The Russian.
Yesterday we went to view the apartment near Commercial Drive which is outta downtown but only 10 mins from the centre on the Sky Train (doesn't go through the sky:o( ). The landlord's this big russian guy called Leon who has a hilarious voice and he met us there and took us around. The flat's currently occupied by these 3 stoners who were in when we went round. Leon's kicking them out though because they totally trashed the place. It was pretty weird looking into tiny bedrooms when there's people in them an one guy was in bed. It seems like a nice place, or it will be once it's cleaned up an it's pretty cheap with utilities and internet included. We wanna say to him that we don't wanna sign anything until we see it done up or at least see the work's been started because we don't want to end up living in it as it was. Since it was effectively a dive.
Anyway, we're seeing another place tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

35th Street. Where our house would be if we moved into the Russian's.

Our appartment would be the top floor (the triangle part) of this house)

Me drinking some tea. I was pretty happy about that.

Debbie drinking her iced latte. Eyein' up my tea.

The hostel club night at the Bourbon.

Me and Debbie liquored up at Lotus.

Debbie and that guy. Debbie loves her gun.

Debbie found another guy (Greg)

Debbie and Greg share a joke; I am unimpressed.

That's pretty much it for now. Me and Debbie are spending today being hungover and doing laundry since we have no clean clothes. We're a bit worried about Greg who was last seen chatting to a girl in the club and whos phone is turned off. I'm sure he's fine. Think we might go out for some dinner later.

Day Three.
Today we had our meeting at the bank to get our accounts and the bank we went to has the happiest staff in the world. The man who stands at the door telling people where they need to go and is generally cool directed us to some seats where the lady who made the appointment for us showed up and said it was good to see us back. Then another lady asked us if we were ok and then Daniel showed up. Daniel set up our accounts with none of the "what do you earn?" "why should we give you an account?" nonsense and also gave us a tailor-made tourist information seminar including when Hearts and Livingston last played football here. We love Daniel and his fair fair eyelashes.
After our refreshing bank visit me and Debbie got shunned by Greg and his new friends so we went to get some yam fries for lunch. That was a pretty good call since they were awesome.
We then decided it was about time we started looking for somewhere to live so we scoured Craigslist for 3 bedroom appartments to rent. There's a few good ones which we noted down and Debbie phoned a Russian called Leon about one which we are viewing today. I phoned up about another one which we are going to view on Sunday at 10am and there's a third one we might get Greg to phone up about if they don't email me back. The third one looks really nice on the photos and it's in a nice place so I think I'm rooting for that one. We'll see though, I'm sure we'll get somewhere. And we're booked into the hostel until December 1st in the mean time.
So that stuff's pretty boring. We went out for a few drinks last night, starting out at the Fountainhead Pub where I drank some Red Truck Beer that sounds awful butch (especially considering the pub turned out to be a "sausage party"- Debbie's words). After that we went to The Speakeasy that was pretty swish and then we went to the Samesun Hostel bar which was pretty cool. It was clearly a bar though and they told us after we'd had a pitcher of beer and some cocktails that we can't drink unless we have some food because it's a restaurant. Out of about 20 tables though one had a plate of food on it and all of them had loadsa empty glasses and drinks. Liars.
On our way to The Speakeasy a big black guy walked up to Debbie and said "I really wanna cut your hair" and they had a chat about how he (his name was Q) wanted to give her some sort of DC haircut(?). I think I'm too white to really understand it. Anyway the only offer I got on the street was from some guy who asked me if I wanted to buy some pot. That's the kind of impression we make here then.
Here are some photos of the above events and some extra snippets.

A self-timer photo of us at The Speakeasy (it was a pretty long table)

Debbie and Greg at the Fountainhead Pub.

The Curtains in our room (they look like parsnips)

Rainy Vancouver

Debbie next to a Christmas tea in Blenz getting off her face on iced latte

The most exciting part of my day yesterday, however, must have been when we turned into the drive of the hostel and Debbie gasped and muttered the immortal word "racooons". There was TWO RACOONS with their stripey tails and bandit masks sitting there. It was awesome. We persued them in order to get photos but they're pacey little critters and hid behind a van in the dark. Still, I saw racoons though. So there.

I woke up at 6.45 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep so I'm pretty tired now it's almost lunchtime and I seem to be constantly hungry here so I'm gonna be faaaaaaaat soon!

There you go Debi, that's your lot for now!

Day Two.
Today me and Debbie awoke early and couldn't sleep so went and skyped some folk all up in their grill as it's afternoon in Scotland when we wake up. Then we had our orientation where we applied for our Social Insurnace Numbers. We've now got cards which mean we can go look for jobs and we'll get our proper numbers in a few days or so. Think we want to get accommodation sorted before jobs though but I've seen a few places I'd like to apply for.
We then got some lunch and got our Canadian cell numbers sorted. Although we texted like 5 people between us and none of them replied. It can't possibly be that we aren't popular enough to get replies so they must not work properly. Boo. We also made an appointment at the bank to get our accounts all set up so then we're almost set!
Here are some pictures from our day. As a treat to those of you (if there's anyone reading this) who look at this as well as facebook the photos are a little different! Bonus eh?

This is North Vancouver and the mountains as seen from Gastown over the railway.

This is me in front of the Steam Clock in Gastown.

This is a photo of a statue of an angel taken with the sun behind it. Hence, silhouette.

This is the station building I think. It's pretty fancy.

This is a street with the mountains at the end of it.

That's all the photos of today. I'm not sure if I'll see anything interesting or novel in the next couple days because we need to find somewhere to live and some jobs.

It's weird though because moving to Canada was such a big thing for so long and now I'm here it doesn't seem like such a huge thing. Like, there's nothing that different from Edinburgh and it's much easier to find your way around that the likes of Aberdeen.
And I do miss people but it's pretty easy to stay in touch and although the time difference makes things tricky, and this'll probably get worse when we get jobs and aren't ladies of leisure, it's not like I can't speak to people.
My main concern is that we won't be able to find decent accommodation. There's hardly any 3 bedroom accommodation and the guy at the orientation said it's mainly unfurnished so we'll have to find furniture that's gonna suck and be potentially expensive. I guess we'll see how it goes anyway.

We're just hanging around waiting for Greg to turn up so I can make sure he finally exists before retiring, exhausted, to the hay. G'night.

Here's the first photos of the trip. I chose the best ones to put on here and the whole lot of them are on my facebook for anyone who is currently procrastinating. Enjoy!x

This is me at English Bay.

This is Debbie at English Bay.

This is English Bay from the other side.

These are some Canada geese in Canada! I got quite excited and gasped and a man who was stopping them from walking into certain road-death laughed at me.

This is a black squirrel in Stanley Park. They're so much cuter than grey or red squirrels.

This is a cool cinema on Granville Street.
This is Debbie wearing an awesome hat.

This is my first Canadian beer. It was pretty good.
There was two huskies hanging about on the street! Took all my strength not to claim them.

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.