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Published: April 19th 2007
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Okay - to counter my last entry, we really are living in a beautiful City! Surrounded by snow-capped mountains, big flowing rivers, vast ocean and fjords. Amazing sunsets and sunrises... I will try to capture a few in the trustee digi-cam, but it is never the same. Spring is beautiful here. You really get the sense of seasons changing. People are friendly, generally. Strangers on the street or the public bus are totally happy to strike up conversations with each other. If you start talking to someone they don’t look at you as though you are mad. Smiles are returned. People thank each other profusely.
Have I countered the last entry yet? I think so.
I think that having a big whinge really helped me get over it. Going climbing also helped. I have decided to relax about trying to get a decent job, and have accepted the idea that I may, once again, be waiting on tables. I just have to make sure I enjoy myself over here.
Since my last entry we have met up with some friends of Jono’s parents, Barb, Brian and their daughter Heather. (Who incidentally - Heather from Canberra if you
are reading - is also a 30 year-old rower- but that is pretty much where the similarities end, methinks). They were all super lovely and friendly. We drank cheap beer at Heather’s rowing club, went walking along the beach and through the City, and they very kindly bought us lunch. Oh, and I saw my first squirrel which was really exciting. They are sooooooo cute. I had to be a tacky tourist, ogle over them and take too many photos. They are really easy to take photos of, and even seemed to pose for the camera. We also went past the back of the aquarium to view a sad looking sea lion in a too-small pool next door to several Beluga whales in a slightly larger pool. They are such beautiful looking creatures. They look like they are straight out of a cartoon. I felt sorry for them though being kept in pools and made to perform tricks in front of tourists. I did however read on the aquarium’s website that “Aquarium belugas acted as a healthy gene bank to which the DNA, or genetic material, of St. Lawrence belugas exposed to high levels of environmental contaminants could be compared.
This gave scientists a measurement of the genetic damage caused by pollutants.”
Apparently chemical runoff is the suspected cause of the death of a number of beluga whales in the northern waters of Canada's St. Lawrence River. The whales there have been found to have some of the highest cancer rates of any wild animals studied. Anyways, we took some bad pictures of them, but there are better ones out there: http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=beluga+whales&gbv=2, so I have spared you.
Nick (a friend from Canberra) stayed with us for a week so we twisted his arm to drive us to Squamish, so we could all twist and contort ourselves into its beeeeaudaful splitter cracks. Something I am sure will sound very strange to non-climbers, but we consider it fun. All the climbs we did were moderately easy, (grade 17 - 20) as we are still getting used to the rock and the grades over here. I have not done a lot of slab or crack climbing, so it is a whole new game. I have climbed a little bit at Baroomba, which is also granite featuring mostly slab climbs. But the Granite at Squamish is much more polished and smooth, so
view of back yard
green stuff IN the backyard I find it harder to climb. I am looking forward to getting really good at jamming and smearing though. I finally got the bravado to do my first lead here, so I’m working on it. By the end of the year, you might even see photo’s of me SMILING while doing it! No promises though.
A few people have asked about the place we call home, so I have taken a few happy snaps of it to show ya’ll. My family (mum, dad, Jen) have all had a virtual tour now courtesy of video-skype, but for other curious people, hopefully these snaps fill in a bit of colour for you.
Not much more travel-related news from this end right now. The words are mainly here to put some padding around the photos. Pfft. I can’t believe I am a writer and I just admitted that. I could give some entertaining job searching stories, but I guess this is not really the forum for it.
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