Almost Christmas

It's almost Christmas! My favourite time of year. We have had some great holidays in the past year. Last Christmas was an amazing experience with my family in New Zealand. And although surfing Santas and going to the beach on Christmas Eve was a little bit weird, I loved every minute of it. 

Most people know I have a fairly strong aversion to snow and cold, so I'm not too disappointed to be in a warmer climate again this year. December has come complete with warm walks around Thetis Lake with friends. 

Apparently this place goes bananas in the summer with families and all kinds of folks. Swimming and cliff jumping - looking forward to it! Well, not the cliff jumping. Water always goes up my nose. 

The weather has stayed pretty nice so far. I have had multiple requests to document the west coast climate in the winter. Most people don't like cold, but they also don't like gloomy rain and clouds. But winter usually brings at least one of those in Canada. And if I had to choose at this point, I prefer the rain over the -25 weather. There are weeks of clouds and rain and then it stays sunny for a week. Then it rains for a day. Then it rains half a day and is sunny the rest of the day. You get the idea. And it hovers between 0 and +10.  (First you get a geography lesson and now you get meteorology training. Amazing!)  

I'm still unemployed. Boo. I do not like it, but I am finding things to occupy my time. Such as taking my boring filing cabinet....

And turning it into this! Mod Podge is the best - am I right, Melanie Neilson? :)  

Merry Christmas! 

A New Island

Vancouver Island is about as close as you can get to New Zealand while still being in Canada. Literally. At least, my rather quick google search leads me to believe it is. I also learned a few other things during my highly skilled research (a.k.a. Wikipedia). For example, Vancouver Island is 460 kilometres in length and 80 kilometres in width at its widest point. At 32,134 km², Vancouver Island is the largest Pacific island east of New Zealand, the largest island on the western side of North America, the world's 43rd largest island, Canada's 11th largest island, and Canada's second most populous island after the Island of Montreal.


You may be thinking to yourself "That is nice that you are so learned, Laurel". Or perhaps you are thinking, "Thanks so much for the geography lesson (you're welcome) but why the heck should we care?" Well, I am making the assumption that most people who are going to read this blog are probably aware that Mark and I spent a year living in New Zealand and are now back in Canada. But you might not have been aware of what we are up to now. (By this time I do hope you have figured it out - otherwise my nifty geography lesson was probably lost on you). 


We lived in Edmonton again for the summer of 2011. It was great. We hung out with our family and friends that we had missed dearly over the past year and a half and enjoyed the sunshine. But we knew winter was coming and we also desperately missed New Zealand and the sound of the ocean. Although we love the quaint little town of Mount Maunganui, NZ where we lived for 10 months, it is far away from family. So we set our hopes on Victoria, British Columbia. The one place we knew of in Canada that had a temperate climate, an abundance of ferns and the sea! 


Mark applied for a job and got it. He has a habit of doing that. He moved out to the island* in September and I stayed in Edmonton for another two months to work at my job with the City of Edmonton and look for work in Victoria. I wasn't able to find a job from Edmonton, so I moved to the island in November. 


Life here is good. I am still without a job and that's tough for me. I have this annoying need to be productive. But I'm trying to enjoy my life of luxury. We are also still making new friends, so it can be sad to be away from the people who know us really well, but we know that just takes time and we have met some great people already. 


I wasn't too sure if I should start a blog again. I mean, there are about 145,859,938 interesting blogs out there that you could read instead of mine. Many of which are more exciting and more well written (is that even correct grammar? See what I mean?). But I decided I had two purposes in writing: 
1) Keep in touch with friends and family who are far away. It's nice for them to read and be able to feel like a part of our lives here and I like that too. There are far too many miles between us and everyone we love.
2) Convince friends and family who are far away to move here by posting enticing stories and photos of how great it is. Then I won't have to blog anymore! 


So, I blog and you can read along if you like. If you're lucky, I'll post more information and likely true geography facts from the internet. 

Fan Tan Alley. A tiny, shopping, alley in Victoria's Chinatown, which is the oldest Chinatown in Canada. I learned that not from the internet, but the electrical boxes throughout Chinatown. They wouldn't put it on there if it wasn't true, right? 

A scenic outlook

 

Look - Is it New Zealand or Canada??? 

 The fall colours are so incredible! So vibrant. *Note for our Kiwi friends - You might find it funny that we call Vancouver Island 'the island', but it's really the only one in Canada that very many people live on (other than Montreal, which is technically on an island, but no one knows that). So, when you refer to 'the island', most Canadians know where you mean...P.S. I originally forgot about all the Maritime Islands. People live there too. So maybe it's only Western Canadians who use the term 'the island'.