Hockey Night in Kaohsiung

On Thursday, knowing that Foster Hewitt’s (our local Canadian pub) would be showing a replay of the game seven hockey final between the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks, Amanda and I very deliberately avoided checking the BBC, Facebook or any other website that might give away the result.

At 8pm our time, we started watching the final and, well, for brevity's sake I’ll leave at “we didn’t win”. Not only did we lose the game but we felt like we had lost twice over when we later on got caught up on news. Couldn’t believe all the rioting in Vancouver. How embarrassing to be a Canadian abroad right now when the only news making it overseas is about the Vancouver riots.

I did take one small pleasure in viewing some of the photos of the rioting and destruction and that was because so many of these rioters, looters, morons and mouth-breathers were stupid enough to do what they did while having their picture taken and within seconds uploaded to websites like Facebook. Some people even took self portraits and posted them to the web or updated their status to say how much fun they were having overturning cars and setting them on fire. Apparently Vancouver police are following up on all the photo evidence and have already made a number of arrests.

Vancouver Pictures.

See Amanda's post below for what we have been getting up to.

I love Vancouver

I am sunburnt. Already. Anyone who has ever seen me on a sunny day will not be surprised. Actually, today when B was going through some pictures of me he’d taken that morning, he oh-so-casually commented that it will be really nice when “we” get a bit of a tan in Taiwan. I guess my pasty complexion wasn’t so noticeable back in Calgary.

Vancouver has been great. We walked to Granville Island yesterday and ate our faces off at the Public Market, then today we caught a bus to English Bay and posed awkwardly for photos on the beach. After that we had dinner with B’s friend, Pierre. As a Canadian who lived in Japan for a while he was able to give us some solid advice to keep in mind for acclimatizing to life in Taiwan.

I wish we had more time to spend here. I love Vancouver so much! It helps that Rob is a great host and that the weather has been so beautiful. I don’t even feel nauseous on the buses here and you can’t travel a block in this city without smelling something delicious! I’m in love.

Two days left before Vancouver... no wait, we are in Vancouver!

So the danger of starting and not finishing and uploading a blog post is that in just a matter of days it will become out of date and irrelevant. I have scrapped my earlier unposted draft that started "Two days before Vancouver" and I will try to do better at not falling behind!

Without a doubt the hardest thing of the last month or so has been not just getting ourselves ready to leave but also saying goodbye to as many people as possible before leaving. So long as there was a single person out there (and there were many) that I wanted to say goodbye to in person but didn't get the chance to, I feel that our departure did not go as I would have liked.

I hope that those I missed will forgive me and understand that they will be the FIRST to be contacted upon our return!

We arrived in Van this evening to green grass, daffodils and sunshine. Just missed the cherry blossoms but spring is looking beautiful here, I do love Vancouver!

For dinner we went to a South Indian restaurant on Kingsway and had some excellent Dosas with our friend and host Rob. The food reminded me of the great meal that our friends Vidya and Raj cooked for us during our second or third last week in Calgary. It's funny that on our first night away from Calgary, comfort food would come in the form of South Indian cuisine!

We will be sure to take pictures while we are here in Vancouver and try to get some up on our blog before heading on to Beijing.


A couple things to get straight before signing off...

1. I have never blogged before, so forgive me of any monotonous or mundane posts. I trust my writing skills will improve with the aid of my editor extraordinaire (Amanda)... who is currently sleeping on the job!

2. Yes, I am rather excited and an astonishingly large number of my sentences will likely end with exclamation points! I will look to my editor to reign me in when things begin to get out of hand, but not tonight!!!!!


Good night, for now.