"So this is their summer?" remarks a lady wearing a black, bubble winter coat as she zooms by on her bike. Yes, the temperatures have dropped further down today. It's almost comical to look at the 14 day forecast where upon my arrival the temperature slowly drops and upon my departure it starts to rise again well into the 30s. Well that's ok no rain or overcast is going to stop me from exploring. I mean it rains here all the time and there still hasn't been one day of rain, just overcast skies, so I guess I'm lucky. There [View Full Entry]

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Tried to wake up early today, but in vain. Left the house at 12 pm. I guess I'm just not a morning person. I'll try tomorrow. So today we set out to explore the beaches in Vancouver. 18 km awaited us. The day was perfect, 24 degrees sunny. This is normal summer weather on the West Coast. When I first arrived here the area was going through an unprecedented heat wave with tempuratures in the 40s and all the air conditioners sold out in every Home Depot. I seem to have cooled the temperatures because the weather has suddenly become cooler [View Full Entry]

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It’s amazing the difference walking up one street makes. Exploring historic Gastown it’s hard to imagine that this was once called ‘Skid City’. The neighbourhood is trendy, polished and touristy. Walk up one street and you’re at East Hastings - the epicentre of Vancouver’s homeless and poverty crisis. They just moved everything up a few streets. As I draw toward the area I know exactly where I am without even looking at the signs. A red-haired lady stumbles past me, dazed and unable to walk a straight line. She spits here and there. People with shopping c [View Full Entry]

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The unseasonably warm tempuratures in BC this summer have brought unbearable heat, since nobody here owns an air condtioner, but it also brought something else....BLueberries! and lots of them. I have never eaten so many in my life as I have here, I mean buckets of them. Today to cool off we went to Golden Ears Provincial Park to swim at Lake Alouette and the river flowing out of it. The water is literally a blue-green colour and to swim with mountains on all sides around you is spectacular. The water is usually very cold, but thanks to the warm weather [View Full Entry]

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The smog may obscure my view of the mountains, turning most of them into distant shadows, but it sure does make for a pretty sunset. I am sitting on the balcony of a 2 million dollar home in White Rock, BC at a small get-together of my cousin’s friend from camp. Spent the day on the beach in White Rock. Not the best, lots of rocks and seaweed, but it’s still the Pacific Ocean and it was my first dip of the trip. The Festival of the Sea was going on so it was nice listening to some folk music while [View Full Entry]

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So I survived my first time flying by myself. I felt extremely nervous about there being no one there to keep me distracted since I don’t really enjoy flying but two movies and one episode of The Office later I was in Vancouver airport and my cousin was running up to me and giving me a hug. We headed straight for downtown since it was the grand finale of the Festival of Lights and it was China’s turn to perform. Basically there are a bunch of countries that put on a fireworks show synchronized to predetermined music. We were on a [View Full Entry]

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Montreal as a city has a flavour that I haven’t experienced anywhere else I have travelled. It seems like one of the most European-esque cities in Canada, probably even North America, but it also has that urban concrete jungle feel too it that is common in Canadian cities. I’ve been to Montreal plenty of times, but usually in big groups with school or my dance group. This time it was just my sister, our cousin and I. Our cousin had come from Poland this summer and had been to Canada many times but never outside of Toronto. With Greyhound tickets so [View Full Entry]

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Stunning landscapes. Thinking of sending my parents to Jablinica for a vacation. [View Full Entry]

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So after our beautiful bus ride from Sarajevo, we finally arrived in the Mostar bus station and were bombarded by "soba" ladies. There were so many of them selling rooms that we could barely get off the bus and no matter how many times I told them I already had a room, they persisted. It was only until one of them noticed another bus pull into the station that they stopped. One of them would notice the other bus, point and yell and then they would all run to the other bus with their flyers. Mostar was interesting. On our way [View Full Entry]

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"SaRaJEVOOOOO!" Yelling "Sarajevo!" while running down the platforms of the Budapest train station looking for the Sarajevo train, was how our morning started off. We had slept in that morning, and got to the train station 5 minutes before the train's shedualed departure. The train left once a day and if we missed it we would have no place to sleep. Nobody seemed to know where it was, and the signs were just as confusing. Finally at the back end of the train station on platform 13 we found a train we thought was going to Sarajevo. All sweaty and out [View Full Entry]

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