Advertisement
Published: December 23rd 2010
Edit Blog Post
Hello all!
It has been a busy weekend and week so far for me and I have plenty to write about in this blog!
After passing my CASI on Saturday it was all go to try and get my job and staff accommodation sorted out in time for me to avoid being homeless on Tuesday night!
To sort out my job and then accommodation I had to get a Social Insurance Number (SIN) which meant going to a little town about an hour out of Whistler called Squamish. I got a coach to Squamish on which I met a girl who was doing a degree about sustainable development and specialising in 'rural stoves'! Yeah, weird! It is amazing the people you meet here and how chatty everyone is! It really helps when you are in a new town because everyone is your friend!
Anyway I digress. I didn't even mean to write about Squamish but it was such a funny place that I felt I had to!
I had never been to 'downtown' anywhere before, but if you had asked me to describe you a 'downtown' area before I had been there I would have described you
downtown Squamish (where I had to go to get my SIN). It was basically a proper sleepy suburb with the odd dirty old 90's bus rumbling along, and pick-up trucks with dogs in the back sticking their heads out the side. I was talking to one of the men at the bus stop and he said that there is a big climbing community in Squamish and if you look up you can see why. Squamish is overshadowed by these really weird rock formation cliff type things and you could see the 'odd nutter' (as he put it!) climbing on there even in the winter snow!
My stereotype of North America as obsessed with pills was not helped when I stepped off the bus and saw a drug store the size of Tescos! I asked a lady if they sold anything other than pharmaceuticals in there and she said 'no not really...just drugs'. So I went in there. Literally the whole store was lined with every cure to every illness/disease/ache/pain that you could have! As you can see in the photo they had the whole of one wall just for prescriptions!
I also went to a dollar store and out of
about 20 things that I bought literally 4 where priced at 1 dollar. Not to mention that all prices are minus tax so it should actually have been called the $1.12 shop!
Like I said, Squamish is strange!
Once I had my SIN I went back to Whistler and got my job confirmed, got my uniform, and got my house which meant that I wasn't homeless! I really like the instructor uniform here, and because the whole resort is sponsored by Burton (the biggest snowboard brand in the world) all the snowboard gear is Burton which means it is really practical, respected (by other snowboarders) and comfortable.
My new room is in staff accommodation just next to the slopes which is very cool because it means I can roll out of bed in the morning and then snowboard down to work in about 5 minutes. I am sharing a room with a Canadian guy who is here for the season as part of his degree course in ski resort management! Cool degree eh! Sleeping in bunk beds is a bit of a jump back to being 5 years old again (i'm on the top because he got here
a week ago) but it only costs about £200 and month to stay here which is amazing for accommodation here! I was expecting to pay about £450 so I am very pleased! Our room is in a shared apartment with another 2 guys in the room opposite and a living room/kitchen in the middle. They are an aussie cleaner and a kiwi lifty and they seem to be pretty easy going and very friendly.
Today I had Basic Survival Training (BST) which is basically an initiation day with the snowschool designed to get you used to procedure and how the snowschool operates. I was put on a kids program although I found out at the end of the day that I will start off teaching adults and will be split between the two different sections of snowschool. The problem came from me making too good an impression on my instructors! Apparently I had been recommended for teaching adults by my instructor on my course and then for teaching kids by my instructor for my CASI exam so they didn't know where to put me! The basic training was pretty dull and we didn't get to do any instructing or
riding really but we did get paid and get a free lunch which made it all better!
Tomorrow I have a shadowing day with the adult side of the snowschool so I will be shown procedure there and then I start instructing the next day! I think I have been given Christmas day off so I am going to go boarding with some of the guys off my course (there is supposed to be 50cm of fresh powder! Talk about a white christmas!) and then we are going to dinner at a restaurant in town which will be nice. I am not sure what is happening in the evening but hopefully there will be a party at one of the big comfy houses my friends are staying at.
In other news I went to the post office today to pick up all the mail that has been sent to my old house over the last month (which hasn't got there because of an address mix-up) expecting them to send me away empty handed but emerged beaming, clutching quite a number of boxes so thankyou everyone for those! Unfortunately the customs labels sort of gave away what was in
them but I am still not going to open them until christmas!
I also got an offer to study biomedicine at Newcastle which was the offer I really wanted because it means I can transfer to medicine after the first year if I do well and avoid the extortionate new tuition fees!
I will check in again once I have started my job!
Lots of Love,
Laurie
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0424s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb