Photos from Vancouver

Here are a few pictures taken on my wanderings around Vancouver, mostly around the West End, Stanley Park and English Bay.




This is the Inukshuk at Alexandra Point, right near English Bay. An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a directional milestone. It is a symbol with deep roots in the Inuit culture, signifying safety, hope and friendship. I've actually taken heaps of photos of it, on my never-ending search to find the perfect shot with the perfect lighting conditions of this very Canadian symbol. There are more on Facebook!

This is at Canada Place, up near the waterfront in the downtown area, looking north toward the mountains. I'm trying to remember what building the sails are part of, but they're a very distinctive marker on Vancouver's skyline.

This is in Stanley Park, not far from Second Beach, and I took this for two reasons: one, because I love the progression of winter-autumnal trees (I know, it should be the other way round really) and two, because it felt a little bit Six Feet Under, and if you've ever watched the opening titles to the show you'll get what I mean.

This is taken from the seawall which surrounds Stanely Park, looking across to West Van on the other side of the bay. The seawall is closed once you round that bend, due to major storm damage which occurred last December. Something like 10,000 trees in the park were either destroyed or damaged, and a 2km section of the seawall suffered major damage as well, so there has been a huge reconstruction project happening throughout 2007. It would be nice if the rest of the seawall were to open before I leave Vancouver, so that I can walk all 9km of it.

Looking across False Creek to Vanier Park and the neighbourhood of Kitsilano. Slightly shaky camera, but how cool are those clouds?!

This is English Bay, bathed in late afternoon sunlight (my favourite time of day). Yes, that is a tree on top of the building in the centre. I'm sure it's one of the most expensive buildings to live in in the West End, probably partly to do with the eccentric appeal of an enormous tree sprouting from the top. I gather there's a whole roof garden up there but it's not open to the public.

Lost Lagoon, which lies between my place and the rest of Stanley Park. I often walk around the lagoon, which takes about half an hour. Quite frequently I see squirrels and raccoons while I'm out walking, which Canadians probably don't think twice about but which are a novelty for me.

OK, this photo is probably the shot that most captures the West End for me: gay-friendly, Canadian, proud, and living in a high-rise overlooking the bay (and being just eccentric enough to live in a building with a tree on the top).

If you haven't already noticed, I like trees. Especially skeletal winter trees. And autumn leaves. And sunset. Both of these are in the English Bay/lower Stanley Park area.

Photos from the Rockies

OK, I promised some photos, so here are some pictures of my nine days in the Rockies, which I have to say are absolutely spectacular and should be on everyone's "must go there one day" list. I just fell in love with this part of the world - it truly is some of the most amazing landscape anywhere. And just when you think it can't get any better, it does - I just kept on being surprised by how beautiful it was. Every time the weather or the light changes, you see something new and different. And these mountains pretty much put every mountain in Australia to shame! Our mountains look like gently undulating hills in comparison.

Anyway, these photos are by no means exhaustive; I took several hundred photos in a week and a bit, so I picked out some good/interesting ones for now and will post a few more another time, as well as some from around Vancouver.


Depsite the horribly crooked horizon I really love this shot. This was Emerald Lake, which is a glacier lake in Glacier National Park, before you actually reach the Rockies. A few of the crazier people in our group (I was with the Moose backpacker bus) decided to swim in water that couldn't have been more than 1-2 degrees. And there were literally a hundred or more people gathered round with cameras to capture this collective insanity. Left to right: Steve (UK), Laurence (Albany, Australia), Kaz (NZ) and David (UK). I seem to have quite a lot of photos of Laurence swimming in glacier lakes because he swam in just about all of them. He's keeping the stereotype of the crazy Australian alive and well throughout the world.



A more tranquil Emerald Lake, before everyone went swimming.


Lake Louise, one of the most photographed and most famous spots in the Rockies.



The view from the Saddleback track around the Lake Louise area. This was a really tough climb (3.7km all uphill) but wow, the views were worth it! L-R: Lene (Denmark), Lukas (Germany), me (looking a bit hot and sweaty), Pieter (Switzerland) and Michael (Germany).



At Lake Louise again, having mostly recovered from the hike.



One of the many waterfalls we visited - I think this must be the Kicking Horse river, which might be the name of the falls as well, I can't really remember. (After dozens of rivers and waterfalls they all look a bit the same after a while).


