Bloganomali

Mixing old and new

2010-11-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

Nanjing is famous for having jade deposits. As we expected, we stopped at a jade store before leaving for Hangzhou on Thursday. I wasn't interested in making any purchases, but I did learn how to tell the difference between real and fake jade. When you tap real jade, it rings very clearly, like a bell. The clearer the ring, the higher quality of jade. With fake jade, the sound is like hitting a window. It's dull, and doesn't really ring. You can also do a scratch test on a piece of glass. If the jade scratches the glass, it is real because it is higher on the hardness scale. There should be no damage to the jade.

After lunch, we rode the bus for about 4 hours to Hongzhou. By the time we arrived, the sun was about to set, which was the perfect time for a boat cruise on West Lake. The Hangzhou region is known for having mountains and water, making it one of the most popular places for recreation. Within West Lake, there's an island with an old pagoda as well as three small statutes in the water. These statutes are featured on the Chinese one yuan bill.

Following supper, we went to see a show about the Song Dynasty. This is a major tourist attraction, especially for tour buses. At the site, they built a village in the style of the Song Dynasty. It was like one of the themed villages in an amusement park. They had people dressed in Song costumes, food stands, souvenir shops, and photo studios for taking pictures in Song costumes. The show we watched was "The romance of the Song Dynasty". This show was split into 5 parts, each a different story about the Song Dynasty. The themes were: introduction of the first people who were kind of tribal, the emperor's elaborate birthday celebration, war against invaders, a tale about mythical snakes, and dragon well tea. The special effects in this show were the most impressive. They used a lot of lighting and screen effects, so they did not have very many traditional sets. Instead, they project the scene onto the backdrop so they can make things move around, as well as do a whole bunch of cool things with lights. Their stage is also unique because the first few rows of the audience move apart to make more stage space. The coolest part is their water effects. During the set about the snakes, they made a huge storm by "raining" onto the stage, creating a pond. They also misted water over the entire audience. I've never seen any set that elaborate before. Later in the show, they drained the entire pond and used that part of the stage normally again. The show itself was mostly dancing and acrobatics, which was good, but not any more spectacular than other shows I've seen. The hotel in Hangzhou was by far the best hotel on the tour. There were no strange smells in the rooms, my bed was comfortable, and the entire hotel was clean and pleasant overall.

The next morning we went up a mountain to a dragon well tea plantation. Hangzhou is famous for its dragon well tea, because it is the only place in the world that has the right climate and soil to grow it. This tea is organically grown, using water leftover from making tofu as fertilizer. Dragon well tea is highly respected in the tea drinking world for its fragrance, flavour and health benefits. Similar to a lot of other teas, it is high in anti-oxidants. This tea can be steeped 5 or 6 times without losing flavour and left steeped in water for up to 48 hours without ruining the flavour.

We were supposed to head to Shanghai after lunch, but one of the old men on our tour lost his rings at the hotel. He sleeps with his rings under his pillow for safety, which is a typical old-school habit. In the morning, he forgot to get his rings. When he called the hotel, they said they couldn't find the rings, so the entire tour bus had to stop at the hotel for him to look in the room and file a police report. A lot of people were not pleased, since we had to backtrack to the hotel and wait around for him. He didn't even file a police report because that would require him to stay 3 or 4 days in Hongzhou. In total, we wasted about 1.5 hours of our day which would have been spent in Shanghai.

It took 3.5 hours to drive to Shanghai. In Shanghai, we stopped at Xintiandi for about 30 minutes. In this short time, I did a quick walk around the Shikumen museum. This museum features a unique style of housing that was popular in Shanghai in the 1920s. These houses are like row houses with narrow alleyways between the buildings. Shikumen means stone gate, which refers to the stone arch at each of the entrances. The museum showed a glimpse of what life was like in the 1920s in Shanghai. This was the home of an upper middle-class family, so the furnishings were quite nice and the house was pretty big. In the poorer houses, some of the rooms are so small that they could only fit a bunk bed.

After supper, we saw the E.R.A. show at Circus World. This was an acrobatics show, similar in style to Cirque du Soleil, but without the clowns. The majority of the show featured typical acts: contortionists, balancing acts, tumbling and trampolines, spinning plates and playing with other housewares, and aerial artists. The most impressive and unique set were the motorcyclists. One motorcyclist was already impressive, riding around a metal sphere, doing tricks. Then, they kept on adding more, until there were about 8 of them all in this tiny sphere, riding around. It was like a light show because they were going so fast. They required some really precise timing and control because that sphere was probably no more than 15 m in diameter.

Saturday was Expo day. The weather this time was completely opposite of the typhoon rain last week. It was pleasant and sunny. With our tour group, we have expedited access to the Expo and the China pavilion. That was the best benefit of going with a tour. We arrived at the Expo site at around 8:30am and before 10:30am we were already in the China pavilion. Without a tour group reservation, it takes closer to 4 to 5 hours to get into the China pavilion, including the wait time to get in the entrance gate and the wait time for the pavilion. The theme of the China paviliion was using old Chinese wisdom to build new, sustainable cities. Highlights of the pavilion: a movie about the past 30 years of rapid change in Shanghai and China, an animated version of a famous scroll painting, a ride (like an amusement park train ride) showing a dialogue between old and new China, and an exhibit about the future of China's contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. All in all, I was impressed by this pavilion and the inspiring message that it brings.

We ate lunch at a restaurant with a vegetarian buffet. This was my best lunch so far on this trip because I could eat all the dishes, and the flavours were to my taste. In many places on the tour, the food was very salty because that's the way people in those regions cook. It made it so hard to eat even some stir-fried greens because I felt like my mouth was burning from the salt. Anyway, the food at this buffet was tasty and I finally replenished some of the protein in my diet which has been missing for the past week.

In the afternoon, we wandered over to the main section of the country pavilions. We wandered through pavilions that had shorter line-ups: Vietnam, Poland, Ukraine, Norway, and Argentina. All of the larger pavilions had wait times of 2 to 6 hours. Saudi Arabia had such a huge line that they stopped letting people stand in line at around 3:30pm. We couldn't be bothered to stand in line for that long. We also went into the joint Africa and joint Caribbean pavilions. In all of these pavilions, it was nice to see what the countries had to showcase, but I was already losing interest after seeing about 2 of them. What discouraged me even more was that most people just went into the pavilions to get a stamp in their Expo passport and move on. A lot of them barely looked at the exhibits; they just make a bee line to the stamp counter and leave. These passports are a big money-making gimmick. It costs about 270 yuan for the passport itself. Some people went around with stacks of about 10 of these passports, getting a stamp in each one. At some pavilions, they charge a few yuan to get the stamps. Then, there are vendors walking around the Expo trying to sell fully stamped passports for exhorbant prices.

To leave the Expo site, we took an evening boat cruise along the river to the north. This boat cruise goes through the famous Pu Dong/Pu Xi area. On one side, they have a lot of stately colonial buildings in French and British style from some hundreds of year ago. On the other side, they have a cluster of new skyscrapers built in the past 10 years, along with the iconic TV tower. The boat stopped at a harbour in an area with large, high-class riverside hotels. Even the public bathroom here is immaculately clean. We took a bus to Wujiaochang, a commercial district close to our hotel. They have a unique "sunken square", which is actually a circle, in the middle of the roundabout. This roundabout connects 5 major roads. To cross the roundabout, you walk through this sunken square. Unlike the typical underpasses you see, where you walk through a tunnel, this place is actually open at the top and features a small garden and ponds. I thought this was a really cool idea for adding green space and safe pedestrian access to a city.

History lessons and Chinese souvenirs

2010-10-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

The breakfast buffet on Tuesday was overwhelmingly huge. They had at least 50 dishes in Chinese and Western styles, including an omelette station and a wonton noodle station. Before leaving Suzhou, we learned how silk is spun from silkworms at a silk workshop. This workshop specializes in making quilts and bedding from silk. Using silk for bedding is beneficial to reducing the amount of dust in the bedroom because silk does not collect dust. As expected on all tours of this kind, they offered special deals to us, like buy a set and get 4 pillowcases for free. We couldn't be bothered to buy a full set for 1400 yuen, and opted for some pillowcases instead.

We drove to Wuxi and went to the residence of a general from the Qing Dynasty. This was similar to the gardens in Suzhou, but with more focus on the rooms in the residence and the various furniture. In one room, they had a display of embroidered art. These pieces look like paintings, but with the added effects of texture that you can't obtain with paint.

After this, we walked along the shore of Tai Lake. Tai Lake is a huge lake, about the size of 20 Hong Kongs (that's they way they like to make comparisons for land size), but no more than 3 m deep at any point. From the lake, you can see mountains where they used to mine for tin. At one point, the tin ran out because one of the emperors wanted so much tin, so the name of the city Wuxi means "no tin". The name of the park surrounding the lake is called Turtle Mountain. The dragon's ninth son, according to ancient legends, is the turtle, which is how the name of the mountain came about. In the park, there's a statute of the turtle, but with a dragon's head to signify where the turtle came from.

From there, we made another shopping stop at a teapot shop. In the mountains of the Wuxi region, they have a special rock that is unique to the region. This rock can be grinded into a powder and used to make teapots. These teapots are world-renown for their ability to keep tea warm, health benefits, and design. The pots are handcrafted and designed so that the spots don't drip, and the lids don't fall off when you pour the tea when the pot is vertical.

We ate supper at a restaurant in a huge hotel. This was one of those fancy restaurants that make art out of their food. We had a salad made out of potatoes, sculpted into the shape of a dragon. It was one of the best food art pieces I've seen so far.

Our hotel was another big 5 star type place. The bed this time was much more comfortable, but our room smelled like sewage. There's also a huge pool, but it requires you to wear a bathing cap if you want to go swimming. I couldn't be bothered to purchase one for an exhorbant price. I guess you can never win.

Wednesday's breakfast was another grand buffet, but it was so crowded that there were no tables left to eat at. I ended up sitting on a couch in a corner of the restaurant. The morning routine went as expected; this time we went to a pearl shop. I had no interest whatsoever in pearls, so I just sat in a corner and wrote in my journal.

After a 2 hour bus ride, we arrived in Nanjing. After lunch, we walked through the park where the Dr. Sun-Yat Sen mausoleum is located. The mausoleum is at the top of a hill, up 392 steps to be exact. It wasn't a very steep hill, so it was an easy walk up. Dr. Sun-Yat Sen was the leader of the Kuomintong, the Nationalist Party that overthrew the old imperial rule over China. He's the father of modern China. His tomb featured his statute, the Kuomintong flag, and a wall engraved with the party's manifest that he wrote.

After we walked down from the hill, my dad surprised me with my own name seal. Ever since I saw the seals in the Shanghai museum, I wanted to get one of my own. It was only 50 yuen for a seal at a small shop in the park, and it took the artist about 2 minutes to inscribe my Chinese name into the rock. The seal features a tiger on the top, representing my zodiac year.

We moved to another major historic site in Nanjing, the Yangtze River bridge. This bridge was built in the 1960s, when China was very poor, going through the cultural revolution, and had huge debts owing to Russia. They made people work on this bridge without pay and thousands died during the construction because they didn't have the proper safety equipment nor tools to build the bridge. Adding to that problem, many people at that time said it was impossible to build a bridge across the Yangtze because the current is too strong.

Within the building by the bridge, there's a showroom of the art pieces by a famous painter. The art form is translated to "inside art" in English. He donates a lot of the money from selling his pieces to the maintenance of the bridge. This type of painting is very unique and takes intense concentration and dexterity. They paint all the pieces (globes, teapots, bottles) through a small hole at the bottom of the piece. It's like painting a wine bottle by sticking a paintbrush into the neck and making a design that you see from the outside. Everything is painted backwards and there's no room for error. The designs are also much smaller than what you see, since the glass magnifies the paintings when you look at it. As a result, the actual painting is tiny, so the artist needs to pay a lot of attention to detail.

Following supper we walked around the neighbourhood of the Confucious Temple. Confucious was a famous philosopher from hundreds of years ago. This area is much like the City God Temple in Shanghai. The only difference is that at night, all the buildings are lit up with colourful displays. We walked around and tried some snacks, like Dragon Beard candy and a sweet green rice cake. Both were delicious and of course, very affordable.

Switching to Old China

2010-10-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

After a day of wet and cold, we took it easy on Sunday morning. We had a bunch of wet clothes to wash and dry, and still needed to buy train tickets. We took care of these errands in the morning, and went to Circus World in the afternoon. We ate lunch at a huge restaurant that spans several floors. This restaurant is unique in its ordering system. Instead of receiving menus, you go down to a showroom with all the dishes laid out. They don't show the finished product for most of the dishes though, instead, it is just the raw ingredients. From there, you choose what you want, and an attendant takes your order. The food at this place was unique and tasty.

We watched the Happy Circus show afterwards. It was full of kids and their parents, as expected, but they had a lot of talented acrobatic clowns. The original name of the place in Chinese is the stadium for horse shows, and that was the best part of the performance. The show started with some clowning around and animal shows, which weren't too impressive. The animals looked like they were not treated well, especially the lions. I think that they can remove that entire component and just feature human performers instead, which is exactly how Cirque du Soleil came to be.

The clowns were very talented, doing a whole bunch of stunts and acrobatics in a hilarious manner. After
intermission, the show was much better. The horse riding acrobatics were impressive. They did a whole bunch of stunts on horses, from juggling while standing on another rider to making a human pyramid.

We walked through the Xiantiandi neighbourhood after the show. This is one of the richest neighbourhoods in Shanghai. It also has a lot of historical preservation of old Shanghai alleyway houses, colonial buildings, and old-style architecture. The streets are lined with designer stores and luxury car showrooms. It felt a bit like walking through a ritzy neighbourhood of a city in the US or Canada.

We returned to the hotel to meet our tour group and go for supper. We joined this specially-priced tour for Canadians and Americans to go to the World Expo. It is only $300 for one week, including ground transportation, meals, accommodations, and entrance fees. Supper was edible. Luckily, this is supposed to be the worst of our meals.

The next day, we started the tour at the Shanghai City God Temple. This is a temple devoted to honouring the gods to protect the city. Each city has its own. We bought some incense to pray for the wellness of the family, fortune, and good health. Each type of incense is for a different wish. Surrounding the temple, there are shops and small eateries with traditional Shanghai specialities. All the buildings are in the ancient Chinese style and it is all pedestrian-only, just like old times. We ate ling bo sweet rice dumplings, a well-known speciality from this district, as well as candied tamarind.

Our next stop was the pedestrian shopping district of Nanjing Road where some of the first big stores opened in Shanghai, such as Wing Wong. This is another shopping district full of designer stores, but along the side streets it is just like regular China. We ate some inexpensive snacks from the food stands, such as baked yams. These yams are super soft, sweet, filling and full of flavour, not to mention only about 4 yuan each.

Lunch was another average affair, and then we were off to Suzhou. This city appears to be less modern than Shanghai, or at least they make an effort to preserve the old-style buildings with the clay-tiled roofs. Our first stop was a classical garden in Suzhou from the Qing Dynasty, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These gardens were similar to the Dr. Sun-Yat Sen garden in Vancouver, but much bigger and older. It was like a maze inside, with courtyards and sitting rooms galore decorated with rocks, paintings, calligraphy, and sculptures. To exit the garden, we took a short gondola ride back to the parking lot. Some of the gondola rowers even sang old Chinese songs. It was like going to Venice, but in Chinese instead. Suzhou is actually a sister city of Venice by the way.

We then visited a 1000 year old pagoda from the Ming Dynasty. This pagoda was very well-preserved, so much that people are still allowed to go inside and climb to the top. It's surrounded by a nice park with a small lake, bamboo forest, and more old buildings.

After supper, we spent about an hour at a pedestrian shopping area. Suzhou people are known for liking sweets, so much that they have these huge candy shops full of treats. We bought an assortment of candies from a shop that's been around for about 200 years. I tried a cake that looks like a crumpet, filled with red bean paste and topped with a candy coating.

Our hotel, the Jinling, is a 5-star luxury hotel and super fancy. It's also very Chinese in its decorations. The wall of our room was engraved with calligraphy and our pillows were decorated with the "fortune" character. My bed was unfortunately an old springy cot, so it wasn't really a 5-star bed. I still slept very well though, although I was a bit sore in the morning.

Bypassing the Great Firewall of China

2010-10-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to UBC VPN, I am finally able to access blogs again. I knew that this Great Firewall of China blocked sites with content on stuff like Falun Gong and Tibet, but I had no idea that it also blocks harmless little blogs like mine. Facebook and Twitter are also blocked, which I guess should be expected, since they are places that can breed pro-democracy movements, or any type of negative opinion on the PRC Government. In any case, I now have "free world" access once again, which I have taken for granted all my life.

I flew to Shanghai on Wednesday, just a few short days after returning to Vancouver from Mexico. The rest of my travels in Mexico, as well as Europe, are still in paper form and yet to be transcribed to blog form. That'll happen eventually. Anyway, I arrived in Shanghai on Thursday afternoon. I was lucky enough that my flight arrived when there weren't many other arrivals, so it took me about 20 minutes to go through immigration and retrieve my suitcase. My parents, on the other hand, had to wait for an hour at immigration. Around 5 or 6 large long-haul flights all arrived at the same time as them, so they all bottlenecked at immigration. While I waited for my parents at the luggage claim, I was entertained by a drug/food sniffing dog at an adjacent carousel. It trotted along the conveyor belt, identifying suspicious suitcases, and then once those suitcases were taken aside, it kept on going back to them. I guess the smells were so strong that the dog was getting confused, so the dog trainer had to keep pulling the dog away from those suitcases. Who knows, maybe those people were smuggling meat.

We took the Maglev train into Shanghai since it was convenient, and just plain cool. I was zipping along, floating on this train at around 400 km/h. Looking outside, I didn't really notice our speed because we were surrounded by fields. I'm sure if it was anything more developed, everyone on the train would have probably gotten super dizzy from looking out the windows. From the station, we took a taxi to our hotel, the Wujiaochang Holiday Inn Express. It's a simple, business-traveller type of hotel with a clean design.

