North Americans go nuts for Halloween, weeks beforehand people deck out their yards with all sorts of weird and wacky paraphernalia. I particularly liked one house's decoration which had skeletons in coffins, graves with bones coming out, and ghosts dangling from the windows. They must have spent hundreds of dollars. We were not as excessive, but did buy some pumpkins. I'd never hollowed out a pumpkin before, it was quite novel really. You start by cutting a hole big enough to fit your hand, making sure you keep the piece cut out. Then you scrape and scoop all the goopy insides [View Full Entry]

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After months of no work, I finally got round to looking for something. To start with I checked papers and websites. The papers were rubbish and the websites had a few good leads. Calgary is an oil and gas city so wages are higher than the rest of the country. It means that people are flocking to the city in search of jobs. Besides this, when we first arrived there were ads for jobs in lots of shop windows. For this reason I was filled with optimism that I would find something. I was excited when I read a job posting [View Full Entry]

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Hands up if you know who Chris Cornell is? For all of you with your hands down he's the lead singer of the bands Soundgarden and Audioslave two of the biggest rock bands in the 90s and 00s. He also has a solo career with his biggest hit "You Know My Name" being a James Bond opening theme. I'm not just telling you this for shits and giggles, we went and saw him playing at Calgary University. Nic, Tina, Chad and I rocked up early had a feed and a few drinks before watching support act "Mobile". They are a Canadian [View Full Entry]

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Calgary has some weird and wacky weather. The four seasons are very distinct, you can definitely tell when winter is anyway. When we first arrived it was summer. Days were generally warm to hot with temperatures around 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. The air is extremely dry and people use humidifiers to put water into the air, a strange concept for a New Zealander. This means that you get lots of electric shocks, I'm glad my shock-happy mate Callum didn't live here. Rain is rare and if it occurs it is usually accompanied by thunder and fork lightning. We watched some [View Full Entry]

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On the way back to Calgary from Fairmont Springs we passed the majestic Castle Mountain and were lucky enough to spot an eagles nest atop a bridge nearby. Usually eagles will have one offspring, sometimes two. This nest had three and the mother in it at once. We watched the squawking children being feed by the mother who was swooping down into the river below to catch fish. It was hard to see the three babies at once, but just before we left I managed to snap a photo with all three. We also made a stop at Kootenay national park. [View Full Entry]

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August long weekend holidays rolled around and we still had no jobs so we packed our sleeping bags and tents in the car and headed with Tina, Scott, Chad and Kelly to Fairmont Springs which is west of Calgary in British Columbia. In the end we were lucky to find a campsite as a lot of people had decided to spend the long weekend camping. I was stoked with the spot we got though. It was surrounded by a horseshoe shaped pond. We pitched tents before lazing around the fire. Eating, drinking and being merry occurred. Not even a downpour and [View Full Entry]

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We thanked Bob and Pat for their wonderful hospitality and caught a ferry for Vancouver. Unfortunately the journey was foggy so we didn't have great views. We made our way into the downtown core and popped into a McDonalds to avoid the rain and wait for Mum and Dad to arrive. The city felt like London, not sure if that was because it was busy like London or because of the rain. We met Mum and Dad and checked into a nearby hotel. Well kind of, they never asked about Nic and I so we stayed for free. Best scam since [View Full Entry]

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Because of our inability to get accomodation at Tofino we decided to make a day trip from Ucluelet to Vancouver Island's famous Long Beach. It is a huge long sandy beach with a few rocky outcrops. It reminded me of Riversdale beach in NZ where our family used to spend holidays. After sunning ourselves for a while, we decided to brave the cold waters. It was brisk to start with but eventually we acclimatised. We certainly got a few strange looks from the surfboarders in their full-body wetsuits. Once back on dry land we spent hours watching the eagles soaring from [View Full Entry]

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We had wanted to stay in Tofino but it was either booked out or expensive so we decided on Ucluelet instead. We caught a bus from Parksville, on the way seeing another couple of bears. If anyone has seen the movie scary movie 2 then the guy running the hostel looked exactly like the character in a wheelchair. He was freakish. Anyways we checked in and went out to check out the place. It is a small seaside town that has a rustic charm. I don't know why I remember this but we saw a bush with the largest leaves I [View Full Entry]

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Scott’s parent’s, Bob and Pat, live in a place called Parksville on Vancouver Island and invited us to stay. We were looking forward to some nice lodgings after our horror hotel in Victoria so caught the bus North. Bob and Pat’s place was definitely the opposite end of the scale from the Victoria hotel. They live in a relatively new area near the coast. We dropped our bags off and headed down to the pool as soon as we got there. Once recharged we took Cecil (Bob and Pat’s dog) for a walk down to the beach. He is a strange [View Full Entry]

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