This really captures the sweeping majesty of the mountains for me. I also have a portrait-oriented version of this shot where I like the light a lot better, but you'd have to look at it sideways because I still can't seem to rotate photos on Blogger.



This was the hostel at Rampart Creek, where we stayed in cosy wood cabins and woke up to the view in the background. There was also a sauna cabin by the creek, where you stay inside the steam room until you just about can't breate anymore, and then run down to the near freezing creek to cool off. Then run back to the sauna again and repeat a few times. The creek has a deceptively strong current though, so there's really only one area at the side of the creek where it's safe to take a dip in the water (bloody freezing, too!!) otherwise you'd be quite easily swept downstream and end up battered and bruised a hundred metres downstream (or worse). I only tried it once and wore thongs (flip-flops, for the non-Aussies) so as to not cut my feet on the rocks, but it's next to impossible to keep them on in the moving water. And so that, my friends, is how I sacrificed a thong to the great Canadian wilderness.



Sitting around the campfire while dinner was cooking inside. Ah, the campfires... two of the best nights of the trip, sitting around chatting until the small hours and making Smores (toasted marshmallow cookie sandwiches with melted chocolate). Mmm, so good!


Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefield. The icefield is unfathomably big and covers an area which (apparently) is big enough for every person in North America to stand on with a distance of a metre apart. I can't quite picture this - as that's over 300 million people, but that's what all the guidebooks boast. It certainly is big though, and this glacier is only a tiny, tiny, tiny part of it. These big ice-bus things allow you to drive out onto the glacier and get out to walk around at a clearing which has been levelled and is safe to stand on. All the large mounds of rubble are moraines, which are part of the process of glacier formation. (And not, as some people frequently ask, rock which has been piled up along the sides by machinery so you can get to the glacier!)



Out on the glacier - the blue sky appeared once we got off the ice bus and made the skyline even more breathtaking.

Ben, a fellow Melbournian, and me out on the glacier. If I look cold it's because I was. Very.

Well that's it for now. More pictures next time.

The long-awaited update

So much for my plan to update this blog every couple of weeks. I guess being busy in one country is no different to being busy in another - some things just get pushed to the bottom of the priority list and I suppose I prefer to be out there living in Vancouver rather than writing about living in Vancouver.

This is a great city, despite the rain. And yes, it does rain. A lot. Most of the time, actually. I'm learning how to fit right in though and look like a local: umbrella in one hand, takeaway Starbucks coffee in the other, trying to pretend that it doesn't bother you that the rain is never ending and you are cold for 6 months of the year. But the rain, though constant, is often pretty light. In Melbourne we get showers; here it sometimes rains so lightly that you wouldn't notice except for the drops of water appearing on your glasses and the fact that you seem to be wet after walking two blocks. But I guess like anything else, the rain is something you just get used to after a while. People don't seem to let it stop them from getting on with their day-to-day lives - people still go jogging in Stanley Park and walking along English Bay beach. They just get wet!

Anyway, because it's been so long since I updated, here, in no particular order, are a few things I've been up to.

Work
I've signed up with a temp agency doing office administration work. This seemed to be the simplest form of finding work since I'm only here until mid-December. I'm on my fourth assignment now, but all I've done there is one day of training on Friday and the real job starts tomorrow. The first assignment was just data entry for a day and a half, the second was a one-day fill in as a receptionist, and the third was an an office assistant/receptionist for an advertising agency. None of them have been riveting jobs; mostly the office admin assistant does everything from filing, distributing the mail and sending out courier packages, to making sure the kitchen is neat and tidy. It's all fine, although for some reason people earning six-figure salaries seem to have lost the ability to wash a coffee mug or put their used teabag in the bin which is only two metres from the sink. I don't mind being the one to stack and empty the dishwasher, but I'm no one's mother - I shouldn't really be having to go around picking up after adults who should know better! People get very lazy when they know there's someone else around who will be paid to do it for them.