We took the subway to the neighbourhood by the Hongkou soccer stadium to meet up with my other relatives for supper. The subway stations are very clean, and most of the lines have glass safety doors by the tracks. These don't open unless a train is at the station so people can't jump or accidentally fall on the tracks. We ate dinner at a small restaurant close to Hongkou stadium. It was very cheap compared to Canadian standards, around $5 per person. The food was okay, just standard Shanghai-style fare.

The next day, we went to the People's Square in Shanghai. This is the main square, kind of like downtown. We had a bit of miscommunication with our other relatives about our meeting place, and since we didn't have a cell phone, we had to wait and look around. It took about 30 minutes, but we finally located each other and ate lunch at an Italian restaurant. We figured it'll be fun to try the Chinese interpretation of Italian food. Their pizza was tasty, but quite different from the standard North American version. They make a very deep-dish pizza with super thick crust and lots of toppings.

We spent the afternoon at the Shanghai Museum. This museum is full of cultural gems and explains a lot about ancient Chinese art forms. The admission is free too. It was a great educational experience for me, since I've never actually been to China before in my memory. My last time in China was when I was learning to walk, so I don't count it at all. They have exhibits highlighting pottery, jade, bronze, calligraphy, coins, stone sculptures, and paintings. There was also a Russian exhibit on the era of Catherine the Great, as well as a feature on the minority ethnic groups. Like the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico, I had information overload, but of course in a good way. My parents were my personal guides throughout the exhibits, which helped me so much because a lot of the placards were not translated from Chinese. I could only read about a quarter, and sometimes half (if I'm lucky) of the Chinese characters on most signs, which doesn't allow me to understand very much.

Before supper, my dad and I had a mission to buy train tickets to Fuzhou for October 31. We took the subway to the main train station, only to find huge line-ups at the ticket booths. We also found out that tickets can only be purchased up to 3 days in advance of any train. That's something I've never heard of before, but that's the way they do business here, so we just had to go with it. It turns out, at some of the ticket re-sellers, you can buy train tickets further in advance, so we got a list of addresses and were good to go.

We ate supper at a famous vegetarian restaurant in Shanghai. I don't know the name in English, but the location is by the People's Square station on Nanxing Road. This restaurant was huge, spanning 2 floors and a few rooms. The food was delicious, and worth its world-class recognition. What's even better though, was the tea. It was expensive, selling at around 60 yuen for one pot, but well worth the money.

Saturday was our first World Expo day. Of course, it was pouring rain all day, which made the experience all the more interesting and soggy. We entered the Expo site through the E section. Since this section was the Urban Planning area, and not the section with the pavilions of each country, it wasn't overly crowded like we expected. There weren't any line-ups at most of the pavilions, which showcased best practices in urban planning of selected cities around the world. This was what I was interested in seeing anyway, so I was quite happy to spend a couple of hours wandering around. The cities of the future pavilion was the coolest of all of them. They have this piece on the second floor of a bunch of garbage re-arranged in a way that casted a shadow of a city skyline on the wall. They also presented a lot of theory on sustainable, liveable city design in a very interactive way.

In the afternoon, we started to experience the crowds and lines that everyone warned us of at the Expo. To access the other side of the river, we waited for about an hour to board a ferry to take us across. From there, we walked to a bus stop to take a bus towards the Americas pavilions. The lines for all of the pavilions were huge, with wait times up to 3 hours. Since we were already wet and a little cold, we opted for the Canadian pavilion since our passports allowed us to fast-track through the line. The Canadian pavilion was nicely designed in Cirque du Soleil style. They had displays highlighting landscapes and art across the country, a "bike through Canada" exhibit where you pedal on a stationary bike and watch a screen scroll through scenery, and an artsy video on a huge screen about Canada. The pavilion wasn't super-impressive or mind-blowing, but I think it fairly represented my country.

We called it a day after the Canadian pavilion and started our long journey back to the hotel. We were unfortunately directed to exit No. 8 by some volunteers, which was a huge and chaotic bus terminal. They said that there are free buses to a subway station close by, but the line up was huge, so we took another regular city bus instead. The bus was packed, and it took us about 45 minutes, winding through traffic, to get to a stop for the No 4 and No 6 lines. It was an interesting experience, riding through the insane traffic in Shanghai with a bus driver who drove the bus like an ambulance. We took the subway back to the station closest to the hotel. Since we were so tired and wet, we took a short taxi ride back to the hotel. I slept straight after taking a hot shower because I was so exhausted from these two days of sightseeing and sleep deprivation since I left Mexico.

Cuernavaca via Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta

2010-10-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

As the Pathways to Leadership seminar ended, my travelling adventures in Mexico began. On Thursday, we wrapped up the seminar by finishing our post-task project outlines. My project is BC Rangers Take Action (official name pending - I need to think of something better). I plan to inspire more Rangers (girls age 15-18) to become leaders in their community by holding a leadership seminar, similar to the one I attended, and then create their own community projects afterwards.

After a short discussion of our projects, we did a quick group evaluation of the seminar, ate lunch, and prepared to start our trip to Mexico City. I was with the group going to Ticalli, the Mexican Girl Guide hostel in Mexico City. We took taxis to the bus station for 10 pesos per person and a bus to Mexico City (Taxquena) for 78 pesos. The buses were the same as the ones from the airport, so they were very nice. This time, they showed The Happening, dubbed in Spanish, so I slept through the movie because I wasn't interested in watching it. About 1.5 hours later, we were at Taxquena and took taxis to Ticalli. It was about 190 pesos per taxi, but it was quite far to the hostel. The traffic was just as I expected: agressive and heavy. The flow of traffic was not as bad as I anticipated, and there appeared to be much more order than the traffic I saw in Rome or Paris.

Ticalli was similar to Our Cabana in its hospitality and Girl Guide spirit. Of course, this was in the middle of the city, rather than the suburbs. The neighbourhood surrounding Ticalli is quite upscale and fancy. The streets were lined with posh restaurants and cafes, and a few blocks away there is a huge HSBC tower. It looks like something that you find in the financial district of New York or Toronto with a full glass exterior. I stayed at Ticalli that evening to save up energy for a full day in Mexico City on Friday.

Friday morning at 8am, a small group of us were already waiting to take a tour to the Teotihuacan pyramids north of Mexico City. Since the Olympics part of the bicentennial celebration was taking place along Reforma (big avenue by Ticalli) this weekend, many of the streets were closed in the neighbourhood. The entire Reforma was covered with tents, bandstands, and sport facilities such as tennis courts and boxing rings.

We met our van on the small section where vehicles were still allowed along Reforma and went to our first stop for the day by a set of ruins at Plaza de las Tres Culturas. I didn't know that our tour included other sites around the city, so for 400 pesos, this was a very good deal.

The ruins were from Aztec times, partially destroyed during the Spanish conquest. The Spaniards used the rocks from the pyramids to build a Catholic church. This was the church for the Aztec people, who were all converted to Catholicism. They were segregated from the Spaniards, so some people had to walk up to 25 km to attend church.

The pyramids were religious centres to make a connection between the people and the gods. The higher the pyramids, the closer the people could connect to the heavens. However, the pyramids were built in the calender cycles of 52 years, so each layer is built in one cycle. It takes hundreds of years to build the larger pyramids.

Beside the pyramids is a memorial for the hundreds of students who died in 1968 during a protest at this site. It was just before the Olympics hosted in Mexico City. The government sent military troops to shoot at the protestors, resulting in a huge massacre.

Next, we stopped at a silver shop. On this street, all stores were silver shops. Having all stores on one street or neighbourhood devoted to the same trade is common because in ancient times, quadrants were considered sacred. Everything was divided accordingly for trades, so that in one quadrant there would be textiles, another quadrant for textiles, and the others might be silver and jewellery. We went to Raphael's silver shop. He set a fine example of customer service. He invited us to watch how he makes silver designs. In about a minute, he finished a piece that showed a scene with a cactus, mexican man with a sombrero, mountains, and volcanoes. He made one piece as a gift for each of us. He is very talented, flawlessly etching out each design to order. No one was asked to buy anything, but of course, everyone ended up making a purchase because he was so friendly. His designs were great pieces of art and many of the small pieces were less than about 200 pesos.

From this shop, we drove north to a artisan co-op close to the Teotihuacan pyramids. Similar to Raphael's shop, a guide met us and explained to us the culture of the Teotihuacan people. He showed us the many uses of the maguey cactus, a sacred and essential plant. The heart of the cactus is cut after the plant grows for 7 years. The spikes are used as arrowheads or sewing needles. The fibre is used for textiles. The thin layers of the cone are used as paper. The cream from the plant is a good soap. After cutting out the heart, the plant produces a juice for 9 to 10 months. This juice is fermented into a medicinal drink called pulque. We tried this drink at the end of the our learning session. It had a sweet/sour, mildly alcoholic taste. We also tried artisan tequila, which is sweeter and more flavourful than commercial tequila since it is not distilled and all the alcohol comes from the blue agave sugars.

Obsidian is another sacred commodity for the Teotihuacan. The obsidian in this region is special because it has a gold shimmer so it was thought to give out energy. Obsidian everywhere else is a black, glossy, volcanic rock. They make a lot of carvings out of this rock, many of which are expensive art pieces.

We drove another 15 minutes to the bottom of the sun pyramid. The two major pyramids in this archelogical site are the sun (representing men) and the moon (representing women). The sun pyramid is the larger one. We walked up to the top of this pyramid and saw a panorama of this region. We could see the mountains, semi-deserts, outskirts of the city, and the neighbouring moon pyramid. One interesting feature on this pyramid is that it has rocks sticking out every metre or so. These rocks were used to tie down the stucco as it set as the pyramid was built so it maintained its structure.

On the way back to Ticalli, we stopped at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica. The story behind Our Lady of Guadalupe is that her image appeared on the cloak of Juan Diego, an aboriginal peasant. Because she had the colours green and red, and showed representations of the sun and moon. These were all elements of the indigenous beliefs, so that's the story of how they were converted. Now, Mexico is one of the biggest Catholic countries. The basilica had an efficient system to move people through viewing area of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Everyone must step on a conveyer belt, which moves you through the display and gives you about 5 seconds to take a pictures. Then, you need to step off and continue walking into the main cathedral. The current basilica was built in the 1970s, so it has a modern design. It is shaped like a circus dome, and the roof is all wood donated by the Canadian government because it was good for the acoustics. The old basilica, which still stands next to the new one, started to sink and tilt from the soft subsoil, so it is being repaired. Outside of the basilica there is a statute of Pope Jean Paul II and his popemobile.

We returned to Ticalli, had a snack, did some shopping at a grocery store, and ate dinner at a cantina a few blocks away. The cantina was a like a pub/restaurant with a soccer game on big screens and lots of music. The food was good and not too expensive. The most amusing thing was how they served beer. When ordering a large amount, you get a 3 L tower with a tap. When your beer runs low, a waiter refills your mug from this tap.

The next morning, I slept in and took my time getting ready to go to the airport. Since it was Saturday and midday, I took the metro to the airport from Sevilla station. It was only about 10 minutes from Ticalli and the metro is only 3 pesos. A taxi is closer to 150-200 pesos. The metro is also much more efficient. It took me about 30 minutes to get to the airport. The trains and stations were clean and not very crowded. The cleanliness of the city in general, at least where I've been, is impressive. The neighbourhoods I visited were some of the cleanest I've seen while travelling. The airport was the same. In the bathrooms, there is a cleaning lady permanently staffed there, and always at work.

My flights from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta via Guadalajara were on time and the service was great. The skies were clear so I saw the changing landscape as I moved from semi-desert to the Pacific coastal forests.

In Puerto Vallarta, I met Kamil and we took the bus for 6.5 pesos/person to our hostel. The owners at Vallarta Sun were friendly, and run an affordable and nicely decorated hostel. It is just 2 blocks from the beach in the old town. Our room was spacious, clean, and air conditioned. We walked along the Malecon (boardwalk) and main street parallel to the coastline. We ate dinner at Planeto Vegetariano, a vegetarian buffet restaurant. It was only 75 pesos/person and the food was delicious. My favourite was a chili stuffed with mashed potatoes and cheese. Walking around this area, I noticed that a lot of the visitors are Mexicans. It is only the beginning of the tourist season, so most of the foreigners don't visit until the winter months when it gets too cold in Canada or the US. I found in Cancun, the hotel strip felt like it was full of American vacationers. Here, it seems like the neighbourhood isn't over-run by foreign tourists and their generally obnoxious attitude.

Fiesta Day

2010-10-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

I've done a lot of travelling and sightseeing these past two days, so I have a little bit of catching up on this blog. On Wednesday, my patrol was in charge of the Our Cabana website update, so here's what we wrote:

Today’s theme was advocacy. We started the day with a role playing activity where we took sides on an issue. We had two leaders debating whether or not an amusement park should be built at the Teopanzolco pyramids (this was hypothetically of course). All other delegates took sides based on the criteria they were given (e.g. Choose the side that represents your values, choose the side of whoever spoke first, choose the side that is the loudest). This activity taught us what is needed to influence others. Next we watched Girl Effect, a short video demonstrating how to convey a message in a way that will affect people’s decision making.

After these introductory activities, were introduced to the WAGGGS definition of advocacy. We had an interactive exercise where people stood up to agree and sat down to disagree with a statement that describes a situation that is advocacy or not. For instance, simply producing flyers about your organization is not advocacy on its own, or participating in a training. The only statement that was advocacy was changing laws, policies, and holding politicians accountable to their promises of actions. This exercise was debated heavily because all of the statements needed clarification and everyone had a different interpretation. This debate was beneficial because by the end, everyone understood the WAGGGS definition.

Following this intense discussion, the facilitators introduced the Girls for Girls project. This was an inspirational example of an advocacy project, showing all the steps required. This project was based on helping empower girls to attend school in Londiani, Kenya during their monthly periods. As a result of missing school a few days a month, many girls fell behind and dropped out. The bathrooms at the schools were co-ed, and there was no privacy. Therefore, the many girls were not comfortable going to school when they had their period. They raised money to teach the girls how to make reusuable pads that they could sell for income, and allow them to attend school during their periods. After hearing this inspirational testimony, we sang the song “I am one voice” together, which was an emotional experience for many of the participants.

For the rest of the morning, we wrote advocacy projects onto pieces of paper in the dining hall and discussed advocacy projects amongst each other. We then ate lunch with a special guest, a former director at Our Cabana. She was the one who established the cleaning and serving system for meals.

In the afternoon, we broke into our co-operative project groups to further discuss our post-task. Following our break, we had two simultaneous sessions to choose from: advanced project management or coaching clinic.

At the end of this day of work, we celebrated with a Mexican Fiesta (Fiesta Mexicana) farewell party. Most people were dressed up and Mixcocalli was dressed with traditional decorations. We ate traditional Mexican foods, danced to a Mariachi band, and broke a piñata. We took a lot of pictures and videos of the entire celebration. Towards the end, Diana read a letter that she wrote to all of us and we had cake. The party continued with several activities, such as bingo, hot potato, and crafts. We also finally revealed our secret sisters.

Links:

Friends of Londiani www.friendsoflondiani.com

Lunapads (resusable cloth pads and menstrual products that you can buy) www.lunapads.com

Presentations and pyramids

2010-10-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the big day for everyone at the seminar. It was time to present our research on gender equality and female leadership in our countries, as well as our associations. Throughout the morning, each country presented their research in 4 minutes (6 minutes for some). I was the second to present, so I made my presentation a little bit fun. I played a part of the song “Canada’s Really Big” to wake everyone up, and show them how large our country is. This relates to managing leaders in our association because people are so diverse and scattered. I presented some stats on women’s roles in society and challenges within Girl Guides of Canada. Like everyone else, in 4 minutes, I was not able to present everything in my research, but at least everyone else saw a glimpse of our status.

Here are some interesting observations from the presentations:

Canada is far behind many countries in empowering women to participate in politics, especially developed countries. Besides having a higher frequency of female presidents or prime ministers, they also have more women represented, closer to the 50% range. In Canada, we’re only at about 25%. In some countries, they actually have policies that a certain percentage of political representatives must be women. Though these policies do have a lot of issues, it at least explicitly shows a commitment to have more women represented. I also never knew these policies even existed.
Many associations lose members when girls become teenagers, for several reasons. For some, it is because they are too cool for Guiding or Scouting. Others, it is because they become so busy with other commitments. Either way, it is a time when girls are most vulnerable to peer-pressure, and probably need the support of Guiding or Scouting the most.
Machismo is a huge barrier to female empowerment in Central and South America. I’ve never been familiar with the gender roles and behaviours in Central and South America, so all the cultural and societal information was new to me.
Many of the associations in Europe combine Guides and Scouts and are co-educational. I always thought that other associations are female-only, like in Canada.
Most other countries have several Guiding and Scouting organizations, divided among things like language, religion, etc. I never knew that before, growing up in Canada. Although we have some special interest units, they all fall under the umbrella of the national organization.

After lunch and a quick swim, we broke into groups to discuss our co-operative projects in our own countries. This took a lot of discussion, because it was hard to identify what we wanted to do. I ended up making a group with USA, Hungary, and Belgium. We have a general agreement of needing to improve training, but we’ll need more time to talk about exactly what we want to target.

In the afternoon, we were free from more sessions! For the first time, we had time to discover the city. We went to the Teopanzolco pyramids first and had some time to admire the structures and take photos. Afterwards, we wandered around downtown Cuernavaca. I took a walk out of the Zocalo (main square) and finally saw what looks like the real Mexico that’s not dressed up and full of people trying to sell you souvenirs. We ate supper as a group at VIPs, which was like a Denny’s type of restaurant with burgers, pasta, and some Mexican dishes too. It was in a fancier neighbourhood, blocks away from the lower income area that I was walking around earlier. I was so tired after supper, so I went back to Our Cabana and relaxed for once for the rest of the evening.

Getting over the hump day

2010-10-05T21:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the most intense day so far and marked the middle of the conference. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. Of course, having access and exposure to all this material is useful, and I expect seminars to maximize their use of time.

We started the day exercising our brains in strategic thinking. We did a knot untying exercise where pairs try to untie knots on a rope without letting go of the ends. From this activity, we realized that we need a strategy and plan for solving the problem. The strategic thinking workshop mirrored the steps of engineering problem solving, so for me, it felt like a natural progression.

