Are You My Friend?

Moving to a new town is hard, especially when you don't know anyone. This is the fourth time that I've relocated to a new city without knowing anyone, and each time I do this it seems harder. By the time we left Salt Lake City, we had a really good group of friends, but I remember how difficult it was at first and I want to avoid a year of feeling lonely.

I've been aggressively trying to meet people in Vancouver. I've been socializing through volunteering, Brian's work friends, city tours, social dancing and Meetup.com. I've heard it's hard to be new in Vancouver, and luckily I've met some really cool people so far. Hopefully these will turn into solid friendships, but I still feel like I'm going from person to person asking "Are you my Friend?". I've also just found out that Vancouver is no longer the world's most livable city; bummer.

Victoria Weekend Excursion

Last weekend Brian and visited Victoria on Vancouver Island. We saw the impressive First Nations exhibit at the Museum of British Columbia and went for a few nice walks through town and by the sea.

Downtown Victoria

Totem poles at the Royal BC Museum

We also went on a whale watching tour, which I enjoyed quite a bit. We saw a humpback whale and several sea lions and seals. This was my first time seeing a whale, and it was awesome.

Humpback Whale Fluke! Sploosh!

Seals and Sealions

Victoria is British Columbia’s capitol and the location of the provincial government. While we were there, we took a tour of the Parliament building and learned about BC’s government, which, as an American, I find hilarious.

BC Parliament Building

Tour guide dressed as architect Francis Rattenbury

Notes on the Canadian Government

• The queen of England is Canada’s head of state.
• The BC Parliament building has a very special door that only the queen and heads of state are permitted to use. We did not see a special door for the royal corgies.
• Since the queen is too busy to deal with Canada, a Governor General of Canada is appointed to serve as her representative (the queen’s understudy)
• The Governor General takes on all of the queen’s important duties in Canada including nodding his/her assent at all of the bills passed by Parliament while dressed in snappy clothing.
• Bills are not made into laws until nodded at.
• Since this system is so sensible, there is also a Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia to nod at the provincial laws of BC.

I’m not saying American government is better than Canadian government;the US government is quite dysfunctional at the moment. However, I find the queen quite amusing, and her role in Canadian government is even stranger to me.

Our biggest reason for heading to Vancouver Island was to meet up with friends and family. Unfortunately, we were not able to meet up with my mom and grandma, but we were able to see our friends Luke and Andrew who had a five hour layover from their cruise. They had just gotten engaged and Brian and I are hoping for a wedding ceremony conveniently located in Canada. It was good seeing our old friends and made us really miss our gang from Salt Lake City.

In front of downtown

Seeing Luke and Andrew off

More of our Victoria pictures are online in our Picasa album here. Transportation/Lodging Details are here

Happy Anniversary!

Brian and I just celebrated our first anniversary last Sunday. When we first got married, a lot of people asked me if our relationship felt different. Having been together for a very long time prior to getting married, I didn’t think that our relationship would change very much, and I’m happy to report that it hasn’t. At least, it hasn’t from our point of view. I’ve seen the biggest difference between being married vs. unmarried in the past few months. Our new friends in Vancouver only know us as a married couple. We’re mostly hanging out with other married couples and our parties have changed significantly.

We had a house-warming party last Friday. Nothing got broken, our floors weren’t sticky, and we consumed more food than liquor. In short, we’ve started to have old-people parties. Which I guess is because we’re old people.

Parties Before........................................ Parties Now

Despite the married-people parties, we’re still having adventures. Brian and I celebrated our first year of marriage by taking windsurfing lessons at Jericho Beach. We’re spending this weekend on Vancouver Island and we’re making plans for our Middle East adventure in the fall.

Our Apartment

Here are some photographs of our new apartment in Vancouver. We like our nice open kitchen.