Anyway, this week I'm on an assignment with somewhat more responsibility - I'm basically the personal assistant to one of the VPs of a large corporation. Could be interesting, but possibly stressful! Everyone has been really friendly though, and there are lots of other temps in the same company at the moment so we went for Friday drinks after work. We ran into a guy that one of the girls knew and he thought about joining us but then changed his mind. "Hmm, six temps, two jugs of Sangria and one fluro pink wig [which was Calli's]... uh, no thanks, I know trouble when I see it!" he said. Oh well, his loss!

Living in the West End
As I mentioned earlier, I'm in a great part of the city, really close to Stanley Park and English Bay. I try to go for a walk around Lost Lagoon (takes about half an hour) at least once a week, which is basically at the bottom of Stanley Park. The whole park is huge - the seawall around the edge extends for about 9km and there are views over to North Van, West Van, Kitsilano and the downtown area. The park itself is really pretty, especially with all the fall colours at the moment. I've seen quite a few raccoons too, and heaps of squirrels - not all that exciting to most people, perhaps, but a novelty for me. I'm about half a block from Denman St, which has heaps of restaurants and shops. I'm a less than 5-minute walk from fantastic Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, African, Italian, French, Greek, Mexican, Lebanese, and Middle Eastern restaurants... plus your standard fast food and takeaway type places! It really is the best part of the city to live in. If only I could afford to eat out every day.

The apartment I'm living in is pretty tiny, but it's adequate for my purposes. Now that I'm working I don't spend much time there. The woman I'm living with is Donna - she sleeps in the lounge and rents out the bedroom, so I'm the fourth or fifth roommate she's had in the last few years. We get along OK, although I think I'm at the point of living with someone where all their little habits and routines go from being slightly annoying to really annoying. Nothing major - I mean, everyone has their little eccentricities that you just learn to deal with. She's unemployed right now; she impulsively quit her job four days after I moved in, although she declined to actually tell anyone in her office that she was quitting and just walked out. So all afternoon her co-workers were leaving messages on her home phone (she doesn't have a cell) asking where she was and what was going on. By late afternoon they were ringing hospitals to find out if anything had happened to her, and they were still ringing at 10:30 on a Friday night because they hadn't heard anything and she refused to pick up the phone and talk to anyone. She eventually got someone to 'pass on a message' that she had quit, but seriously, who behaves this way? She's a grown woman and I've never seen anything so childish!

All Singing, Some Dancing
As anyone who knows me knows that I wear the badge 'choir nerd' with pride, I've been going to hear lots of great choral performances. This really is one of the best cities in the world for choirs!

The Vancouver Chamber Choir are very good - I went to their concert at the Chan Centre a few weeks ago where they did an all Baroque program, and last Friday night they did a program with a guest conductor from Japan of music by Canadian, Scandinavian and Japanese composers. It was good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I was hoping to. Very... uh... esoteric, is perhaps the word. You'd need to really love contemporary music to have appreciated it fully (it was almost entirely late twentieth century, with a couple of exceptions), and even though I've been a choral singer for 18 years, I found it very difficult to listen to. Technically excellent, of course, but not especially engaging. There was only one piece on the program I knew, which was Grieg's Våren. Usually I love this piece, but even this failed to inspire me much. I don't know; perhaps I was just in the wrong frame of mind for going to a concert.

musica intima, on the other hand, are an absolutely brilliant twelve-voice unconducted ensemble who not only sound amazing but are great to watch for how well they communicate, with each other and with the audience - they have the best stage presence of any choir I've seen recently. I heard about them long before coming to Canada and I already own three of their CDs, so it was a real treat to go to their concert last weekend and also hear them do the music for Evensong a few weeks before that.

Last Sunday I went to hear the Phoenix Chamber Choir sing at CBC Radio for the final of the 'Let the People Sing' competition. They came fourth out of the four in the final, but were still definitely worth hearing. They had some stiff competition too, singing against choirs from Norway, Finland and Estonia. The competition itself was being held live in Germany, and Phoenix were singing in a small recording studio with a live audience. But the judges were listening to all choirs from a separate room so as to not disadvantage the groups that couldn't be there in person. Phoenix reminds me a bit of Concordis (my choir) in some ways - one of the better amateur choirs in the city, with quite a number of people who look to be in their twenties, and they sing a wide variety of repertoire, including some Eric Whitacre and Moses Hogan. And they select fairly approachable music: stuff that is challenging but listenable from an audience perspective.