The pre-lunch session was the toughest part of the day. The topic was project management. The setting was classroom style, with presentation slides and worksheets. Having sat all morning long, sitting for the rest of the afternoon was a huge challenge for me. Also, I felt like I was in school. In fact, this session reminded me of engineering project management. So, I had an advantage because I was already familiar with the content and did not struggle as much to grasp all the concepts. We went through the steps of project management by using the case study of taking a group of 8 girls to a National Camp. The problem was the girls did not know how to set up a tent. I thought this was a bit too simplistic to do a full 2 hour session on project management, but at least the tools provided are useful for the future.

Today, I had the honour of being a hopper as my patrol duty. At Our Cabana, we eat lunches and suppers in a family-style table setting. One volunteer sits at the head of the table and serves the food. Then, everyone passes the dishes along the table towards the end. The hopper sits to the left of the volunteer and shuttles food between the kitchen and the table. I was like a waitress that ate with the people I served. It’s a style of eating meals that I’ve never seen before so it was cool to get the full experience.

The next session was about external communication. We had round-robin discussion groups at 4 stations: Negotiating, Effective Influencing, Lobbying and Campaigning. These discussion groups picked me back up from “school” and I enjoyed learning about other people’s perspectives on how external communication is done.

At our workshop about changes in organization, we went through some theory about the process of changes in associations and the change curve. The best part of this workshop though, was finding out about what other associations struggle with and wants to change.

This evening, we took some time to walk around the neighbourhood of Our Cabana. It’s a residential neighbourhood, so most stores were closed and it was not bustling like Zocalo. There wasn’t too many interesting things to see, but I appreciated the change of scenery from Our Cabana and interesting conversations with other delegates about the diversity of our cultures. I did not know until today that Canada actually has very high minimum wage legislation compared to other countries (e.g. in Europe) that have similar costs of living. Also, we discovered among our group a stark difference in the priority of families. Most of the Western Europe countries, especially in Scandinavia, expect people to move out of their parents’ homes when they become adults and have their own lives. They usually separate from their parents and when their parents get old, they go to care homes. On the contrary, in the Mediterranean and to the East, kids live at home until they are married. Even after they’re married, they stay close to their families, take care of their parents when they are old, etc. There are merits and disadvantages to both, but I found it fascinating how it was a big cultural difference. I find in Canada, there are variations of both schools of thought, so I never really noticed this Western/Eastern type of trend. I often forget how diverse of a country I live in compared to other parts of the world, and take for granted how tolerable the Canadian society is for diversity.

Tasting the World and Water Fights

2010-10-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

The best part of today by far was the international festival. I’m going to describe my day chronologically though, so you’ll just need to read through to find out what happened in the evening.

I realized I forgot to explain why I was at Our Cabana in the first place. I am the Canadian delegate for the Pathways to Leadership 2010 seminar for the World Leadership Development Programme (WLDP) in the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). WAGGGS is the umbrella organization of Girl Guide and Girl Scout associations around the world. The WLDP is a program to provide opportunities to leaders to discover, assess, and find ways to improve their own leadership capacities, as well as those of their associations.

Today, our patrol was responsible for colours. To put this in context for non-Guiding and non-Scouting people, patrols are groups assigned to duties or chores for the duration of a camp, event, or some specific time period. My patrol is my dormitory group, the Tulipanes. At Our Cabana, all dormitories are named after flowers and we are the tulips. Colours is a flag ceremony usually at the beginning of the day. We usually have some form of song, skit, poem, story, or presentation during the ceremony to set the mood for the day. I was lucky enough to be the flag raiser today, and hoisted the WAGGGS flag to the top of the flag pole.

Like yesterday, here are my personal highlights of today’s offerings:

- Motivation role playing exercise: In a group of six, one person is the team leader. The leader has a specific task to complete with the group. Each group member acts out one negative and one positive trait, starting with the negative (e.g. bothered when her ideas are not accepted). The leader needs to motivate each member, and when she feels sufficiently motivated, she exhibits the positive trait (e.g. encourages others to contribute ideas).

- Coaching practice: This was a useful exercise but happened at an inopportune time. We were starting to run behind schedule, so our morning break was used for the coaching practice. I think everyone needed to take a real break to clear our minds, which I strongly suggest for next time. In any case, in groups of three, we took turns with the role of the coach, coachee, and observer. We did not have nearly enough time to fully experience the coaching process, but it was still good practice.

- Building blocks game: This was a communication activity whereby teams have a director, builder, runner, and observer. There are also overall observers. The director has a lego structure, the builder needs to build a replicate of the structure, and the runner acts as the communicator. The director and builder cannot see each other. The runner cannot see the structures of the director and the builder, so she must relay the messages between the two. The observers take note of how the teams function. This activity stressed the importance of clarity and specificity in communication, and the need for having a strategy to make it effective.

- Swimming: This was not a planned activity, but I really appreciated going for a swim after lunch, even for just 20 minutes. The water was so warm, at least according to me. I consider water to be warm if I don’t feel like I’m going to freeze if I don’t keep moving.

- Water relay: This became more of a water fight. We learned about conflict management theory and then put it into practice. Each team had two buckets, about 10 m apart. One is full of water, the other is empty. The goal is to bring water to the empty bucket using cups, while preventing other teams from doing the same. My team had a defensive strategy. Two of us protected the delivery bucket, a few ran water between the buckets, and others sabotaged the other teams. It was a few minutes of chaos. Women who seem to be mild-mannered were knocking cups of water out of other people’s hands, people were attacking their own teammates by accident, and everyone was wet by the end. The styles of conflict management shone through. We had the attacking sharks, the turtles who tried to hide, and everyone in between.

I learned even more Spanish over supper, thanks to my very patient Spanish-speaking friends. I asked for the name of all the food in Spanish, and I remember about half of it. I think that’s a decent memory retention. My favourite is the pay de limon, a creamy lime pie with a graham crust. Muy bien!

As dusk set in, we began our international festivities. Each country set up a booth featuring things like food (the best part), crafts, items that represent their country, languages, and information about their association. Our Canadian booth was simple: a flag, a map to show the vast expanse of our land, maple leaf paraphernalia, and of course our beloved Girl Guide cookies. At one point in the evening, we even shared the theme song for Bonhomme Carnaval in karaoke form so everyone can sing along.

We started the evening with some performances. I enjoyed a Romanian pop song, sang Lean on Me with everyone else, learned some Irish dancing, observed the melancholy of a Icelandic love song, and watched an energetic Shakira tribute (after much encouragement of our talented dancer). We spent the rest of the evening mingling among the booths. We ate and drank way too much (but in a good way), admiring uniforms and traditional clothing, dancing, and trading. With about 40 countries represented, this was a mind blowing experience. I can’t even list all the foods I tried. My favourites include candied tamarind, smoked cheese, and a variety of chocolate. I also accumulated so many more crests to add to my ever-growing collection for my camp blanket. Now if only I was more diligent with sewing…

Welcome to Our Cabana!

2010-10-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

I've been in Mexico for a little more than one day, and already I have had so many amazing experiences. The start of my journey was a bit rough, catching a flight at 6:30am from Vancouver to Los Angeles. After a slightly delayed flight, I arrived in Mexico City right in the middle of rush hour. I was impressed by the airport. It was this grand, spacious, luxurious place that operated so efficiently. I went through immigration, picked up my luggage, and went through customs in less than 20 minutes.

I bought my bus ticket to Cuernavaca, and within only 1 hour of landing, I was on a coach bus to Our Cabana. The bus was super clean and comfortable. They played a movie and gave everyone a free snack and juice. The traffic going through Mexico City was chaotic, as expected. It took us such a long time just to get out of the city. In about 2 hours, we arrived in Cuernavaca at a bus station by the Casino. There were taxis waiting outside of the bus station. With my limited Spanish, I managed to get a taxi to Our Cabana for 35 pesos (equivalent of $3.50 CAD). I never take taxis in Canada because they are so expensive, but here it is quite affordable and common.

Upon arrival at Our Cabana, a friendly volunteer showed my to my dorm. All of the buildings at Our Cabana are built with volcanic rock, giving it a marvelously rustic charm. There were 10 beds in my dorm with a shared bathroom that connected to another dorm. I felt at home instantly. Since I arrived so late (8:00pm), it was way past supper time, but I managed to get some leftover spaghetti. Scarfing that down, having not eaten a proper meal all day, I proceeded to our first program session.

We did an icebreaker activity with all the delegates, volunteers, and facilitators. Each person read one question in English and Spanish, then responded in the language of choice. One of the facilitators or volunteers who are bilingual translated. It was an exhausting evening for them, and also an opportune time for me to learn some Spanish.

I was so tired after that session that I went straight to bed. Despite the music playing very loudly from a club close by, I had no problem falling asleep.

The next morning, I grudgingly woke up and proceeded to breakfast at 8am. I probably could have slept for another couple hours, but by the end of breakfast, I was awake and ready for program. The sun was shining brightly outside and the temperature was just right to be warm, but not uncomfortably so. We had a quick flag ceremony and started our first session.

For the morning, we had an introductory session on the objectives of this conference and learned more about the plans for the week. Today's theme was discovering our own leadership. I loved the style of this session (and all others too). Every activity was interactive, many times in the form of a game or a group activity. Unlike the training sessions that we all too often attend in Canada where someone lectures with presentation slides, I felt like I learned so much, but without actually feeling like I was trying to learn. The new ideas just seemed to seep into my brain through osmosis.

For the rest of day, we went through a series of workshops on self-discovery and identifying what leadership means to us. It is far too much for me to write in detail about each session, so here's a glimpse at my favourite parts of the day:

- Creating a motto for the leadership quality of motivating others: "Motivate! What? Motivate! What? Energize! What? Energize! What? Act! Act! Act!". This captured the importance of motivation to get the energy to take action.

- Making leadership silhouettes. We all made silhouettes in large sheets of paper and wrote reflections about ourselves throughout the day on the silhouettes.

- Building trust through the confidence circle. In a group of seven, one person stood in the middle of a circle formed with the rest of the group. The person in the middle leaned with her eyes closed, trusting that she would not fall because everyone was there to catch her. This led to some interesting discussion on strategies for building confidence in a team through trust.

- Learning more about the leadership styles of others through a physical sliding scale (I'm not sure how else to describe it). The facilitators asked several questions. Everyone stood in the centre of the room, then moved towards one side or another depending on how much she agreed or disagreed with the question. People who ended up on different parts of this scale then shared with the group why they picked a certain position. I would like to use this technique for group activities in the future because everyone gets up, moves, and learns from each other.

In the evening, we had free time to go to the explore the city of Cuernavaca. We took taxis to Zocalo (downtown square), which was about 15 minutes away. The city was bustling with a partying atmosphere. There was a band playing catchy latino music in the square, a craft market with everything you can imagine, mariachi bands parading around with serenades (with a price of course) and people everywhere enjoying their Saturday night out. During this time away from our program, I chatted away with the other delegates and we shared so much to each other about our countries, our interests, and everything in between. Although I was quite tired from a day of activities, I was so glad I went out to experience the culture in Cuernavaca and hang out with my new Guiding and Scouting friends.

Los Angeles, Catalina Island, and Sequoia National Park

2009-08-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

I spent the second half of the trip with my family, so luckily my mom wrote all about it on her blog. Only thing that I have to add about is the diving at Catalina Island. I went on 3 boat dives the first day just west of Avalon and 2 shore dives in Casino Point Marine Park the next day. The water was quite warm, which was a nice change from the colder waters off the South Coast in BC. The visibility was amazing since there was so much sunlight and I love the kelp forests! It's just so cool to see a forest under the water. I couldn't really identify much of the sea life I saw, but there was lots of it. At Casino Point Marine Park, I saw a couple of wrecks, which one could almost miss because they are so overgrown by kelp. I thought it was really cool though, seeing a bunch of kelp growing the shape of a boat. I also saw a giant sea bass at Casino Point. That thing was probably my size. It didn't swim too fast, so I was able to watch it for a while. If only I had a few more days to dive around the island.

Hiking and other things in the Bay Area

2009-08-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

Three days, three "hikes", and lots of cool views.
Friday Jul 31: Mount Tam
It was getting dark, so Joel and I cheated and drove up to Mount Tam. It was a short trail (maybe 500 m) to the top. It was almost like a staircase, so pretty much anyone who can walk can do it. Coolest part of the view was looking at all the fog roll in from the ocean. That's one thing that is really amazing (and sometimes annoying) about the Bay Area. For visitors, it is a cool thing to see, but I can see it getting frustrating to not have many clear sunny days.
Saturday Aug 1: Tennessee Valley
There are a lot of trails in Tennessee Valley, many of which are easy to access and easy to hike. The terrain was easy to moderate, so it made for some fast walking times. Again, the fog was sticking around for the day. We hiked from the trailhead at the end of Tennessee Valley Road to Rodeo Beach, following a series of trails that formed a nice big loop. The trail is mostly a gradual ascent, a few steep sections, and a descent to the ocean. On the higher sections the wind was quite strong, probably at least 15 knots since there was so little vegetation and lots of exposure to the elements. The area by Rodeo Beach used to be a military base, so we saw a few old batteries cut into the cliffs in the last section. As we descended to Rodeo Beach, the fog finally cleared a bit and we had a sunny lunch. It cleared up a bit (barely) in the afternoon as we walked back to the trailhead.
Sunday Aug 1: San Rafael Farmer's Market and Angel Island
The San Rafael Farmer's Market is huge. About double the size of anything in Vancouver and has a huge assortment of food. It makes sense of course since so many more things can be grown in California. We picked up lots of delicious treats at this place before we went over to Angel Island. The ferry terminal to Angel Island is in Tiburon, a small (and very wealthy) town southeast of Mill Valley. The ferry ride is short, only about 15 minutes. Angel Island has a lot of natural and historical significance because it is one of the few state parks that are so easy to access from San Francisco. Angel Island used to be where they detained immigrants from the Pacific, mostly the Chinese. I did not have time to visit the immigration station since I hiked up to the top of the island instead. The hike had the most number of switchbacks I've ever seen on a trail. It was pretty much flat the entire way and we practically circled the island going up to the top. It makes it nice for people who don't hike much and don't want to deal with a steep slope, but I was getting pretty tired of covering so much distance with so little elevation gain. The view from the top was worth the walk though since the island is in the middle of the bay. There's San Francisco on one side, then the ocean, Marin County, and bits of Oakland. Angel Island is an nice place for a day trip away from the city. Just need to be careful to catch the last ferry of the day at 4:30pm to get off the island.

San Francisco

2009-08-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

For the first half of my California trip, I hung out in the Bay Area and stayed with my high school friend, Joel, who lives in Mill Valley. I spent the first few days exploring San Francisco, after being told by many people what a fantastic city it is. Having now wandered through most of the city, I agree. San Francisco is one of the few US cities I've been to that I actually like. The way it is structured reminds me very much of Vancouver. It has a lot of diversity, neat neighbourhoods, mixed development communities, and is generally progressive in terms of politics. Oh, and the location right beside the water is nice too.
To keep it concise, here's a summary of where I went, what I did, and what I thought of it:
Chinatown: Everyone talks about SF's Chinatown, how it is so big and full of old stuff, so I had to see it for myself. It is a big tourist trap, but worth visiting. Walking through, it was very decked out Chinese style with the little alleys, crowded stores, and big gate entrance. However, Chinatown is very much divided between the tourist section (Grant) and the real Chinese section (Stockton). I walked down Grant first, and didn't really understand why Chinatown didn't have many Chinese people, and was just full of trinket stores. I was expecting to see the grocery stores, butcher shops, bakeries, and herbal medicine stores along with people bustling around (especially the grandmas with their little shopping carts). Then when I walked over a block to Stockton, I found the real thing. One tourist highlight of Chinatown is the fortune cookie factory, where cookies are still hand folded. It was kind of neat to see how cookies were made before the process become fully automated. Plus, they had chocolate flavoured cookies.
Fisherman's Wharf: Another tourist trap, but also home to the famous sea lions and the Boudin bakery. The sea lions were fun to watch as they flopped around by the dozens on the dock. The Boudin bakery was an amazing place. First off, they make really good sourdough. However, they also make sourdough in a whole bunch of different shapes. There were turtles, lobsters, teddies, etc. The way the bakery was laid out was just so cool since there were windows everywhere so you can watch the bread being baked and get delivered to the counter via a conveyer belt basket. The prices aren't too bad either considering the quality of the bread. It was only $5 for 2 lbs of a multigrain loaf.
Riding the cable car: I was told that I haven't experienced SF without riding a cable car. So I went ahead and did it. The ride was pretty interesting since it takes you up some really steep hills. What I liked most was watching the grips operate the streetcar. So much skill goes into all the controls, as this is technology from more than a century ago. To make the cable car move, they let the car grip onto the cable. To stop, they release the cable and use a cedar block that's shoved into the ground to brake. Definitely not the most efficient way to move around, but when this system was invented, it was revolutionary.
Castro Street: This place has a lot of significance for LGBT rights and history. Since it has so much history and is so well-known, I thought it would be like Davie St in Vancouver, but ten times more times colourful and lively. When I was walking around at least (a weekday afternoon), it felt a bit more subdued. In any case, it was a nice place to walk around, browse through the stores, and grab a treat at a cafe.
Wicked: I scored some really good seats to a production of Wicked (centre orchestra seats). I was surprised I even got tickets since I was buying them the day before. The performance was solid and definitely worth the $100 ticket.
California Academy of Sciences: Based on the rave reviews of this place from a colleague, and my affinity for science centres, I decided to spend a few hours at this place. It was like going to the Vancouver Aquarium, but with a bunch more exhibits to see. There wasn't anything that stood out, but it was nevertheless fun to look at animals.
Golden Gate Bridge: Since I was staying in Mill Valley, I crossed this bridge daily to get in and out of San Francisco. However, I also walked across it one day to stop and look at the views of the bay from the bridge. Plus, I like taking pictures of interesting structures (don't we all?).

