fray was great and the whole atmosphere was great, too.

I eventually gave up on really updating this post so I'm just gonna paste some pictures from all the other stuff I did during my first couple of months here. The only thing that needs some written explanation I think is which job I got. So I went to the gob interview at the golf course first and I really liked it cause Graham (one of the menagers) was really niced and it didn't even feel like a job interview or at least not like what I was used to in Germany. So pretty much the only reason why they even looked into hiring me was because of the 3 days I worked at the fair in "Münster-Sarmsheim" :P but I must made a good impression cause he said he liked my attitude and they would call me back after they had interviewed everyone else. The other interview for the grocery store was pretty much the same. The lady who interviewed me was not much older than me and asked me just a few questions that sounded like they where the standard ones they ask everyone and I pretty much had the job right away. They gave me some forms to fill out and she told me I would need to come to some training day and they'd call me to tell me the date and time and everything. I don't quite remember if it was right after I came home from that second interview or just a day after that I got an e-mail from Eagle Creek (the restaurant at the golf course) that if I was still interested I can start right away. So I didn't know what to do! The serving tables part that was included in the coffee shop job scared me a little cause I've never done it before and then doing it in english and everything but I really liked the whole laid-back atmosphere there. And for working at the grocery store I would earn more an hour but I also had to go downtown and remember all those tones of codes and stuff so after a brain storming call with my mum and her pretty much convincing me to do the coffee shop job I called Graham and he told me to come in the next day!!! That's how I got into Eagle Creek :P and I don't regret my decision AT ALL!!!
So now that I was working I didn't have as much free time as before but I still tried to actually DO things on my days off and not just sit at home even though that ment just going out alone.
I pretty much checked out every mall around here (taking lots and lots of busses :P) and somedays just went downtown to hang out at waterfront or english bay!

Waterfront (far above) and downtown (above, right)

English bay (above), Granville Island with Angel (below)

Taking the boat on our way home!

BC Place Stadium (above) and Science World (right)

Almost a month away from home and 2 weeks at work my birthday was coming around. Till then I hadn't made any real friends yet so I celebrated with everyone at my place. "Tita"(that's filipino for "aunt" lol) Christi and Jane made lots of food and I baked a cheese cake which turned out to be really difficult cause of the different oven and measurments and everything but at the end it did taste pretty good! I had a really nice day and everyone tried to make it nice for me which I was really grateful for!!!

On one of my days off work we all went together to Cultus Lake! I really enjoyed the trip cause I got to see a little of the inland around Vancouver! We stoped at a farm marked to get some fresh veggies and fruit on the way there! We didn't actually go to the real lake but to a waterslide park that is right next to it! Was fun being a kid again for a day (considering I jsut turned 20 lol)

On the last weekend of the kids' summer break Angel, Paolo and me went to Grouse Mountain and Capilano Suspension Bridge! We took the sea bus which goes from Waterfront to North Vancouver. That was pretty cool cause I've never taken it before that :D