Last night I went to another concert, this time by the Vancouver Cantata Singers. This is the choir Tony Funk sings with, whom I met in Brisbane in 2006 when he conducted NYCA. What an amazing performance last night was! Even though I've heard many technically excellent performances since I've been here, last night was the first one that took my breath away on an emotional and spiritual level as well. It was all early music, as might have been sung in St Mark's Basilica in Venice during the Rennaissance, so there was lots of Gabrieli (both Andrea and Giovanni) and Monteverdi. Some people may have found it too much of a good thing, but I enjoyed every minute, especially the way they worked the acoustic of the cathedral to their advantage, positioning themselves differently for each piece. They performed with I Tromboni, who are a Vancouver-based trombone quintet. No, I had never heard of such a thing either, but the concept works well and they sound great. It's the first time I've ever heard Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 trumpets without the trumpets! And then I was invited out for post-concert drinks with the choir and brass players. I feel like I'm making friends in all sorts of musical networks over here!

Anyway, apart from listening to as many choirs as I can, I've also joined the choir at Christ Church Cathedral for my remaining two months. I really miss singing in a choir - I knew it would be hard to go my whole trip without singing, but I didn't think I'd miss it so much so soon! I approached their director Rupert Lang when I met him at the musica intima concert last week, and he was happy to take a soprano short-term, so I went along to their rehearsal on Thursday night and I sang in this morning's service. My preference was to join a community chamber choir like Phoenix because of a bigger variety of repertoire (and the whole not having to go to church thing), but I knew it would be harder to find a chamber choir which would accept someone for only a few months. Totally understandable, of course, because it mucks up the balance of parts and it's hard when the choir's schedule is already planned for the year. But I'm happy to have joined the cathedral choir. It's a great sound, people are really friendly, and we're singing wonderful music that I don't usually get an opportunity to sing. This morning we sang a psalm setting by Rupert and some Mendelssohn (including Verleih uns Frieden, which I absolutely love), and for future services we've rehearsed parts of the Mozart Coronation Mass, and Harris' Faire is the Heaven, which surely must be one of the most stunning choral pieces ever written. Apart from the services, there are also concerts coming up, so there's plenty to keep me busy. And like everything else I seem to do here, there's a social side too... a group of us went out for brunch afterwards and I am still feeling comfortably stuffed from a breakfast burrito.

So, 'all singing, some dancing?', you ask. Yes, I've found a place downtown which runs salsa and tango lessons on a Wednesday evening, so I'm putting my dancing shoes to use over here as well. They're just beginner lessons, even though I already have a year or so of dancing experience at home. I'm relatively new to salsa though, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's lots of fun, and feels good to be dancing again. Unfortunately there aren't many opportunities for social dancing though, which is the best way to improve on what you learn in the classes. I could head out to the Crystal Ballroom on SW Marine which is meant to be the best ballroom studio in the city, but it'd take at least 45-50 minutes to get there by bus. (You don't realise how much you rely on having a car until you're forced to live without one!) But there's a salsa nightclub somewhere closer to downtown so I might check it out one day.

People I know
Well, from arriving in this city knowing a total of two people (the Funks, and they're out in Abbotsford), I'm starting to meet a lot of people through dancing, choir, working, etc. When I was staying in the hostel at the start of September I met Alison, another Aussie girl from Sydney. She's here until April and living over in North Van, and we found that we have quite a lot in common. We're starting to catch up every week or two for coffee, lunch or a movie. And last weekend I finally got to catch up with Tony over lunch. It was great to see him again - I'm so excited he's coming back to Australia for NYCA in 2008! I will absolutely, 100% definitely be back home in time for the next season!

I've met a few of Donna's friends, I've met some of the other temps through work, and I'm adding new friends to Facebook just about every week it seems. And there are a few people I'm planning to keep in touch with who I met over...

...Thanksgiving Dinner
Thanksgiving in Canada is earlier than in the States (because they're further north and the harvest is earlier), so it's always the first weekend in October. But two days beforehand I still had no plans, and I thought it was a bit depressing to be here for one of the traditional holidays and not get to do anything Thanksgiving-y. Donna already had plans, and Alison was going over to Victoria for the weekend. So I jumped on Craigslist to see if anyone else was at a loss for anything to do. If there were no ads already posted along the lines of what I was looking for I was planning to post one of my own boldly asking whether any Vancouverians wanted to have me over for dinner and show this uninitiated Aussie the ways of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. As it turned out, there was an ad posted from a guy who was new to the city who had nothing better to do, and wanted to throw a Thanksgiving dinner party providing he could get at least three guests. He was offering all the food and to do all the cooking, although we could come early to help if we wanted, so I responded.