Garibaldi Lake

2009-07-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I went for an overnight trip to Garibaldi Lake, one of the busiest trails close to the Lower Mainland. We left on Saturday morning, at a time we thought was pretty early, around 7:30am. We were at the trailhead around 9:00am, and the parking lot was already packed. It was another one of those super hot and sunny days. The trail was quite easy, similar to Elfin, but a lot nicer. It's not an old road so there are fewer sections of loose rock. It was like a highway of people hiking up that trail, especially those large groups (at least 30 people) of Chinese and Korean hikers. There were also lots of very unprepared people (as expected) and those who didn't respect the rule of staying on the trail. There were people cutting the switchbacks, I'm guessing because they think they can save a bit of walking, which is terrible because it makes the slope more eroded, not to mention puts more impact on the environment. Plus, it is a lot steeper so it takes less time to use the switchback anyway.
It only took about 3 hours to get to Garibaldi Lake. The lake was a nice turquoise blue, like many other glacial lakes. The view of the glacier was spectacular. However, the downside was that the campground was full. We had lunch and cooled off in the lake, then proceeded to Taylor Meadows. This camp site is not as nice, but at least we found a spot to pitch the tents. We did a short hike (without loaded packs) up the Black Tusk trail when we realized the clouds were starting to blow over. It was a good thing I made the decision to turn around at 6pm. As we neared camp, we heard some thunder, and about 10 minutes after we arrived at camp, it started to rain. It rained (or rather thunder showered) on and off throughout the evening. We stayed relatively dry in the tent, so it didn't seem that bad.
The next morning, we packed up and descended. It only took about 2 hours to get to the trailhead, and we were off to return to Vancouver for our traditional apres hike snack of poutine and gelato.
Besides the difficulty in finding a camp site and crowded trail, I think the Garibaldi Lake area is worthwhile to visit. If I return, I will probably try for a weekday or go in the shoulder season and hike further into the park on a longer trip.

Elfin Lakes with the Pathfinders

2009-07-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago, I went on another backpacking adventure with Girl Guides, but this time it was with the girls. We had a schedule very similar to the leader's snowshoe trip in February, leaving on Friday morning and returning on Sunday afternoon. It was hot and sunny (not as much as Stein Valley) the entire trip. The mosquitoes did not attack as much though, but there were a lot more of them. I did not know that the entire trail was pretty much a dirt road, so the hike up was a lot faster than anticipated. Plus, the girls were really strong so we kept a good steady pace. I definitely prefer the trail in the winter when it is covered in snow. It looks so much prettier. However, the summer trail much easier, especially on the climb from Red Heather Meadows (halfway to Elfin Lakes) up to Paul Ridge. Instead of just going straight up to the ridge, the summer trail switchbacks. The views are pretty nice from Paul Ridge all the way to Elfin Lakes. The trail was still covered in small patches of snow on our way there but they were melting pretty quickly.
The camp site at Elfin Lakes was not very impressive. The area is a low-lying marsh, so there were lots of mosquitoes. The trails were also very muddy and slippery. The tent pads were decent though, and the water source is a fast flowing stream, which is much better than the stagnant lakes had we stayed in the hut.
The next day we had a rest day since the girls were not interested in doing a day hike. We walked up to the shelter and hung out for the day. It was so much cooler in there compared to the camp site.
We had an early start on Sunday morning, which was smart since it got really hot by about 9am. A lot of the snow that we saw on Friday had melted away. In the next week, the entire trail would probably be snow-free. We descended quickly, reaching the trailhead just past noon, which left us enough time to buy the girls some ice cream before heading back to Vancouver.

Stein Valley

2009-07-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

I did my Girl Guides Wilderness Leadership Training Backpacking Tech Skills this past week at Stein Valley Provincial Park. This park is close to Lytton in the Fraser Canyon, which is almost desert like in the summer. We had 4 days of sunshine, but it was also 4 days of intense heat, usually greater than 30 degrees C.
I didn't take any pictures because we were saving weight and I left my clunky camera at home. Agnes kindly put all her photos up on her gallery.
Getting to the trailhead is pretty interesting because it involves crossing the Fraser River on a cable ferry from Lytton. We were on the trail at 2pm. The first few kilometres of the trail were quite easy, up to Devil's Staircase. Along the way we saw some pictographs, where the talus slopes took over and we had to be very careful with our footing. The scree was also a challenge because there was no vegetation cover so in the middle of the afternoon, it was scorching hot. After Devil's Staircase the trail was again mostly flat, but went through very brushy and buggy sections. We arrived at the Teepee Camp around 7:30pm. There was only one other group there so we took over the camp site that was right beside the Stein River. The camp site had a pit toilet, bear box, and some nice benches around a campfire ring (no campfires for us though due to the fire ban). This river is full of rapids and the water is super cold (and also very refreshing after a long hike on a hot day). It was nice to sleep to the white noise of the water rushing by, though it was pretty quiet anyway. It's nothing like the super busy camp sites where the sound of other campers drives you absolutely mad.
The second day we decided to do a day hike to give ourselves a break. We also liked our camp site a lot, and didn't feel like moving camp. We hiked out to the suspension bridge, which was a pretty easy 4 km. There were lots of nice creeks along the way and Earl's Cabin, a very old log cabin built at least 100 years ago. At the suspension bridge we stopped for lunch, found a geocache, and had a long break. We hiked back to camp a lot faster than we hiked out to the bridge. Back at camp I soaked myself in the river. It was so hot that I was dry again in about 30 minutes.
On the third day, we had to move camp to make our way back to the trailhead. It was a cooler day at least. We left camp at 10am and our pace was a lot faster than the first day. Our packs were slightly lighter and we got more used to having the packs on our backs. The brushy areas were much less buggy in the morning. We stopped at the bottom of Devil's Staircase to look at pictographs, then started conquering the scree at noon. This section seemed a lot easier on the way back and we were at the Devil's Staircase Camp by 1:30pm. We had a nice long lunch break there before hiking another hour on a practically completely flat trail (felt like a sidewalk) to the Loop Camp. It was a lot hotter and drier at the lower elevation. However, there were practically no mosquitos, only flies and ants. The water access point wasn't as nice as the Teepee camp because the rapids were a lot larger here, but a dunk in the river was still very nice. Like the Teepee camp, we only shared the site with another group. This was the first time in a few months that I've been out hiking without dozens of other people on the trail. It was such a hot and dry day that we slept without the fly on our tent. It was cool to just look up and see the trees and the sky.
On the last day, we had a very easy 1.6 km hike (more like a walk) out to the trailhead. Then it was back across the ferry and on the highway to go home. We stopped in Hope for lunch at one of those country diners (with very few vegetarian options) but I was quite happy with my spinach salad and yam fries. Traffic coming back to Vancouver was not so great in the Fraser Valley since we hit the Sunday afternoon "rush hour" of people returning home. After passing Surrey it was smooth driving again back to civilization.

Diving in Howe Sound

2009-07-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

This was a few weeks back, but I've been a bit busy doing lots of fun things outdoors and did not have a chance to write about them. I went on a dive charter with AquaSoc on the Sea Dragon to Howe Sound. It's the first boat diving that I've done in BC. Our first site was the Pinnacle because it's kind of like a layered cake. There are a bunch of different levels to swim at to look at things. The visibility was not super great because it was raining that day, but it was nice to get out in the water and back into diving after a few months hiatus. I still need to work on my naturalist skills for BC, so I can't actually really identify much of what I saw. One thing I definitely liked were the anemones. The second site was the Canyon and definitely one of the cooler dives I've been on thus far. We saw a wolf eel, an octopus (which I noticed under a metal grate), and a toilet. The last item was a bit odd. It looked like it just fell out of a boat or something. I have seen some really interesting things underwater, but this one wasn't really expected because we weren't at a wreck. In any case, it was a very enjoyable Saturday and I hope that I can get out diving more this summer. Just need to somehow cram it in with all the kayaking and hiking.

New Kayak!

2009-06-24T21:06:00.000-07:00

This past month, I've been up to a lot of paddling because I now own a kayak. It was a bit of a impulse buy, but I got a really good deal on a used Necky Arluk IV. What prevented me from kayaking a lot before was the cost of renting a kayak and then transporting the kayak to a place where I can paddle. After getting a rental from MEC, driving out to Deep Cove to launch the kayak, and then rush back to MEC before closing was such a pain. Now I have a kayak and a place to store it in False Creek, so my problems are solved. The freedom to just go out and paddle around on the weekend or in the evening is something I've never come close to before. Since I haven't done much kayaking before, I still have a lot of skills to improve on (another benefit of owning a kayak is having a lot of opportunity to practice) and later this summer I will be going on a nice trip to the Sunshine Coast, without having to take the ferry!

Car Camping on the Sunshine Coast

2009-05-27T22:52:00.001-07:00

I usually don't go car camping since I like to put some effort into getting to my destinations (plus, there are usually fewer people at backcountry sites), but this past weekend, I wanted to take my parents out to enjoy the outdoors. I would have never expected them even a couple of years ago to go camping, but I think I've got them hooked now. We just did an overnighter at Porpoise Bay by Sechelt so it was a very easy weekend. We took the ferry over to Langdale on Saturday morning and stopped at Gumboot Restaurant in Roberts Creek (which I discovered back in February on a dive trip) for lunch. We continued along north to our camp site, set it up, then headed up to Skookumchuk. This place is a must-see on the Sunshine Coast. We got there about an hour before the high tide was coming in and I somehow convinced my parents to hike the 4 km out to the rapids. It was an easy hike (more like a walk), but for my parents it was a totally new experience. They wanted to turn back about half way, but with some gentle encouragement, they pushed on and witnessed some amazing views of very fast running water (plus the kayakers who showed off their tricks in the rapids). We got some awesome pictures out there in the afternoon sun and hiked back as evening came along. My mom felt so accomplished at the end. I am very proud of my parents for hiking that trail. We stopped in Sechelt for some well-deserved dinner on the way back to the campsite and had a nice long sleep till the next morning.
We slept in on Sunday morning, packed up, and headed back towards the ferry. En route, we stopped at Gibsons Landing, a quaint little place (kind of like Steveston) by the water for lunch at Molly's Reach, the former set of the Beachcombers (for all those who did not watch CBC in the 70s and 80s, it was a hit TV show). It was as Sunday as it could be. We were so relaxed, the sun was so bright, and I was actually spending time with my family.

Canoeing Alouette Lake

2009-05-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I posted something. Seeing that the theme of most of my posts are interesting travels, outdoor explorations, and the odd recipe, not much of that has happened since March until these past couple of weeks. Just a few skiing escapades to well-known resorts that aren't quite special enough to write about. Plus, the month of April has been a constant stream of work/volunteering.
My gears have shifted over to summer mode now, and what better thing to do than go canoeing? Over the long weekend I went to Alouette Lake with some friends to do an easy weekend of paddling. This lake is frequented by many visitors, especially during long weekends when everyone goes camping. We started out in the early afternoon on Saturday, slowly making our way towards the narrows, which is about halfway up the lake. It was a very calm, sunny day, so the paddling was quite enjoyable. We saw a few interesting things along the way, such as a movie set (some sort of fake log cabin) an an assortment of junk (mostly beer bottles/cans) that got left in the water by some irresponsible people.
As expected, the lake was full of power boats. They zipped along, leaving us paddlers in their wake. Most of them were pretty harmless and I can understand that some people don't have the time or ability to paddle. However, canoeing is probably one of the lowest impact activities around. In any case, what bothered me more was the blaring music, use of generators on a campsite, and general disregard for some people who wanted to go camping to get away from the noise of the city. The fact that we were able to hear someone's music from across the lake was disconcerting, not to mention the sound of chainsaws hacking away timber (which is completely illegal in a provincial park).
I can go on and vent a bit, but sticking to a more positive attitude, we ended up finding a nice camp site at Moyer Creek on the west side of the lake where the power boats could not get in. We set up all our stuff, had a delicious curry and naan dinner followed by some s'mores and it was off to bed. Well, before the bed time we had an interesting adventure with setting a bear cache. Summarized in one sentence: The moral of the story is to make a bear cache before it gets dark.
The next morning we took it pretty easy. We did some hiking up Moyer Creek and finally got to a point where we could not hear all the buzzing of the motors. That was mainly because the white noise of the running water drowned it all out. In the afternoon, we did a paddle past the narrows and picked up more junk including a shoe and a rusty lawn chair. I really thought we should have our parking fees waived for providing this service to the park. Coming back from our afternoon lazy paddle, I braved the chilly waters and went for a swim. The water actually didn't end up feeling that cold, especially in the shallow benches with the afternoon sun. Dinner followed promptly after with some entertainment in the form of singing, plus the strumming of a guitar and mandolin to lull us to a very good sleep.
We started out early on Monday morning to get back to our launching spot so we could meet Debbie (who missed the trip). We finally got a few clouds and some strong winds heading back. The nice thing about starting so early is that all those partying power boaters were still asleep. It was almost like we had the lake to ourselves, until about 9:30am and the motors were running again. We hung around for a while at the dock, ate some lunch, and did a short paddle around the south part of the lake before the rain really kicked in.
Besides some disrespectful power boaters, this weekend was pretty awesome. I couldn't have had better weather on two of the days and this trip really got me excited for more paddling fun this summer.

Hemlock Valley: A hidden gem

2009-03-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I discovered ski resort that I've never even heard of until this past month. It seems like no one knows about Hemlock Valley, or at least, cares to go there. It is further than the local mountains, but closer than Whistler, and much cheaper and less busy. Now, for those extremists who are into the gigantic resorts, this is definitely not the place to be, but for those who just want to have a good day out on the mountain and get a change of scenery, I think Hemlock Valley is a wonderful alternative to the buzz of the north shore mountains. It is not open for very long hours, and is actually not even open every day of the week. However, it has a decent selection of runs, and what I enjoyed most was the lack of line-ups. The area is also a lot less developed, so the runs look a lot more natural, not just bulldozed portions of a mountain. The snow was nicer to carve down as well since it was drier than that icy coastal slush (even though this wasn't too far from the coast, it was still a huge difference).
It may have just been my luck that day, but I felt like I got more than my value out of my lift ticket because I never had to wait more than about 5 minutes to get on a lift. In fact, we got so much skiing and snowboarding in that we even stopped for lunch at the pub. The food was actually affordable and good, which is an anomaly when it comes to ski resorts.
With the expansion of development into the Fraser Valley, highway upgrade to Hemlock Valley, and the coming madness of the Olympics taking up a bunch of ski resorts, I think Hemlock Valley is going to be gaining popularity in the very near future. But for now, it still has that small resort feel, and I hope to take advantage of it while I can.

Sunshine Coast Diving

2009-02-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I got my Advanced Open Water Diver certification. It was my first time diving in cold water and with a drysuit. The water temperature both days was between 5 to 7 degrees Celsius, so it was a huge difference from the tropical waters of Bermuda. The drysuit kept me warm and dry throughout my dives, but my hands and feet were pretty cold. All that extra gear made me feel really sluggish in the water, but I got used to it after a couple of dives.
The first day we went to Coopers Green park. We had great weather since it was sunny and calm. The visibility in the water was really good as well. I did my first dive swimming around a small island and getting accustomed to the drysuit. As expected, I saw lots of sea stars and invertebrates, but not many fish. The second dive was a navigation dive where we used a compass and counted fin kicks to swim a 100 ft square underwater. I did quite well on that dive, since my dive buddy and I got back to the point where we started without going too much off course.
We had a few hours between our navigation dive and night dive, and our instructor had a great idea of having a barbeque. It was nice to get warm food and a fire while we waited for the sun to go down. For our night dive, we circled the small island again. This time, all the fish were out. There were also lots of crabs crawling around.
Tired and cold, we headed over to our hostel, Up the Creek, which is in Roberts Creek. This was an excellent hostel. It was clean, cozy, and only $26 per night. We were essentially a big house that got converted into a hostel. It had a hot tub, comfortable beds, and a large living room type place with a fireplace. Down the road from the hostel was a restaurant called Gum Boot where I had supper. It's one of those organic, whole food, vegetarian-friendly places. Next time I come to the Sunshine Coast, I would definitely go back to Up the Creek and Gum Boot.
The next day, we went to Tuwanek Beach for two more dives. It was raining and felt colder, but we were going in the water anyway. The first dive, we swam out to an island, and went along one side of it. We had to keep our dive short since we were doing our deep dive next, and had to make sure we didn't have too much nitrogen in our systems. The visibility was really bad on the first dive. We had to dive with our lights.
The deep dive was really cool. We went down to 98 ft. There wasn't much there, but the visibility was better than the last dive (but it was dark of course). We couldn't spend too much time down there to make sure we didn't exceed our decompression limits, but it was good for a first time dive.

Snowshoeing Elfin Lakes

2009-02-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

Two weekends ago, I went on my Elfin Lakes snowshoe trip. It is an annual event that Lougheed Area organizes for Guiders, but of course, Vancouver Area was invited because we have so many Guiders who are keen for outdoor adventures.

We had a very early start on Friday morning, leaving Vancouver at 6:30am. The traffic out to Garibaldi was smooth and we were on the trail at 9:30am. The first part of this trail (almost half) is an old logging road, so it was very wide and had lots of switchbacks so it was not too steep. We had some fog for the first hour or so and then it cleared up into blue skies. We could not have had any better conditions. The wind was calm, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the snow was nicely packed. We got great views of Diamond Head along the way. It took us about 2.5 hours to get to Red Heather Meadows at an easy to moderate pace, where we stopped for lunch. The mountain hut was a nice place to relax, and has nice amenities like a stove and wood heater. We didn't use any of those things of course since we were just staying for about an hour.

The next kilometre from Red Heather Meadows was a steep climb, similar to the last third of Mount Hollyburn. The snow was grippy though, so it felt easier to me at least even though I had a larger pack this time. Looking up the climb seemed so daunting, but once I reached the top it was not as hard as I expected it to be.

After that point, the trail just undulates along Paul Ridge to the shelter at Elfin Lakes. We actually had a net elevation loss by about a couple hundred metres. The trail diverges at this point with one for the summer, and one for the winter. The winter trail is slightly longer, but avoids the riskier avalanche terrain that the summer route goes through. The views along the ridge were magnificent. I took a lot of pictures that I would probably make prints of to hang up at home or give as gifts. Into the afternoon, I still did not see a cloud in the sky.

At about 4:30pm, we arrived at the Elfin Lakes shelter. No one else was staying there that night, so our group really lucked out. It was like a private cabin for $10 per person. The sunset was amazing with all sorts of colours emerging in the sky. At nightfall, the snow was glistening in the moonlight.

