Hello.
Me and Debbie and a boy called Greg (who I haven't met yet) are going to be in Vancouver for 6 months and if any of you are interested in what we get up to then there'll be blogs for you to read. This one is my one and Debbie's got one too called DebbieinVancouver I think. So there you go.
So far we haven't done anything in Vancouver except eat a free breakfast and go on the internet, much like I'd do at home. But yesterday was quite eventful with 28 hours of travelling and celebrity encounters.
Our first flight was at 9.05am from Edinburgh to Newark (NYC) which was around the 7 hour mark. Did some snoozing, watched Wall-E, CSI NY and some Without A Trace on my seatback TV thing (was pretty cool) then had to clear US Immigration which was a bit nervewracking but since I'm not a mastercriminal they let me in. We didn't have too long to wait for our next flight so we got some 'juice' (actually some immensely thick and cold fruit concoction) then boarded our plane to Houston. This flight was pretty short (4 hours) so I mainly read my book. We had a few hours to kill at Houston an you have to pay for internet access so we were pretty bored. Luckily HULK FREAKING HOGAN turned up to make our wait a little more exciting. He was wearing a rather fetching sky blue t-shirt/yellow bandana combo and had a pretty cool tache. Debbie took a photo so no doubt yous'll get to see that sometime.
The flight from Houston to Vancouver was 4 1/2 hours and was pretty dire. I tried to sleep because I'd been up for some ridiculous amount of time by this point but it was really slight sleep and I kept waking up thinking we'd landed an I'd been left on the plane. It did eventually end though and then we went through Vancouver airport (which is, admittedly, probably quite nice if you haven't been awake for 28 hours) and collected our baggage. Then we had to wait for a bit for our work permits because there had been some kinda power outtage but we got them in the end which was nice. Though I can't work in Education, health or psychiatric care (dash).
We jumped into a taxi to the hostel then headed to bed but the other two beds were full of sleeping people so we had to try and manouvre in a tiny, dark and cramped space. We got there eventually and I crawled into my bed in an odd too-tired-to-sleep kinda way, which was exacerbated by the snoring beast in the bottom bunk. She seems like a nice enough woman but really, those noises weren't even human, let alone ladylike.
And that's pretty much what's happened so far. Think the plan today is to go for a wander round some nice parts of the city. We have our orientation meeting tomorrow where we find out about bank accounts, social insurnace numbers and things like that I think (i.e. boring stuff). Then Greg's arriving in the evening so I'll get to meet him finally.
I'm off just now. Think I might need to play some Geo Challenge.