There ended up being four of us in total - me, Adrian (who issued the invitation), Verena (originally from Austria but has lived here 5 years) and Memory (originally from Zimbabwe but has been in North America for about 10 years). It was such a great night - it could have been really weird, four total strangers coming together to share a meal with possibly nothing in common except a lack of friends to spend Thanksgiving with. But we all got along really well, ate and drank way too much, and the food was superb! It was traditional dinner with all the trimmings: an enormous turkey (could have fed about 10 people), stuffing, roasted yams and potatoes, brussel sprouts (I thought I hated them but they're not as bad as I expected), cranberry sauce with real berries (nothing from a jar or can at our table!) and pumpkin pie, of course. Verena and I were both there around 4 o'clock to help, but when we arrived it turned out that Adrian had already done pretty much everything because he over-estimated how long it would all take and had started early. He's a good cook, too!

Well, there's probably plenty more I could say about all the things I've been doing in Canada, but I'm aware of just how long this entry has become. I'll save some stuff for next time, and yes, I absolutely promise I will be posting photos soon. Without boring everyone with all the details of the various technical difficulties I've had, I can only upload photos to this blog when I use an internet cafe because 1) Donna's computer is really old and has no USB port (what's with that?) and 2) the image-viewing program crashes every time I try to view any pictures on her computer. When I next have a spare hour or so I'll go and use a computer elsewhere to get some photos up. Because surely there's nothing more tedious than just reading long pages of text like this one! And if you have absolutely no interest in all things choral, I apologise for such lengthy descriptions of all the concerts I've been to recently.

Hope all is well with everyone back home, or wherever you are in the world. Love and best wishes from the city where it only rains once a year: starting in September and finishing... oh... around May.

Living in Vancouver

Hello everyone, and sorry for the long gap between posts. This one will be brief, unfortunately, mainly just for me to post my big bit of news: after searching for almost a week I have found a place to live for the three months I will be in Vancouver! This is super exciting for me, not only because it means I get to move out of the hostel and start my 'real life' here (as opposed to constantly being a tourist) but also because it's the first time I've ever lived anywhere other than my parents' house in South Oakleigh.

I'm moving into the West End neighborhood which, if you know Vancouver at all, is not far from the city area, between Downtown and the gorgeous Stanley Park. It's a pretty competitive area to get housing - I was wandering through the streets the other day admiring all the nice houses and thinking "I'll never be able to afford this area!" But I got lucky and found a room in a shared apartment with a lovely woman called Donna. The place is small, but it's nice and light and reasonably modern, and nowhere near as cramped as some of the places I've looked at. It's hard to find places that are both nice inside and in nice areas; a lot of them are one or the other but not both! So I move in tonight - in fact, when my last 6 minutes of prepaid internet time run out I'll be heading down to my new home.

So that's my latest. The job comes next (but I have several leads to follow up from people so it shouldn't be too hard). I figured it was much harder to house-hunt once you start working, so the place to live was my first priority. Will keep you posted with any other news that comes up, and I'll try to get pictures of my trip to the Rocky Mountains up soon.

In the meantime, for anyone who is on Facebook, you can add me as a friend and then see the couple of albums I've uploaded there, of San Francisco pics and also Highway 1 along the California Coastline.

A meander around San Francisco

It's hard to believe I've been away for 10 days already. Where does the time go? I'm in Vancouver now, where it's still warm but not quite so overbearing as in California. That will teach me to listen to Mum next time she tells me 2 t-shirts will be plenty!

Well, as promised, here are some photos of the first few days of my trip. I'm sorry there's not more - using a hostel computer means there's always someone waiting for you to finish, and the pics are slow to load. Plus, there's no kind of software on here that will even let me rotate photos, so these are the ones I could post without having to make you look at them sideways.