We ate a filling supper of lasagna (the kind where you just add boiling water and cook for a few minutes). By 7:30pm, we were all in bed from an exhausting, but also unforgettable day of snowshoeing.

We slept in on the next day since we had no time constraints for the rest day. The avalanche risk was a bit too high to hike up the Gargoyles, so we just looked at them from the cabin. I was responsible for making our breakfast of hashbrowns, smoked tofu, and dried fruit. I took advantage of the emptiness of the cabin to take photos inside.

By noon, the weekend snowshoers started to pile in and did not stop arriving until the late afternoon. The shelter went from being almost empty, to completely full. The park rangers had to start turning people back on the trail because the shelter was so full. We filled our afternoon by playing an epic game of Monopoly that took about 3.5 hours. Then again, I didn't have much else to do.

For supper, we were treated to a delicious stew with dumplings made by Agnes. It was a "homecooked" trail stew since we dehydrated all the ingredients herself, rather than just purchasing a pre-packaged one. We ate our supper quite early, but with good reason because later in the evening, there were just so many people all trying to cook at the same time. It was such a change from the night before. Next time, I am definitely going to go to Elfin Lakes during the week.

The cabin was so full that people were sleeping on the floor and even the dining tables. When we left on Sunday, the cabin looked like a mess. There were a lot of people who came up to the shelter unprepared, and not very knowledgeable about backcountry etiquette (such as not dumping food out on the snow).

In any case, we got an early start for the hike down to beat the morning rush of the crowds. Just as the sun was beginning to rise at 6:30am, we were already on the trail. We had relatively clear skies and calm winds again. The hike down was so much easier and we were off the trail by about 11am.

This trip was one of the best hiking trips I've had since the weather and snow conditions were perfect. The tough sections of the trail were just enough to feel exhausted in a good way, and so accomplished at the end.

Snowshoeing Mount Hollyburn

2009-02-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

In preparation for my snowshoe trip to Elfin Lakes, I went on a practice hike up Mount Hollyburn. It was a snowy Sunday morning, with lots of fog and gray skies, so it was not the best for getting great views of the coast from the top. It was good at least, to have less favourable weather conditions for the practice hike. The parking lot in the nordic area of Cypress was not too busy by the time we arrived mid-morning. The great thing about hiking up the Hollyburn side is that it is free because we are out of the ski resort area.

The start of the trail was steep and icy, which made me think that the next few hours will be a tough workout since I've never been on this trail before. It flattened out though as we went through the forested section.

The trail was so busy with snowshoers, skiers, and some hikers. I was surprised to see so many people on the trail without bags or even water. Even though it is a short hike, I never go out without having extra food, water, and a first aid kit. Then again, I grew up in Girl Guides, where we are trained to be prepared for unexpected situations and emergencies. I guess it is all these people who go out without any preparation who end up needing to get help from North Shore Search and Rescue.

Following the nice flat section, we had another climb that took us to the summit. Like the beginning, only steeper, the trail was already icy from all the foot traffic. It took us about 3 hours to get to the top, which is a good time at a steady pace. The view was okay at the top, but we couldn't see much from the fog. I was able to see the valleys, but nothing beyond that. I'll have to go another time on a clear day to take photos.

We had lunch at the top and was joined by some Whiskey Jacks and ravens. I've never been so close to a raven before, nor seen one that just stuck around for so long. Then again, I was not surprised since people tend to feed the birds.

I found descending to be more difficult than ascending since the ice made balancing a harder task. We went much faster though of course, and came down in about a little over an hour.

I'd definitely recommend this as a moderate day hike on snowshoes. It was a good trail to take for my first time on snowshoes in a few years, and I think for a beginner it would be great to do as long as a slow, steady pace is maintained.

Matcha Sponge Cake

2009-01-28T15:30:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays my mom taught me (well, taught me again because I forgot) how to make a cake that was taught to her in Vietnam. I had this cake a lot as a kid, loving its fluffy moistness while being not to sweet and absolutely delicious. So now, I'm sharing this recipe with a slight variation by adding Matcha (Japanese green tea).

Serves 8

5 eggs
250 g sugar
175 g flour
3 tbsp Matcha powder
1 tbsp vegetable oil

1. Beat eggs and sugar using a mixer on HIGH until stiff peaks form. They should be an off-white colour. It will take about 5 to 10 minutes to get to this point depending on the mixer used.
2. Slowly sift and fold in the flour and Matcha powder. Try to mix it as little as possible so the air bubbles formed by the eggs do not pop.
3. Drizzle the oil into the mixture, and stir slowly until combined.
4. Pour the mixture into a greased and floured springform or bundt pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 35 to 45 minutes, until the top becomes light brown. It is ready when a toothpick or skewer is inserted into the cake and comes out clean. It is better to err on the side of having the cake in the oven longer since it will just be the edges that get browner. If the cake is taken out too soon, it may deflate into a dense block of baking ingredients.
6. Let the cake cool for 10 to 15 minutes. Turn the cake over onto a rack or plate and serve warm.

The little that I saw of Saskatoon

2009-01-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

On my way back from Ontario, I stopped over in Saskatoon for a week. No, I didn't get stuck there from some airline mishap. It was planned and it wasn't for a vacation. I was there for the National Conference of the Canadian University Press.

It was my first time in Saskatchewan. However, it was probably one of the worst times (according to most people) to visit since they just came out of a cold snap days before I arrived. I actually enjoyed the change of weather. Plus, the snow was great. It was like dry interior powder, but even drier and fluffier.

My hotel was the Sheraton Cavalier. It is on the Saskatchewan River in downtown Saskatoon. It was by far one of the nicest conference hotels I have stayed at. The staff were surprisingly friendly, helpful, and cooperative with the conference. The hotel also boasts two somewhat large water slides. The food was actually quite good, and in general I was impressed.

The conference was your typical student conference of sessions, elections, parties, keynotes, meetings, and the like. Since I was conference staff, I didn't actually take part in many of the regular activities. However, I still got a kick out of listening to the keynotes. Three of them were CBC personalities, so they were pretty amusing characters.

I didn't get too many opportunities to explore Saskatoon, but from what I saw, it reminds me a lot of Prince George, only that it is bigger and does not smell like pulp. I spent most of my time walking on the trail that runs along the river, observing the ice fog and enjoying the crisp air.

I had an enjoyable week in this rolling prairie land. It was like an extra week of vacation (with lots of work, but not real work) and the best part was that I didn't have to pay for it.

Slight misadventure in Michigan

2008-12-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

Detroit is an interesting place that I have not explored much growing up despite the fact I was only a 15 minute tunnel crossing away. Crossing the border was mostly reserved for shopping, stopping by the US location of my mom's family business, going to the airport, and going to the auto show. It was only last year when Erin finally took me to Wayne State and Hamtramck so I can see more of this city that's in even deeper troubles than ever before.
This year, we decided to go on a night out with supper at a Polish restaurant in Hamtramck, followed by a hilarious improv show at The Second City. Hamtramck is well-known for having lots of Polish people, so it was only appropriate to go to Polonia, a restaurant that's been around for decades in the community. As expected, the supper was delicious, simple, and very filling.
We navigated our way to Novi without much difficulty, until we reached the area where The Second City was supposed to be. We drove up and down the street a couple of times, unable to find it even though we knew we were at the right location. There were a few blocks where the power was out, but of course we were optimistic and thought there was no way it was the theatre. We were wrong. The Second City was smack dab in the middle of the 3 blocks or so that lost power. The show was cancelled and we drove out for 45 minutes to find out.
We figured since we were in Novi, we may as well make the best of it. Too bad there's not much there. The visit ended up being justified by a stop at a Dairy Queen to use the washroom facilities and eat a gigantic waffle cone.
The night was still young, so we decided to go hang out at the casino since that's what Detroit is famous for. None of us were really gamblers so I had the ingenious idea of playing a dollar's worth of 2 cent slots. I wanted to know how long it would take to lose a dollar at a casino. The result of my experiment was about 10 minutes of button pushing and lever pulling that felt more like a day. I just kept on getting a few cents back every few turns.
So there we have it, I lost a dollar and 10 minutes of my life. But hey, we got some free parking at least.

I still like to slide down hills of snow (or ice)

2008-12-25T14:31:00.000-08:00

The best Christmas gift this year was the sunny and warm weather on Christmas Day. After a few days of snow, freezing rain, and rain, today was the first day I was able to go out and enjoy the snow. I took my cousin out to go tobogganing at Malden Park, one of my favourite places to go growing up to slide down the gigantic hill. It was her first time (she's only 8), so it was a pretty exciting day. The snow wasn't the best because it was really icy, but it made for some very fast runs (a bit bumpy and scary, but fun). I haven't been tobogganing for so long, and I must say that it never gets old. If the sun wasn't starting to go down, we probably would have stayed for another few hours until we were physically too tired to climb back up the hill. Yeah, I'm still a kid. Video to be posted soon.

The spontaneous and long journey to Windsor

2008-12-23T09:53:00.001-08:00

Snow-maggedon came back with a vengeance on Sunday, so much that the Festival of Lights was cancelled. Much to my dismay that I won't be able to parade around with my lantern creation, it was necessary because the combination of high winds and an assortment of things on fire is probably a recipe for disaster. Seeing that I didn't really have a reason to stay in Toronto for an extra night, I decided that afternoon that I'll take the evening train to Windsor. The entire experience was almost surreal. It went something like this: buy a train ticket, pack my stuff up, subway to downtown, meet Sheng for dinner, meet Laura at a cafe, book it to the train station, get on the train, run into another person from high school on the train, sit next to a person who I didn't realize until yesterday went to my high school, get stuck by Brantford for a few hours because the switch was broken, arrive in Windsor 3 hours late, train station closes, wait outside by myself for parents to pick me up, get home, crawl into a bed that's almost too small for me, wake up the next day completely confused as to where I am.

The random encounters begin

2008-12-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning was a blessing of blue skies, sunshine, and a crisp (some say cold) temperature. It was the perfect opportunity for a stroll down to the St. Lawrence Market. I somehow convinced Laura to bundle up and go for brunch at the market. The sun was just creeping out of the shadow-casting downtown high-rises to give a bit of warmth to the air. The sidewalks were empty and covered in an assortment of coloured salt (why people bother purchasing neon orange salt still puzzles me). I probably could have done cart-wheels down the streets without running into anyone. I've never seen downtown Toronto so quiet, but it was a nice refreshing experience.

Then we hit the market and it was a whole different scene. By the time we arrived, it was already buzzing with activity (it did open at 5am). As we were wandering around, enjoying the tasty food, of the millions of people in Toronto, I ran into my friend Oliver who I haven't seen in four years. That seems to be the theme of the trip: how many people from high school I can meet after no contact for years.

Continuing along with this eventful day, I went to a workshop and learned how to build my very own bamboo and paper lantern for the Kensington Festival of Lights. I made a raindrop lantern to represent the West Coast and also for the irony of a raindrop on fire. It was also one of the easiest shapes to construct.

Seeing that couldn't get enough of the great outdoors, that evening I made my way down to Nathan Phillips Square for the Cavalcade of Lights and hung out with Oliver and his mom. The concert was pretty good, featuring a pop/folk singer. I was really impressed by the fireworks though. At one point, there were these spinning wheels of fireworks coming from the sides of the city hall buildings. I thought it was just a motorized wheel, but it turns out it was a person strapped into a harness suspended about 30 storeys in the air. Definitely something you don't see everyday.

Snow-maggedon

2008-12-19T19:47:00.001-08:00

Apparently I've been somehow conditioned inclement weather because Torontonians are in a state of shock from all the snow that has fallen in the past few days. I did quite the walk around the city today, going all the way to the water and back. The snowfall was quite thick, but it barely accumulated on the ground. It wasn't too cold. In fact, I spent most of my time sweating up a storm in my winter jacket, scarf, toque and ski gloves. Perhaps I'm just used to bundling up for the cold, or maybe I just have that much more of a cold tolerance. Who knows?

What came down today was nothing close to the snow storm that we had in Prince George about two weeks back when Becca and I trudged through a couple kilometres of snow that was about two feet deep to take the bus to get the school so we could write our final exam. Oh, and nothing was cancelled either. The buses were somewhat delayed, but they still delivered us to and from school. I even made it out of Prince George and down to Vancouver that night through the snow and freezing rain. It is true that the central interior of BC is much more acclimated to large snowfalls and colder weather. But hey, it's not like I grew up in that setting. In fact, I've only spent about two and a half years there.

So to all you Torontonians, suck it up. It's not that bad.

A visit to the East

2008-12-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I've written anything. A lot has actually happened over the past month and a half, but I am not in the state where I would like to recapture all of it. Maybe a bit later. For now, I'd like to focus on the present. Where am I at? I've finished my degree and moved back to Vancouver again.

Now I'm in Ontario, visiting friends and family (some who I haven't been in contact with for more than 4 years). I came to Toronto first and was lucky enough to be taken in by my family in Scarborough, as well as my long-time friend Laura from high school. What's interesting about this city is that my perception of it has completely changed. Toronto used to seem like this cold, impersonal, glum city. Not that it didn't have energy, but just not my type of energy. I don't like the rush of city, the club scene, or any of that apparently sophisticated mess of metropolitan life. Of course, that was because I had only seen the main drag the downtown. This time, I was finally exposed to places where I felt so much more at home. Laura took me to Kensington Market, an area much like Commercial Drive. Things were much more colourful, and it actually feels like a community. Plus, I have the comfort of vegetarian, organic/local/fairly-traded food not affiliated with any of that big corporate business. Highlight of the market: I found westcoast smoked tofu, one of my favourite foods.

Continuing on with discovering parts of Toronto, I went to the St. Lawrence Market today and again, it was another one of those places where you can get away from the "big city". I had some great food at the Ukranian food shop, and just enjoyed my time browsing around the variety of food stuffs.

Continuing on with great food, I had supper at the Vegetarian Haven with Sheng (who I haven't seen in four years), which I would highly recommend to both carnivores and herbivores alike. The food was tasty, full of unprocessed ingredients, and seriously put me in a haven of gastronomy. The waitress who introduced the special of the day was definitely not trying to sell it too much because it was THAT good. Oh, the price was also quite reasonable.

There will be more to come about this trip. I promise.

WESST IS BEST Super Moose's Oatmeal Lemon Biscuits

2008-11-07T00:16:00.000-08:00

(Makes 20 to 24)

3 cups flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup rolled oats
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
3 tbsp sugar, plus another 2 tbsp for sprinkling
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups milk
1 lemon, juiced and zest removed

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. In a large bowl, cut the butter into the flour. Rub the butter into the flour with your hooves until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. You'll have to get your hooves nice and dirty for this step. Stir in the oats, salt, baking powder, baking soda, lemon zest, and sugar.
2. Mix the lemon juice with the milk and stir. I decided to use the freshest milk I could find while making these biscuits.
3. Once the milk curdles a bit, make a well in the dry ingredients. Pour in the milk mixture.
4. Stir the mixture gently until combined. Don't over-stir! If you mix it up too much, the biscuits will not be fluffy and soft.
5. Turn the dough over to a floured surface. The dough will be very sticky, so make sure your hooves are dusted with flour. Turn the dough over a few times, covering it evenly with flour. Press the dough out to about a 2 cm thickness. Use a knife, cookie cutter, or biscuit cutter to cut biscuits to desired size and shape.
6. Transfer biscuits to a parchment lined baking pan. Gather trimmings, and repeat the pressing and cutting process until all the dough has been cut. Sprinkle biscuits with sugar.
7. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
8. Biscuits are ready when they have risen and start to turn golden brown. These are best when served warm with butter and jam.

WESST IS BEST Tacos

2008-11-07T00:06:00.000-08:00

(Serves 6)

2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp ground cumin
2 lbs ground beef or veggie ground round
1 tsp ground chipotle pepper
1 tsp salt
2 cups beef or veggie broth
1/4 cup tomato paste
tortillas

grated cheese

tomatoes

sour cream

guacamole

other taco toppings

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a saute pan. Add onions and saute for 3 to 4 minutes, until they are translucent.
2. Add the garlic and cumin and saute for another minute.
3. Add the beef and cook, stirring frequently, until it is browned, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add chipotle and salt.
4. Add the broth and tomato paste. Reduce heat to medium.
5. Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally for about 20 to 25 minutes, until it has thickened to a desired consistency. Some people like their taco meat juicier than others, so just use your own judgement.

6. A few minutes before serving, warm the tortillas in an oven on a baking pan. Cover the tortillas with foil or another baking pan to keep them from drying out.

7. Serve taco meat with tortillas and toppings.

WESST IS BEST Beans and Rice

2008-11-04T19:33:00.000-08:00

Tastes great on its own, or as a filling in a wrap.

(Serves 6)

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 cups canned black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup water
1/4 cup chopped parsley
4 cups of cooked long-grain or wild rice

1. Heat oil over medium high heat in a large saucepan. Stir in onion and cook for 2 minutes.
2. Add garlic, cayenne, cumin, and chili powder. Cook for 1 minute.
3. Add tomatoes, beans, and water and stir well.
4. Simmer mixture for 15-20 minutes, or until it has thickened to a chili consistency.
5. Stir in the chopped parsley and cooked rice.

WESST IS BEST Spicy Brownies

2008-11-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

Try to not to get your mouth burned and brain freeze at the same time.

(Serves 8)

9 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp five-spice powder
1 tsp chipotle pepper
ice cream
whipped cream

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water.
3. Remove from the heat and whisk in the sugar, then eggs, vanilla, and salt.
4. Sift in the flour, five-spice powder, and chipotle, and mix until incorporated. Do not overmix!
5. Pour the batter into a greased 8"x8" pan and bake for about 30 minutes. Brownies are done when the top looks dry and glossy. Do not overbake or you will end up with dry, crunchy brownies. Unless of course, that is what you are going for.
6. Serve warm, with ice cream and whipped cream.

WESST IS BEST Moussaka

2008-11-02T00:02:00.001-07:00

Lots of ingredients and lots of steps, but so worth it in the end. To optimize your efforts, make it in a huge batch and then freeze it for later. Best way to do this is to start off with the beef, then work on the potatoes while it is simmering. Then make the Bechamel sauce, and finally cook the eggplant. If you time it just right, everything will be ready for assembly at the same time.

(Serves 10)

3 tbsp olive oil

1-1/2 lbs ground beef (or veggie ground round)

1 onion, finely chopped

4 cloves minced garlic

1 cup beef broth

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp oregano

1 tsp cinnamon

6 cups canned diced tomatoes, drained

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp nutmeg

4 potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized chunks

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup flour

3 cups milk

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp nutmeg

3 eggs

1/4 cup olive oil

2 eggplants

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Beef:
1. Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Saute the beef in the oil until it is brown.
2. Add onion and garlic. Cook until onion is soft.
3. Add beef broth. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Reduce heat to medium. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and seasonings.
5. Cover and simmer until sauce is very thick, stirring occasionally. This will take about an hour.
6. If other components aren't done yet by this point, keep it warm over very low heat.

Potatoes:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Toss potatoes with oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for about 35 to 50 minutes, until they are soft and start to brown. If they are browning and not soft yet, place foil over them.
3. If other components aren't done yet by this point, turn the oven off and keep potatoes in there to stay warm.

Bechamel Sauce:
1. Melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add flour and whisk for about 3 minutes to make a roux.
2. Mixture should resemble a very thick gravy. Gradually whisk in the milk. Add the milk slow enough such that it gets fully incorporated into the mixture. If you dump the milk in too quickly, the roux will get stuck to the bottom and remain lumpy since it'll just float around in the milk. Continue to whisk until mixture thickens so that it coats a back of a spoon. It should resemble a runny gravy.
3. Add seasonings and set aside to cool for a few minutes.
4. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. Drizzle eggs into mixture while whisking.
5. Cover and set aside.

Eggplant:
1. Toss eggplant in salt and pepper.
2. Heat a large skillet over high heat and add some oil.
3. Fry eggplant in batches until they are soft, adding more oil when needed.
4. If other components aren't done yet by this point, cover and set the eggplant aside.

Assembly:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (take potatoes out of the oven first if they are still in there).
2. Coat a 9" x 13" baking dish with oil.
3. Spread half of the potatoes on the bottom of the dish. Lay half of the eggplant slices on top, followed by half of the beef. Repeat this order of layering with the rest of the potatoes, eggplant, and beef.
4. Ladle Bechamel sauce on top.
5. Bake moussaka for about an hour, until top is golden.
6. Let it cool for about 15 minutes before serving.

WESST IS BEST Lemon Cake

2008-10-29T19:03:00.001-07:00

This is the best when it is warm from the oven, with hot glaze oozing over it in sticky deliciousness.

(Serves 12)

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp grated lemon zest

3 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups milk

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

2. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and lemon zest.

3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. While stirring, add flour mixture to butter mixture, alternating with milk such that there are a total of 3 flour additions and 2 milk additions. Don't stir too much or the cake will not be as fluffy.

5. Grease (and preferably line with parchment) a 9" square or round pan. Pour batter into the pan and bake for approximately 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

6. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes.

7. Mix the lemon juice and icing sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

8. Pour the hot glaze over the cake. Let it sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

WESST IS BEST Greek Salad

2008-10-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

(Serves 4)

3 tomatoes (preferably the kind on the vine), cut into bite-sized chunks
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 cucumber, cut into bite-sized chunks
1 green pepper, seeded and cut into bite-sized chunks
1/2 cup kalamata olives
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
150 g feta
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

1. Combine vegetables, olives, feta, and parsley in a large bowl.
2. Combine oil, vinegar, oregano, salt, and pepper in a small plastic container with a lid. Shake vigourously to mix it up and pour over the salad.
3. Toss the salad and put it in the fridge for at least an hour before serving so all the dressing can seep into the vegetables to make it so much more tasty.

WESST IS BEST Tzaziki

2008-10-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is best when served with some warmed pita that's topped with garlic and olive oil. It keeps for about a week or two in the fridge, so you can make lots and slowly (or not so slowly) go through it.

Tzaziki (Serves 10)

1 L plain yogurt

1 cucumber

1 tbsp plus 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sour cream (none of that low-fat stuff allowed)

1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tsp garlic, minced

1 1/2 tsp dill, minced

1/2 tsp ground pepper

1. Line a strainer with 2 layers of cheesecloth (or paper towel, but it doesn't work as well since it gets mushy) and set over bowl. Dump the yogurt in there to drain it.

2. Grate the cucumber into another strainer set over a bowl. Toss with 1 tbsp of salt.

3. Place cucumber and yogurt into the fridge for about 4 hours. The yogurt should have thickened so that it is almost at the consistency of sour cream, but slightly harder. Squeeze as much liquid as possible out of both the cucumber and yogurt. Mix them together in a large bowl.

4. Mix in the remaining ingredients and put the tzaziki back into the fridge for another few hours to let all the flavours come out. You could eat it right away, but it is so much better once it's been slightly aged.

WESST IS BEST Baked Mac and Cheese

2008-10-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

Break away from that Kraft Dinner. You can never turn back to it now. Don't be afraid of the amount of butter and cheese in this recipe. It just happens. Also, this can be dressed up with the addition of assorted veggies, changing the type of cheese, adding meat, or the type of pasta.

Baked Mac and Cheese (Serves 6)

250 g elbow macaroni (about 2 cups)

3 tbsp butter

3 tbsp flour

1 tbsp mustard powder (usually found in spices section)

3 cups milk (2% is okay, but homogenized is better for creaminess, or use coffee cream)

1/2 large onion, or 1 small onion, diced (about 1/2 cup total)

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp paprika

1 egg

350 g grated cheddar cheese (about one small block)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground pepper

2 tbsp melted butter

3/4 cup bread crumbs

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

2. Boil a large pot of water with a pinch of salt. Add pasta and cook until it is al dente (ie. still a bit firm, but not hard anymore). Drain the macaroni and set aside.

3. Melt the butter in a medium sized pot over low heat. Add the flour and whisk well so it is smooth and free of lumps. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring continuously. You have created a roux.

4. Slowly add the milk to the roux, whisking continuously. Add the milk slow enough such that it gets fully incorporated into the mixture. If you dump the milk in too quickly, the roux will get stuck to the bottom and remain lumpy since it'll just float around in the milk. You definitely do not want that to happen. Once all the milk has been added, the mixture should resemble gravy in its viscosity.

5. Add the bay leaf, onion, and paprika. Increase the heat to medium and simmer the sauce for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

6. Remove the bay leaf and let the mixture cool for about 5 minutes.

7. Beat the egg in a small bowl and slowly pour into the milk mixture, stirring continuously.

8. Stir in about 3/4 of the cheese and cook until all the cheese has melted and the sauce is somewhat homogenous. Season with salt and pepper.

9. In a greased casserole dish, mix the macaroni with the sauce. Top with remaining cheese.

10. Coat the bread crumbs with the melted butter and sprinkle over the mac and cheese.

11. Bake the mac and cheese in the oven for about 30 minutes. The bread crumbs should be slightly browned by this point.

12. Remove mac and cheese from the oven and let it rest for about 5 minutes before serving.

WESST IS BEST Buckwheat Pancakes

2008-10-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

Now you can make delicious pancakes at home and have fond memories of the WESST Retreat breakfast. More recipes will be posted as I scale these back down to portions so they don't feed 60 people.

Buckwheat Pancakes (Serves 4)

1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup buckwheat
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp butter, melted
~ 2 tbsp butter or vegetable oil for the skillet or frying pan
2 cups thawed frozen (or fresh) strawberries tossed with about 1/4 cup sugar
whipped cream

1. Whisk together flour, buckwheat, sugar, baking powder, salt in one bowl.
2. In another bowl, beat eggs then add milk and vanilla.
3. Whisk butter into milk mixture. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Don't overmix or your pancakes will not be fluffy.
4. Melt about 1/2 tbsp butter (or heat vegetable oil) in a skillet or frying pan over medium heat. Ladle about 1/4 cup batter onto the skillet or pan. Cook until bubbles break at surface, about 2 minutes.
5. Flip and cook for another minute.
6. Serve with strawberries and whipped cream. And for you non-vegetarians, you can have some bacon with it too.

Purden Lake and Raven Lake

2008-10-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

I went on an outdoor adventure last week with Becky to take advantage of the weather that's still warm and all the trails that the Central Interior have to offer. It was also a nice break from all the school work and newspaper work that's been piling up. Friday night, we camped at Purden Lake. It's a nice car camping area that's only 45 minutes outside of Prince George to the east. One of the strangest things I found at this place were flush outhouses. This place is very busy in the summer, so I'm assuming they just replaced the pit toilets with flushing ones rather than build a washroom building. I just didn't expect to see a flushing toilet in one of those wooden outhouse stalls. We had a campfire to use up the last of Becky's firewood and made banana boats, which is one of my favourite camping treats. It rained through the night and was clear in the morning, so that was quite convenient. We slept in a bit since we weren't really in a rush, took a stroll by the lake, and drove off to the Raven Lake trailhead of Sugarbowl-Grizzly Den Provincial Park. By this point it was the early afternoon and the clouds started coming in again. The hike up to Raven Lake is 4.7 km with a 450 m elevation gain, and the trail is of about moderate difficulty. We had the most interesting weather walking up. It rained on and off, then hailed as well for a few minutes, and we even experienced a bit of snow when we got to the higher elevations. It was a very enjoyable hike, especially through the alpine meadows which are one of my favourite ecosystems. The Raven Lake campsite is pretty luxurious with an A-frame cabin that has a wood stove, an ample supply of firewood, bear cache, and a pit toilet. There were only two groups at Raven Lake, so we all got to stay in the cabin, which was really nice since it is pretty cold up there at night. The other group was two guys who worked for the City of Prince George, and they were pretty cool. They brought a beagle along with them, and she was pretty adorable. We ended up playing some card games to pass the time in the evening. Becky and I learned how to play crib, and we taught them the game of spoons. Well, it ended up being "cutlery set" since I had one of those camping sets of a knife, fork, and spoon as the objects to grab from the middle. We didn't have three spoons with us. The next day, we packed up early and scurried down the mountain, which took less than half the time than the climb up. It was a great morning walk since the air was still crisp and the exercise just got us pumped for the rest of the day.

Back to the moose

2008-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's been way too long since I posted anything, but I blame getting back to school for that. So about 3 weeks later, here it is, my recount of what it is like to return to the Central Interior of BC (note it is not really the North):

The weather has been pleasant and not particularly cold quite yet. Some days were approaching 20 degrees C, but evenings are starting to cool a bit, just enough to start seeing breath condensation. What's really been getting me is the dryness. I've become accustomed to always wearing some sort of rain jacket walking around. But here, it's only rained maybe 3 or 4 days so far. The city has really changed since I left in 2006. First of all, Sunday bus service has been expanded so that almost all the routes run about once an hour. Back in 2006, it was just piloted and quite ineffective. Now it is actually somewhat useful. Development in College Heights has also grown and that sprawl of consumer big box stores is just continuing to take over, squashing out local businesses. And speaking of local businesses, downtown is as dismal as ever. But enough with the bad things, one nice improvement is UNBC. It's doubled in size in 2 years with a new Northern Sports Centre, Teaching and Learning building, and the soon to be completed Northern University Student Centre. But the unfortunate thing is that Forests for the World is closed, which means that I can no longer go on midday walks out to Shane Lake.

School-wise the work load isn't too harsh. My design project is sucking up most of my time, but that was to be expected. Also, I have returned to my post of Production Coordinator for Over the Edge. Though this was unplanned, I do appreciate the extra $200 a month even though it means I have more work to do.

Kayak Trip

2008-09-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

Kamil and I went on a kayaking trip from Deep Cove up Indian Arm from Wednesday to Friday. To be more sustainable, we took the bus out there, which didn't turn out to be that difficult. The weather conditions were perfect as we paddled out. The water was pretty flat, and even though the tide was not in our favour, we made a good pace. Our first stop was at Thawate's Landing. There wasn't much there, but it was a good rest stop. As we paddled further into Indian Arm, the water became so flat that it looked like glass. We got to our camp site at Granite Falls about an hour faster than expected because we had so little interference. We didn't do much exploring that evening because we were so tired, but the long sleep was essential for all the paddling the next day.

In the morning of our second day, we paddled up to the estuary. At this point, we have paddled all of Indian Arm, which was a nice accomplishment. Like yesterday afternoon, the water was completely calm and flat. Along our way, we saw quite a few seals. The highlight was at the actually estuary though. We were greeted by two seals, sitting on a floating log. We watched them for a good half hour, jumping in the water, swimming around, then flopping themselves back on the log to sun. We paddled back to Granite Falls for lunch and to explore the really cool waterfall there before packing up to go to our next site. The afternoon paddle was by far the toughest part of the entire trip. The wind was quite strong against us and the water was really rough. The hour we saved going up Indian Arm was "unsaved" while paddling back down. We saw lots of seals along the way, and it was almost like they were following us. But alas, we got to the north island of the Twin Islands by late afternoon. We discovered that the island did not have a beach to paddle up to, only a dock. Neither of us have docked up a kayak before, so we problem solved and managed to lift the kayak out with all our gear without any major disasters. We had a nice warm supper of rice and beans, which was filling and a good treat after a day of paddling. Again, we had another good, long sleep.

On our final day, we didn't have much to do except for paddle back to Deep Cove. Luckily, the winds have calmed, so we took our time getting back. Again, we saw quite a few seals along the way. Back at Deep Cove, we stopped for lunch at this bakery/cafe to cap off the trip. They make a legendary dense potato bread. I don't believe I've ever tried anything of that sort before.

So all in all, I would say this was one of the best wilderness trips I've had. I felt like I was truly welcomed back to BC.

Coming home

2008-09-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

As much as I was sad to leave Bermuda, I had a good mini-vacation coming home through Seattle with Kamil. My flight arrived late at night on Aug 31, so we stayed at a surprisingly impressive airport hotel. I got this room with my Aeroplan miles, so I didn't expect much of it. However, it was a newly renovated Best Western with a super comfortable bed, nice furnishings, and an overall somewhat classy decor. We spent the next day being tourists in Seattle. Our first stop was the Recreation Equipment Inc (REI), which is the American equivalent of MEC. Only difference was that this place was at least 3 times as big as MEC in Vancouver with its own bike test trail and climbing tower. A typical tourist thing to do is go to Pike Place Market, which was where we found ourselves for lunch. It's just like a Granville Island Market type place, but they have this little shop that makes delicious Pirosky (enough for me to mention on a blog). After 2 months of eating mostly dining hall food at BIOS, this lunch was probably a lot more fantastic to me as it really was. But in any case, we continued on to the Seattle Underground Tour in Pioneer Square. This tour takes people to the old Seattle, when ground level was a few metres below the current city. The Seattle area was a big mud flat after all, and this was a problem when the tide came in and out, washing up sewage and creating huge soggy holes at intersections. This was a major health and safety problem, so they built up Seattle to its level. Some parts of the old Underground were preserved though, and we got to see it. The guide was hilarious in providing loads of trivia on how Seattle came to be. He had this neurotic and very dry sense of humour which kept me thoroughly entertained for the entire 90 minutes, even though I've already taken this tour before. By this time, it was late afternoon, so we started to drive back to Vancouver, expecting traffic to be quite hectic since it was Labour Day. Usually there are lots of people travelling over the holidays, so we thought we'd wait at least an hour at the border. Instead, we made it through in record time. The border wait was one of the shortest ever actually.

The last of Bermuda

2008-09-05T23:22:00.001-07:00

I've been very behind in posting due to the madness of saying goodbye to Bermuda and getting back to Canada. So here goes:

Starting with the Friday of last week, I made my final presentation for my project. The first time was for the interns and BIOS staff/faculty. The second was a special one for some people from Bermuda Works & Engineering. To recap on the project, I did a study on the potential options for managing waste in Bermuda and compared what the environmental and economic impact would be. It was hard to make any definite conclusions, but in general, it looks like recycling is good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but is expensive. Everyone was pretty impressed by the presentation, so that was a decent sign that my efforts were well spent in the past two months.

As a end-of-summer celebration, the entire station had a raft-up by Tucker's Town in the evening. For those not familiar with the concept, we tied up a bunch of boats into a raft. The water was very shallow and calm, so people either hung out eating or drinking on the boats, or cooled off in the water. It was a nice way to get to know others who work at the station, especially for me since I don't interact with many people during work. I stayed at Emily's house-sit again that night since I couldn't get enough of it on Wednesday.

Saturday morning was very relaxed as we took the dog out for a walk around the Coral Beach property. It was very posh. Tennis courts, beach, very nice looking buildings and gardens, and an overall sense of exclusiveness. For lunch, after gathering supplies in Hamilton, I taught everyone how to make wontons. We couldn't find exactly what we needed for ingredients, so there was a bit of improvisation. The food turned out nicely in the end, especially with our dessert of s'mores. In the later part of the afternoon we went down to Horseshoe Bay for some body surfing and the sand sculpture competition. I was impressed by the art. I couldn't believe how this stuff was just made of sand and water. I watched the professional sculptors working for a bit and they just scrape and mould the sand like its plaster.

I spent my last evening in Bermuda back at the station, going for a evening/night swim in Ferry Reach to observe the changing sky and bioluminescence. No wild parties or big celebration. In fact, the station was really quiet, which I appreciated a lot. Just floating around and being immersed in the calmness while watching the specks of light in the water was the perfect way to end off a day.

Although I was flying out on Sunday, I decided to make the most of the day by snorkeling at Cooper's Island in the morning. The water was quite rough, perhaps as an effect of Gustav so there wasn't much to see. The swim was still refreshing and I knew I'd miss the warm water as soon as I left. And plus, I figured I may as well leave Bermuda in style... with its pink sand still in my hair.