Chinatown, San Francisco, which seems much more integral to the city than Chinatown in Melbourne, which you probably wouldn't even know was there unless you went looking. I went to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory a block or two from here and my fortune from the very first cookie I ate was: "You are about to be confronted with unlimited possibilities". Very apt for the first day of my trip, I thought.

Portsmouth Square, Chinatown, where all the old men spend their afternoons playing Chinese Chess, the women sit around talking in groups, and the children play on a really cool playground.


Portsmouth Square, Chinatown - even "The Goddess of Democracy" can be crapped on by a pigeon. The tall skinny pyramid is the TransAmerica building, the tallest skyscraper on San Francisco's skyline.


The view from Telegraph Hill in North Beach - it's quite a hike to get up here, but the views are worth it. At least, they would be if San Francisco wasn't being true to type and shrouded in summer fog. This looks over the bay to Oakland & Berkeley, and that's Alcatraz out in the middle.

If you walk down the other side of Telegraph Hill and towards the bay, you go right past all these lovely gardens of private homes, which line the steps toward Filbert St. It's a steep descent, and I'm glad I was walking down rather than up! But just as you think there couldn't possibly be any more 'down' left, you turn a corner and find yet another set of steps leading you back towards the city. It's a lovely quiet part of San Francisco, and makes a change from the bustle of downtown.


Union Square at dusk. On my way back from wandering Chinatown and North Beach I stopped in Union Square to listen to a band that was playing. A pretty big crowd had gathered and were enjoying a balmy summer evening. I only caught the last 3 songs or so though, and then went in search of dinner. I think I probably walked about 7km on that first day, and I was jetlagged too, but all up it was a great introduction to the city.

Anyway, that's all for now. More photos to come next time hopefully, but I head to the Rockies tomorrow so I may not find much spare time to post for a week or so.

I left my heart in San Francisco...

...and I know the way to San Jose!

Hello all, sorry for not posting a little sooner to let you all know I made it safely and am having a lovely time. I have been quite busy - busier than I expected, anyway - seeing sights, meeting people, trying new things. Since I will be back in the Bay Area for Christmas and New Year, I was planning to take things at a fairly slow pace for the first week so that it feels like a holiday and not a race around a big city. But there are so many places to go and things to see, so finding time to sit down and email/blog to people back home has kind of been pushed down the priority list.

When I arrived I spent two nights in San Francisco, and despite the jetlag did lots of walking around to acquaint myself with this amazing city. Yes, it is crowded. Yes, it is foggy during summer which kind of spoils the nice views across the bay. Yes, it is FULL of quite aggressive panhandlers. But it is also charming, beautiful and intoxicating. People who live in San Francisco are clearly people who are in love with their city, which you soon realise as soon as you talk to the locals. And everyone must have very strong calf muscles from all the hills!

So far I've explored Chinatown, a bit of North Beach (up to Telegraph Hill and back down the other side via the quaint steps which take you past some very elegant houses), the Haight-Ashbury ex-hippie district and Buena Vista Park, a bit of Golden Gate Park, the Museum of Modern Art, and part of the Mission District. And that was just in 48 hours.

On Friday I caught the train to San Jose where I met up with Amy, a good friend who lived in Melbourne for the first half of 2006. So she's been showing me a lot of her local area, and Mountain View where she used to live. I'm getting to meet her family, her friends, her friends' families... everyone seems kind of excited to meet "the Australian girl", which is a bit weird! But the people are lovely, and very friendly. The only people who don't seem especially friendly are those with whom you have only the briefest of interactions - the bus drivers, the people who serve you in supermarkets, etc. They are polite, but only to the point where they are fulfilling the requirement of their job - no one even seems to go out of their way to venture a smile when they serve you. Australians by comparison are a lot more easy going. But if you are able to have even a brief conversation with a local they suddenly become quite friendly and enthusiastic to hear about your travels or your country, or to offer advice on things you must see or do.

Today I hung out with Amy, her boyfriend Ian, and two of his friends, Evan and his fiancee Kirsty. Kirsty is from Glasgow and is in the process of being able to migrate here so they can get married. If it were me I think I'd be picking Scotland over the US! But each to their own, I guess. The five of us watched a movie and went to play mini-golf. I won! Which I think is a first for me!