Night dive and house sitting

2008-08-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night I went on another night dive, this time to the Rita Zovetta. This was a cargo ship that sank by St. David's Island and got spread out all over the reef. It was nice change from the very intact King George. There were a lot more fish around as well, especially the juvenile ones. I finally saw the glassy sweepers which tend to hang out in caves, but I spotted them when we swam through a part of the ship's hull. At one part, we encountered a big swarm of worms and juvenile fish, enough so that I felt them running into me. The swells were also pretty strong, but they were fun to swim through. Coming up to the surface, there were a few very confused glow worms swimming around by the boat. It was neat to see them though for one last time. This dive is unfortunately my last dive in Bermuda, but I am now in the double digits for my dive count.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of accompanying Emily to her house sit along with Lisa. We went to this very homey cottage at Coral Beach, welcomed by a very friendly dog, lots of chickens, and a resident stray cat as well. House-sitting is a tradition established in Bermuda back in the colonial days when people would stay at other people's houses when they left for extended periods of time to keep looters out. Now, it is no longer months that people leave to cross the Atlantic by boat, but house-sitting is still very common just for a week or two for vacation. Lots of house-sitting posts come up especially at BIOS since people know we like to get out once in a while.

Implosion!

2008-08-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I witnessed the implosion of the Club Med hotel by Fort St. Catherine's in St. George (thanks to Dan and his parents' boat). This hotel has been out of commission for more than 20 years, so yesterday's event was almost like a national holiday. Boats lined up all around the shore to watch this building fall down and whoever was able to take time off of work was out to see the spectacle. I got a video of the entire implosion, which was quite lucky since they didn't sound any warning blasts. The wind was blowing straight out to sea so the town of St. George was not covered in dust afterwards. The dust cloud actually dissipated very quickly, so within minutes it looked like nothing really happened.

South shore snorkeling, bonfire, and diving

2008-08-25T18:40:00.001-07:00

Full weekends make for very long Monday posts. So here it is:

On Saturday, we went out to the South Shore to have another beach day. Since it was David's last weekend, we hit up Warwick, Astwood, and then 100 Steps so that he could see as much as possible before leaving. Warwick was pleasant, and not too busy like we thought it would be. Astwood was mainly a big park with a trail that we ended up taking out of curiosity, hoping that it'll take us straight to 100 Steps Beach. That didn't really happen, and we ended up doing some bushwhacking, then walked through a few people's backyards to get back to the road. On our way to 100 Steps, we passed by the most eerie looking gate ever. Having already walked through a lot of interesting places in the morning, we figured we may as well explore. The forest truly looked like it was haunted and the road from the gate went quite far in so we just turned around and left. 100 Steps was as nice as it was last week, but this time around we actually snorkeled the reefs. The visibility was quite good and there were lots of patches to explore. The Kawaley-Lathans also came down to the beach and brought with them boogie boards. This was something I've never done before, so I gave it a try (more like dozens of tries). It was a bit like surfing, since it involves catching the waves, but right at the shore. It was great fun, and definitely something to do again.

As evening rolled around, we went to the South Shore Swizzle for supper. This was the first sit-down restaurant in Bermuda that I found which does not charge the automatic gratuity. The food was decently priced with big portions and it was tasty. Following that, we walked to Chaplain Bay for a bonfire with our Bermudian friends. This bay was amazing in the evening because the whitecaps reflected the moonlight, so you can see these rolling specks in the distance. There were also lots of shooting stars in the sky, which was a nice treat since I usually don't see them.

Sunday rolled around and I was out on the water again, going diving. Since the wind was coming in from the west, we were able to go to the South Shore. The first dive was at Cathedral, which has lots of neat swim throughs and cave structures. I just find it so cool to be going under things in the water. Interesting sea life sightings were squat anemone shrimp and a huge horse-eye jack. There were some strong swells as well, so I had a good exercise in controlling buoyancy and learning how to cruise along with the swells. The second dive was at the Pelinaion wreck. This ship from WWII rammed into a reef when Bermuda decided to turn its lighthouse off so the Germans can't find them. It was neat to see a true wreck since there were pieces of ship everywhere. The hull was propped up on the reef, so I swam under it (again, my favourite part) and we also saw lots of ship parts like the boiler, the engine, rotor, etc.

On our way back, we passed by the fitted dinghy race in St. George's harbour. This time around, I got a nice close look at these dinghies and their massive sail to craft ratio.

Glow worms and night diving

2008-08-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

Continuing on from my insanely busy weekend, I have been out and about the past 2 days as well. On Monday, I went out with the Waterstart program (thanks to JP) to watch the glow worms in Whalebone. This time around, I actually managed to get footage of some of it happening. Too bad it was mostly females though in the water. The males were just not around. But besides watching the glow worms, we collected a couple to observe in the lab under a microscope. I couldn't get any photos from the scope, but I got a few macro shots. You can see down to the detail of their cilia.

Last night, I went for my first ever night dive. We went to the King George wreck, so it is my fourth time there. But it was so different in the dark. I saw lots of trunk fish, a huge lobster, an arrow crab, and some very friendly (or territorial?) juvenile cow fish. I felt so stealth swimming around the wreck, just using my dive light to illuminate my path. I had a great divemaster who took me through a lot of the narrow passageways through the ship, so I felt like a water ninja streaming through in the dark. And at the surface we were in perfect timing for more glow worm action. Since we were out on the water, away from the light pollution, the glow worms were very clear. It was also the peak night so they were just going crazy. There were a lot more males this time around too, looking like strobe lights in the water.

Food, Sheds, Reefs, Beaches, Music

2008-08-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Like most other weekends in Bermuda, I've had another one jam-packed with activities. Starting with Friday night, a few of us went over the St. David's to dine at the infamous Dennis's Hideaway. This guy essentially has a restaurant in his backyard which he runs with his son (whose nickname is Sea-Egg) and it has been around for 40 years. It is a haven for seafood lovers, they catch most of what they cook themselves daily. I did not take part in the eating of seafood, but the atmosphere was great and it was worth the visit. Plus, it was Diana's last night in Bermuda. The people who eat meat tried "The Works" which featured an assortment of things from the sea from shark hash to mussel stew to fish and chips. I was impressed by their feast as I munched on my salad. Following that, I went and ate take-out Chinese food for the first time at Sung Sing (上星) in St. George since I needed some real supper. I was actually impressed by the quality of the food. It wasn't as chop suey, fake Chinese stuff as I expected. And, I finally ate some good, properly fried tofu. It was also probably the best deal I got in Bermuda for food. It was $12 for a dinner-sized take-out box (the big square one), which is only slightly more than what I'd pay in Vancouver.

Moving onto Saturday (and there's so much more too) in the morning was another KBB Clean-up, this time in the Whalebone Bay area. It should have been renamed the "bulky waste removal day" because we ended up finding the top of a boat in the bush (registration sticker still intact) and an entire shed that blew over a few years ago by the water. It was epic. We filled 1.5 garbage truck loads, found some very interesting items, and got a good work-out as well carting things out of the bush. Later in the afternoon, we wandered over to Cooper's Island Nature Reserve for a snorkel. It was the best snorkeling I've done in Bermuda. The reef was extensive and there were lots of fish I have not seen much of before. I also saw the chassis of what looked like a go-cart and speakers in the water which started to get overtaken by marine life. Besides wonderful snorkeling, the beach was also amazing. It was not busy at all because it is a nature reserve and not accessible by car. The sand was super soft, a nice off-white colour and clean.

Sunday, the legendary group of three (Lisa, Emily and I) had another amazing day Bermudian style. We went down to what Rich and Kathy call the 100 steps beach on the South Shore. It is like a secret beach that doesn't really have a name, and one needs to descend down a bunch of steps to get to. Nothing like going down to Wreck Beach of course (I believe it is 500 steps) but it is just enough away from everything to feel like a secret place. Like Cooper's Island, the beach was clean and the sand was soft. Only difference is that there was lots of Sargasso seaweed floating about and a good chunk of beach that isn't full of coral. It was the first place that I've been to where it's just a sandy bottom. There are lots of reefs, but they are much further out. In the evening, to top it all off, we went to Chewstick. This is a weekly open-mic night that features a wide variety music and spoken word. There was reggae, R&B, freestyle, calypso, teenage punk rock, and a whole bunch of stuff in between. I was surprised by the quality of the presenters and lots of them are very talented. The Chewstick "band" was amazing in their ability to just improvise and accompany anything off the top of their heads. The energy in that place was so positive and so energetic. We only wish we discovered it sooner.

Lighthouse, rain, waves, ice cream

2008-08-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made a trip out to Gibbs Lighthouse with some of the POGO (Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans) people. They arrived this week, so they haven't seen much of Bermuda yet, and we decided to do a touristy thing together. I also was looking for something to do that didn't involve swimming as well since I got a bit of a gash on my left toe from the night before and wanted to give it time to heal. The lighthouse wasn't very tall, but the view from it was awesome. I was able to see the entire country with its white roofs, golf courses, and countless beaches. The coolest part though, besides just the view, was the rain. It just started to pour while I was at the top of the lighthouse, so I waited until it passed. The post-rain effect was really cool since there was just this cast of fog over everything. Not a sight you'd expect in sunny, tourist-destination Bermuda. It reminded me a bit of Vancouver Island and the BC Coast. The lush greenery, grey skies, mist, and wind really did it. The inside of the lighthouse was also full of history and opportunities for artsy photos.

The weather cleared up in the afternoon, so we headed down to Church Bay. This place is very amusingly decorated, with wooden signs of random things up everywhere. I particularly liked the distance arrows, with one for Parrot Fish pointing to the bay. It was nice just to watch the waves there while everyone else snorkeled.

I made my way further to the west later in the afternoon and visited the Lathans since I was so close. I was once again fed watermelon and had some good conversation. I feel so lucky to have them here because it is really nice to get away from the station and see other people once in a while. I lucked out once again with getting back to BIOS because their daughter had a birthday party in Flatts. So we dropped her off and then went to Bailey's Ice Cream for an afternoon snack. Bailey's is famous island-wide and after trying some of their Bailey's Irish Cream ice cream, I understood why. Having driven so far already, Rich and Kathy just drove me back to BIOS (though they really didn't have to, but they are just really nice) in time for supper. I guess ice cream was a pretty good appetizer after all.

Bonfire and bioluminescence

2008-08-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Last night, we had yet another bonfire at Whalebone Bay. We used palm branches as kindling this time around. It felt so tribal with the palm leaves igniting and flaming away since the fire got so big when they caught. Another item I added to the bonfire was bannock. It has been a long time campfire tradition of mine to make bannock, so I decided to share it with my friends in Bermuda. The extra palm branches actually worked very well for cooking bannock since they are thick and smooth. The finished bread just slid off without much effort once cooked. After getting overheated from the fire, we went for a swim. This was not just any swim though. Since we were in Bermuda, we had to go skinny dipping just once. Last night turned out to be our night (especially since I didn't have a swim suit, and wanted to have dry clothes afterwards). Now while we were at it, we observed the bioluminescence of the phytoplankton. It was surprisingly bright. All I had to do was wave my hands around and everything around me in the water just light up in little specks. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Non-mariner's race

2008-08-04T19:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to one of the silliest events in Bermuda, the Non-Mariner's Race. Famed for satire, this "race" of non-crafts at this non-official event is a great finish to the Cup Match weekend. Early in the morning, Emily, Lisa and I ventured to Mangrove Bay to help Katrina (Rich's daughter) and her friends build their non-craft in the morning. We took 4 palettes, nailed them together, and duct taped sealed buckets underneath. The satire of our craft was the "business trip" that some government officials took to the Playboy mansion apparently for Bermuda's tourism. The name of the non-craft was "Feel the Love", which is the slogan for the Bermuda tourism campaign. This non-craft was equipped with Heffner and a few bunnies. Everyone else was in the water to propel, and also because the non-craft could not hold up more than 4 people. The other non-crafts were quite outrageous as well. Some must have taken a lot of time, such as the GP-1 and de Crane. These got 2nd and 1st place, respectively. Now even though this was a "race" it was more of a float parade and the prizes were awarded accordingly. Every team got a participation prize of Black Seal rum, Coke Zero, t-shirts, hats, and cooler bags.

Following the event was the party in Mangrove Bay. Again, we were greeted with the friendly Bermudian hospitality. It all started when Dan (who is in Katrina's group of friends) invited our team onto his parents' boat. Then, we just went from boat to boat of friends of friends of friends, meeting loads of people. It was a nice way to spend the evening, Bermudian style. To top it off, another one of Katrina's friends, Alex, took us to his parents' house for swimming and delicious supper cooked by Dan (who went to chef school). And similar to the generosity of the Lathan's on Friday night, we got a ride all the back to the BIOS station thanks to Dan.

Cup Match

2008-08-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I participated in an iconic Bermudian event, Cup Match. It was the second day of the cricket match between the St. George's and Somerset clubs. The place was quite busy, but not in the sense that I was expecting. I was anticipating the crowds of rush hour public transit in the middle of winter when buses break down. There were lots of people in the stands, and difficult to find a place to sit, but it was still possible to walk around the fair grounds. In the morning, the match was quite entertaining with St. George's batting. They are the defending champions, and I could see Somerset being very aggressive in their fielding, trying to get them out. In the afternoon, I met up with the Lathans. I kept in contact with Rich from KBB after the clean-up, so yesterday I hung out with his family for Cup Match. They have this wonderful pink house in Somerset on the water. I was treated with such great hospitality and everyone was super friendly, even their pet chickens. Actually, it was the first time I've ever seen a freshly laid egg. It was just on a step. The egg was smaller than what one usually finds in a grocery store, and of course, it wasn't clean. It was still neat though. We listened to the cricket match on the radio, and went to the field as St. George's started to bat for the second inning. Since they are the defending champions, if the game closes at a draw, they get to keep the cup. So they played very defensively, which was a bit boring to watch. However, just being immersed in the excitement of all the fans waving their flags, dressed in their team colours and cheering (or booing) was a great cultural experience. For instance, every few steps we took walking from the gate to the field, the Lathans stopped to talk to someone they knew. The community is so close-knit, and everyone just knows everyone else. The match drew to a close as a draw (as expected) as evening set in, and we returned to their house. We ended up watching Kung Fu Panda on an iMac and had popcorn (made the real way on the stove). That movie was awesome and really capped off a great day. Then, Rich and Kathy, being the amazingly kind people they are, drove me all the way back to BIOS from Somerset (that's pretty much across all of Bermuda). So all in all, on the awesomeness scale, yesterday would be rated somewhere in the uber-beyond-awesome range.

Non-diving fun

2008-07-30T17:32:00.000-07:00

Besides diving, I actually did lots of other land and water based activities. The past week has been just packed with action. Before my dives on Saturday, I stopped by the caves at Grotto Bay. Lots of cool rock formations. In the evening, I went to a bonfire at Whalebone and passed the night away making s'mores as well as looking at the sky. Sunday morning, despite being tired from the dive the day before and bonfire, I took advantage of the sunshine and went to St. Cahterine's Beach. It was definitely worth it. The seagrass was teeming with baby fish and we saw a school of 23 squid. I watched them for a good 15 minutes. On Monday, after surviving the smell and heat of the Tynes Bay Waste Treatment Facility (an incinerator) for work, I trekked to the Royal Naval Dockyard. It's their version of harbour night that evening, so I figured I may as well check it out. This dockyard actually never was completed, so it became a tourist attraction. The buildings were old and interesting. There wasn't much there though besides the shops, restaurants, and museum. The market was also very much the same as St. George and Hamilton. Despite the tourist trap ambience, I ended up taking some great pictures.

North Rock and King George (3rd time)

2008-07-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, I went on my first two unsupervised dives. I went with Triangle again, since BIOS chartered a boat. We ended up at North Rock and King George again, which was alright because I didn't see much of either of the sites during my certification dives. I also had an underwater camera to play with this time around (thanks to Chris) to take pictures and video. So it was my debut for both diving and underwater photography. The reef at North Rock was as amazing as before, and I saw so much more because I actually got to swim over the reef, around, and through some cracks. The most interesting sights were a sea urchin that was cut in half but somehow still alive, a stick crab, and gigantic lobster. There was also a school of some huge fish hovering under an overhang, which was pretty cool. Although visibility was degrading from the sun going down, the wreck was still great. I didn't swim around the entire thing on my previous dives, so this time I thoroughly explored. We swam through the middle, around and down the perimeter of the ship, and peered into lots of the holes. The wreck was overtaken by soft corals and quite populated by fish. The boat ride back to the station was also spectacular since I saw a rainbow while the sun was setting (camera battery was out by this point so no pictures).

Diving

2008-07-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Over the past two days, I completed my PADI Open Water Diver Course. I took the day off work on Friday to do my five confined water dives (which were just on the beach) and first two open water dives. The skills were quite straight forward and easy to do. I actually ended up taking only 45 minutes to do the confined dives. For the open water dives, we went to North Rock and the King George wreck. North Rock is a landmark in Bermuda because it marks the northern edge of the barrier reef surrounding the island. The reefs in the area are quite spectacular. Lots of cool corals and fish. The King George wreck was also neat. This dredger was scuttled in 1922, so unlike other wrecks where ships just got bashed up against something and sunk, it was all in one piece. Sea life has taken over this ship of course, but the entire thing was so well preserved. On Saturday, we went back to the same sites for my third and fourth open water dives. Then I was officially certified. Now I have a month to get in as much diving as possible before returning to a temperate climate. I plan to continue diving of course in the Pacific, but that probably won't happen until the summer of next year.

Fish identification!

2008-07-25T07:05:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, I went to Tobacco Bay for an evening snorkel. Armed with my new knowledge of things that live in the water, here are some of the things that I saw:

Green moray eel

Octopus

Sergeant major

Slippery dick

Queen angel fish

Squirrel fish

Parrot fish

Unfortunately again, my camera battery ran out after a few pictures, none of which really turned out. Need to get some lithium batteries.

Aquarium and Spittal Pond

2008-07-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, I decided to venture to the aquarium/zoo as recommended by the other interns. As well, I wanted to improve my fish ID skills, so it was something to do sooner rather than later. The aquarium itself wasn't too large, about the size of one or two "rooms" in the Vancouver Aquarium. I was satisfied though as I was able to add a few more fish to my vocabulary. Outside of the aquarium is the zoo section of various tropical and subtropical themes. My favourites were the gigantic Galapagos Tortoises (which were munching away at vegetables when I was there) and Golden Lion Tamarind Monkeys. I got a few good pictures at the zoo, which will be posted to the gallery soon. Since I have not explored this part of the island yet (considered Smith's Parish I think), in the afternoon I walked to Spittal Pond Nature Reserve and surroundings. The nature reserve was great for getting away from the crowds of tourists and it was a neat place in general. Too bad my camera's battery ran out while I was there, but I think I'll probably go back some time.