I also got to meet Larry tonight, who I have corresponded with for almost a decade via email but never actually met, so it was lovely to finally meet face to face. I heard Living Water, his choir, sing at an evening church service at a Presbyterian Church in San Jose. It was... interesting. Enough to remind me why I am not currently comfortable attending a church. Then a group of us went to dinner afterwards at a fairly typical American kind of place - burgers, westernized Mexican food, and strange combinations of things that seem to serve little purpose except to try to be the most unhealthy food you could possibly eat. Tonight I am in the land that invented deep-fried mozzarella cheese, which Americans claim is "awesome" (although there is very little that isn't "awesome"). To be honest, it's not that nice.

Tomorrow Amy and Ian are being my own personal tour guides and chauffeurs and taking me to Santa Cruz, Pigeon Point and Half Moon Bay, so we'll have a nice day of driving along the coast and taking in the stunning scenery. I will try to post pictures the next time I write.

So that's been my week. Having lots of fun but missing home as I try to adjust to the idea of nine months living out of a backpack and meeting new people.

But for now I leave you with my Weird Discovery of the Week:

In the Mission District on Friday I was browsing in a rather eclectic CD store called Aquarius Records and found an album called 'Sounds of North American Frogs'. The first line of the description read "The amphibian song revival is here!" Hmmmm. I thought my musical knowledge and awareness was pretty comprehensive, but clearly this is one revolution which has escaped my notice. And I'm sure my life is the poorer for it.

The Plan

So. You're probably here because I sent you an email about my big going away party before I head overseas in just under a month. Yes, after many, many years of talking about it, it's finally happening - the big rite-of-passage, "off to find myself", trip of a lifetime. It's exciting and scary, all at once. I know once I'm over there I will probably love it, and forget all about how hard it is to be away from friends and family for so long. But I expect the 16 hour trip across the Pacific will consist of me bawling my eyes out and going "Oh my God! What am I doing????"

For those of you that are interested, I will try to post regular updates here while I'm gone, so you can see something of the places I get to see, and read about all the things I get up to. I figure this is a bit easier than posting long emails that will clog up your inbox and that you will feel obliged to read - but if you aren't interested in where I am and what I'm doing I won't be offended!

Because I don't yet know how often I'll be able to post, I thought I'd at least give you a rough outline of where I plan to be when, and what I hope to be doing. That way, when I don't post for several weeks at a time, you can at least hazard a guess that it's because I've been eaten by a moose in Canada, or met some crazy gun-toting redneck in Texas, or fallen madly in love with a handsome Spanish boy, or acquired a taste for guinness in Ireland and am spending all my time in the local pub, or fallen down a glacier crevass in Norway. Well, you just never know...

22 August 2007: THE BIG DAY!!

Depart Melbourne for San Francisco.

September: Head up to Canada before it gets too cold to be worth going. Spend a couple of weeks in the Rockies and then head back to Vancouver to hopefully find work of some sort.

October-November: Working in Vancouver. Hopefully get a chance to visit Tony Funk in Abbotsford at some point.

December: Back down the coast to San Francisco to spend Christmas and New Year with my friend Amy and her family. Hopefully fit in a trip south to San Diego with Amy.

January: Fly to Houston to visit Bethany, another dear friend, for a few days, then visit Washington and maybe Mum's cousin (Janette Turner Hospital - yes, the author!) in South Carolina before flying to London. Spend a few days in Bognor Regis with some friends of Mum's, and then head south to Spain (or wherever it is warm!).

February: Living it up in Spain, France & Italy!

March-April-May: To Ireland, hopefully to work again for a few months.

End of May/early June: A couple of weeks' holiday in Scandinavia, then flying from Helsinki to Frankfurt. Visit Linsey in Geissen (just north of Frankfurt).

Mid-June: Home to Melbourne, via Tokyo.

So, there you have it. Ambitious and maybe a little crazy given that I have less than a year to do it all in, but if you saw the list of things I cut out (most of east coast USA & Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Greece, Croatia, Morocco, Scotland and St Petersburg, to name a few...) then it starts to look doable after all.

I am at the point where I'm sick of working through the list of things I need to do before I leave and I just want to hop on the plane. But please, feel free to keep on eye on this blog while I'm away, and to post comments as well. I will miss everyone so much!

Till next time.
Bron