Garbage cleanup and glowing worms

2008-07-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

I woke up extra early yesterday morning to make more journey to the other end of the island, by Somerset. It took about 1.5 hours by bus, but since I was going through new territory, it didn't feel that long. I helped out with the Keep Bermuda Beautiful clean-up around the cricket field in preparation for Cup Match in two weeks. The majority of what we picked up were beer bottles. I think that probably 2/3 of the trash were beer bottles, and then most of the other items were food containers. It was a good community event, although the turn out wasn't too high, about 8-10 people. I got a nice lunch at the end at Dockyards for making the trek from St. George's. I caught a ferry to Hamilton from Dockyards for my return journey. Interesting incident here: When I was getting change from buying sunscreen, I ended up with a Canadian quarter. It actually confused the cashier a bit at first, but she just handed it over to me. First time in a foreign country where I got my own currency back as change. I never even experienced that in the US, where I'd expect it to be more prevalent. In the evening, I walked out to Whalebone Bay to watch the mating rituals of the glow worms. These creatures are endemic to Bermuda and are bioluminescent when they mate. This only happens the first three nights of a full moon, and at around 56 minutes after sunset. The "show" only lasts about 10 to 15 minutes. It was so neat to see these glowing specs in the water. Hope to see them again tonight.

Work at BIOS

2008-07-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

So it appears that it has been all fun and games in Bermuda. However, I actually do something quite different between 9am and 5pm from Mondays to Fridays. Those are my work hours, and the reason why I am here at BIOS in the first place. I'm working on an environmental and economic cost-benefit analysis of waste disposal and recycling in Bermuda. Long project title, and lots of fun to explain. First of all, a bit of background to set the mood. Bermuda is highly developed and densely populated. With this comes lots of waste. So their solution was an incinerator to reduce the volume of garbage. This incinerator also generates a small amount of electricity. Unlike other very developed countries though, Bermuda does not recycle much. Only "tin" cans (steel essentially), aluminium cans, and glass containers are processed. What I am doing is assessing the feasibility of recycling other things such as paper and plastic in terms of their impact on the environment and of course, how much it would cost.

Today, I finally had a bit of a break through; I got in contact with some important resource people at the incinerator, with the Ministry of Works & Engineering, and recycling facility. For the past 2 weeks I've only been able to review reports and research. But now, I can actually speak to people! It might not seem that exciting, but for me, today has been a good day.

Tropical Storm Bertha Arrives

2008-07-14T08:01:00.001-07:00

At about 2 or 3am I woke up to howling winds and rain pounding on the roof of Wright Hall. It was actually really loud since I am on the top floor, like there was someone playing timpani above me. It continued on and about 7am the main power went out. We have backup generators at BIOS though for the lab, office, and Wright Hall, so I actually didn't notice until other people told me about the power going out. Anyway, Bertha is apparently approaching a Class 1 hurricane once again since some gusts on the west side have been hurricane force. Nothing official yet though. One good thing about all this rain and wind is that it has really cooled down the air. Plus, this rain helps replenish the roof-top rainwater collection system, which is Bermuda's primary water supply since groundwater is sparse or contaminated. Earlier this afternoon we were in the eye, which was a nice break. Didn't last long though. We're back to strong winds and lots of rain. I've been constantly checking the hurricane radar images to see where we are at. It has become a hobby of mine in the past week.

Hurricane Bertha and Snorkeling

2008-07-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

The past few days we have all been preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Bertha. Luckily, it is now demoted to tropical storm status, but we have been experiencing the effects since Friday. The waters have become rougher, especially on the south shore of Bermuda. We've had high surf warnings and rip currents as well. It was unsafe to be in the water, but from the shore it was nice to watch the waves break along the rocks and beaches. The water in Bermuda is usually quite calm, so these waves were essentially like the ones in Hawaii, but just not a typical sight. I went to Horseshoe Bay yesterday to photograph the waves and storm clouds. I had a good walk through a trail through a park that links a bunch of connecting beaches along the south shore. The north shore of Bermuda is not as affected by Bertha so today I went to Bailey's Bay. We took a blow-up raft with us and swam to an island in the bay. It was only about a few hundred metres away, but it is not a place where most people visit. I snorkeled off the island in the shallow water and sea grass. Since it was so shallow, the visibility was very good (the sun helped as well) and I saw lots of fish. I've learned a bit more fish ID now, so here are some of what I saw: silverbacks, sergeant majors, and parrot fish. The winds are picking up a bit more tonight, and we are expecting to get some more tropical storm weather tomorrow.

Hamilton Harbour Night

2008-07-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, I made an evening trip to Hamilton, the capital of Bermuda for their weekly Harbour Night. I walked through a bit of Hamilton on my way to Front Street where the festivities are held. The town is very small and from what I saw, was not as picturesque as St. George. There were lots of street vendors, stores staying open late into the evening, a Gombey dance performance, and Calpyso group for Harbour Night. They also had a stage set up, and blow-up slides, jumping cages, etc. for kids to play on. I went into some stores and surprisingly their prices are not too bad. These are the tourist gift shops of course, not the high-end designer brand ones. I've scoped out a few items that I must bring back to Canada, all of which are things one can consume:

Hot pepper jelly

Various confitures

Goslings Black Seal Rum

I just need to be careful with the weight of all this stuff so I don't go over the baggage limit.

First Week at BIOS

2008-07-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

After this very long blog entry, I am going to update more frequently and in real time. I've been here for a week now, at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS). This research station is on Ferry Reach, in other words, waterfront property. I live in Wright Hall, which is the main residence building. I have double room to myself on the top floor facing the water, which is a pretty good deal. This hall is quite old though, so it doesn't have air conditioning but it's not that bad since I have a fan in my room. It also has a bit of an ant problem, but that is common to practically any building in Bermuda.

The food is decent at the station as there are vegetarian options at every meal. Some meals, such as the Indian curries are good. In any case, I'm not paying for the food, and that's the part that matters the most because everything is so expensive here.

The atmosphere at the station is very social since there are lots of student interns working here or taking a course. There's a good mix of students from various parts of the world, namely the US (mostly from Princeton because they have this intern program at BIOS) and UK as well as Canada. As well, most of the staff live at the station. There's always some activity being organized, be it a movie night, soccer game, capture the flag, or some other social gathering.

Since I arrived on June 30, this is the first time I spent Canada Day outside of Canada ever since I started school. In lieu of the traditional festivities, I ended up going to St. George for their weekly evening marketplace. It is one of those tourist attractions mainly for the cruise ship passengers. I watched a re-enactment punishment of gossiping and nagging women via the ducking stool. In other words, a woman gets dunked into the water by sitting in a chair that gets dropped into the water. Odd tradition, but at least the water in Bermuda is not too cold. Still I think they should punish men in the same way for similar types of offenses. I also watched the Gombey dance, which seems to have roots from Afro-Caribbean traditions. The dancers performed in a group of about 12, led by 2 captains. Their costumes were colourful, almost masquerade-like and the dance itself was very energetic, fueled by the rhythmic drumming accompaniment.

The best part about living in Bermuda is the abundance of beaches and reefs. I've gone snorkeling 3 times already, twice at Whalebone Bay and once at Tobacco Bay. Each time I see something new. I just need to learn my fish species now so I can actually identify what I see. One type of fish I know for sure is the angelfish, of which some are huge. About 4 times what you see in an aquarium.

Another neat activity in Bermuda is watching the fitted dinghy races. These dinghies have massive sails so they can zip along the water. They also have a very low freeboard so the crew is practically in the water when they are all on one side trying to turn the boat. So much that they end up capsizing easily, as I have seen in one race.

Departure day

2008-06-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

We went back to the military recreation area in the morning to try to catch some waves. There were some bigger ones, but I still never actually got all the way to standing up on the board. According to the lifeguard there are just no big waves all around Oahu, so we just got unlucky with our timing. After checking out of the hotel, we went back into Honolulu for a shopping afternoon. It was the only time we had to stock up on chocolate covered Macadamia nuts and various other souvenirs for all the people at home. One interesting find in the Ward Center was Beard Papa's! Just like the one in Japan with the cream puffs, but this one had savory puffs as well. I found out there were quite a few around Hawaii, which makes sense since they have so many Japanese tourists. It was a pretty slow day since we were just passing the time before heading to the airport, but it was a good recovery from all the excitement of the past week. This vacation has definitely been one of the best, and I think both my parents and Kamil agree.

"Hike" and "Surf"

2008-06-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

Early during our stay at Makaha, Kamil heard that there is a trail that goes up to the top of one of the mountains. So this morning, we decided to check it out. We ended up stopping to talk to this older couple. The man pretty much stopped us and asked where we were going, then said that he "hikes the area all the time". He described a route we could take, which was somewhat helpful. Then he added the comment, "I wouldn't take her up there" to Kamil. Like I was not capable of walking up what ended up being about 200 m on a trail followed by a gravel service road. I wouldn't even consider it a hike. Or rather, what if I was the one "taking" Kamil up? If he would have told both of us not to go, it would have been okay. I regret not making a comment, but there's nothing I could do now. We went to Kapolei for lunch as well as to find some extra clothes for Kamil since he was out of clean shirts. On the way back, we rented some surf boards and attempted to surf at a beach at a military recreation area. Unfortunately, the water was practically flat and we weren't good enough to catch the little waves. Just need to try again tomorrow.

Kualoa Ranch

2008-06-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

It was an early start in the morning to drive across Oahu to Kualoa Ranch. This 4000 acre cattle ranch was the shoot location of a variety of films and TV shows, including Jurassic Park, Godzilla, Mighty Joe Young, Pearl Harbour, Lost, and 50 First Dates. We purchased one of those day packages with 4 activities and lunch included. It was such a good deal. We started the morning on a catamaran that went out towards Mokolii Island (or Chinaman's Hat because that is what the island is shaped like). The captain of the boat was very cool, running the catamaran deliberately into the waves so everyone at the front got soaked. His dog was also very friendly and enjoyed every bit of it. For the first time, we saw a turtle. Next was an off-road tour of the ranch on a Swiss WWII Pinzgauer which took us to a ridge overlooking the property. We passed by many cows, and many heaps of rotting mangoes which dropped to the ground from the plethora of mango trees. One of the guides actually brought along a mango picker (a stick with a small basket) and everyone got the chance to eat a fresh mango from the trees. Following lunch was the horseback tour. It was very slow since the horses were only allowed to walk, but the ride was relaxing. The experience only made the last part of the day, which was the ATVs that much more exciting. After watching the safety video, which indicated that the ATVs only go on roads and no more than 15-20 mph, I thought that it'll just be a leisurely thing just like the horse ride. However, we only had 4 in our group, and all of us have ridden ATVs before. Our guide decided to be cool, and took us on an alternate route through the rougher ATV paths. We didn't really know this until we saw that this other group of Japanese tourists, who were doing the same excursion as us, just rode slowly along a road that went parallel to the trails that we took. We rode into the valley, which looked just like Jurassic Park (of course) stopping at old movie sets like Godzilla's footprint. Little known fact is that the footprint was originally 8 to 10 feet deep, but the cows kept falling into it and couldn't get out so they had to fill it in. This day at the ranch was by far the best day of the vacation.

North Shore

2008-06-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

We drove to the North Shore, known for its high surf especially during the winter when all the competitions take place. Our first stop was in the town of Haleiwa for a delicious lunch at a Thai restaurant. It was some good Thai food and very vegetarian friendly. I tried papaya salad for the first time, which is quite unique since they use unripe payayas to make it. The papaya was still green and shredded almost like a carrot. We headed east to Waimea Valley to see the giant botanical park and waterfall, which was practically non-existent. There has been a lack of rain for the past few weeks, so the creek was dried up and the waterfall was more of a water trickle. Good thing we weren't there just to see the waterfall. There was a vast variety of plants in this park from all parts of the world, primarily the tropics. We also saw this endangered duck which does not have webbed feet, but they are huge so this thing can run really fast. Right before sunset, we went snorkeling at Sharks Cove, but unfortunately did not see any sharks. There were lots of fish though, much more than Hanauma Bay.

Kaena Point to Kapolei

2008-06-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

This morning we ventured to the northwest part of Oahu to Kaena Point State Park. This was by far the best place to watch waves crash onto the shore and spraying blowholes. There weren't a lot of people at this place. There wasn't enough time to walk all the way to the point along the dirt trail, but we at least got to where we could see the point in the far distance. We drove down the coast to the city of Kapolei for lunch and spent the afternoon at the Ko Olina Resort. It is a relatively new place and has 4 artificial swimming lagoons. We swam in one of them to cool ourselves off before going to the Paradise Cove Luau. It was one of those "must see" attractions in Hawaii. The luau started with a bunch of stations of various Polynesian games and crafts such as tossing a spear to a target. Following that were various demonstrations, of which the only really important one was how to crack open a coconut with just a stick. Good to know in case I was ever stranded on an island. The trick is to secure the stick into the ground and smash the coconut on it to peel off the husk. Then, after a second smashing, the coconut breaks apart. I'm sure it takes a bit of practice to get a clean break, but at least the technique is known. The feast was the next part, featuring a variety of meats so I ended up having salad and rice. It was decent but the omnivores enjoyed it much more than I did. As the sun went down, we watched the featured polynesian variety show of music, hula dancers, a fire spinner, and a bunch of other stuff. It was overall a worthwhile experience.

Kailua and Makaha Valley

2008-06-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Checked out of the hotel this morning and went to Kailua for a morning of kayaking. The waves and wind were strong today. The water was very choppy, so the visibility in the water wasn't that good. It was good kayaking though. There were two small islands close to Kailua for kayak stops, and a beach. One island was a bird sanctuary and the other was a mound. The beach was a small one and not very busy, so that yielded a good lunch stop. Following kayaking, we stopped at Lanikai Juice for smoothies. They use quite a few organic ingredients and buy all locally-grown produce. The second food stop was at Chip and Cookie. We bought an assorted pound of their cookies, which are these mini cookies about the diameter of a golf ball and loaded with either chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, butterscotch chips, or whatever was the mix-in for the cookie type. It was about a 1.5 hour drive from Kailua to our second hotel, the Makaha Valley Golf Resort on the west side of the island. This place was a huge contrast from Honolulu since there was not much development around us. We were surrounded by greenery. The resort was laid out more like a village with a main building and small clusters of 8 or so rooms. No elevators required. I saw an assortment of birds, geckos, and for the first time, mongooses. Another great deal since this place worked out to be about $120 per night with free parking and Wi-fi (which we did not get in Honolulu).

Surfing and other things

2008-06-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

Waikiki Beach and all of Hawaii as a whole is famous for surfing, so Kamil and I had our turn at it this morning. We took a surf lesson at Waikiki Beach and it was quite good. It was less of a lesson on learning how to surf on our own, and more of just having instructors hold the board and let us go when a good wave comes. In any case, we learned how to stand up at least. In the afternoon, we were originally going to go to this submarine excursion, but it was cancelled so I got a refund for it. So instead, we ended up going on a dinner boat cruise and illusionist show. It was a pretty good deal since we got it from a tour company which included transportation and it was cheaper since it was a package. The boat cruise was nice in the fact that we were able to see the cityscape of Honolulu from the ocean. The entertainment and food was also decent. The illusionist show was entertaining, and done in the style of what you would expect in Vegas. Lots of audience participation, a troupe of dancers, cheesy jokes, etc. Nonetheless, it was a fun evening.

Hanauma Bay, Diamond Head

2008-06-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

Early start today for a trip to Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve. This place is known for its snorkeling, and seeing that it was a Sunday, we wanted to make sure we arrived before the large crowds. The reefs were full of interesting fish and coral. Unfortunately my fish identification skills are non-existent (will be changed after I work in Bermuda) so I don't know what I saw except for the piccolo fish because it was mentioned in the introductory video. Because this place is a preserve, everyone was required to watch a video on how not to damage the reef before entering. There were some songs in the video that I think may have been inspired by the Little Mermaid but due to legalities with licensing they had to change the tune a bit. In any case, it was a morning well spent and arriving early was worth it. By the time we left, which was about noon the beach was getting increasingly populated. In the afternoon, we walked up the Diamond Head crater. It was a very shallow grade trail for about half the walk, and then stairs to the top. The view of Honolulu and the ocean from the top of the crater was neat. The evening was quite interesting as I got the opportunity to meet some extended family from Utah. My mom unexpectedly saw her uncle yesterday morning at our hotel. He was staying there with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and their family. In any case, like all Chinese people they decided to go out to dinner together but it was Father's Day so all the restaurants were packed. Kamil and I ended up going to find our own food. We searched, and the best thing was to make our own since there was a mini supermarket by the hotel. We had a full kitchen at the hotel, so we put it to good use.

Honolulu

2008-06-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Having arrived in Honolulu late last night (didn't check-in until 11pm which was equivalent to 2am PST), we decided to have a recovery day. The room we got at the Waikiki Marina Resort, which is actually inside of the Ilikai Hotel was a great deal. It was clean and looks recently renovated, came equipped with a full kitchen, but was way cheaper than the rooms in the actual hotel since we just rented it from a time share. Our first goal of the day was to find a pair of replacement sandals for Kamil since he accidentally bought a pair at MEC that had unmatched sizes. We eventually found a place that had them, and they ended up being cheaper because of the savings in taxes (and the very strong dollar of course). We then ventured to Chinatown at the request of my parents for cheap produce as well just to walk around. We conveniently found an Indian Restaurant across the street from the hotel for dinner, which typically has good vegetarian selections. The food was pretty good, however it was quite overpriced compared to what I'm accustomed to in Vancouver.

Amsterdam

2008-06-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

Canal bike was awesome! It was a good view of the city from a different perspective. There were lots of tourists taking pictures of us paddling along. It was a self guided tour, with commentary in a book. With my great navigational skills though, our boat did not get lost. I rented a bicycle to circle around Amsterdam and the outskirts of the city for the rest of the day. I biked through Vongel park and saw those bikes with the bins in the front which are quite popular apparently in the Netherlands. On my way to supper at a vegetarian cafe, I walked through one of the nicest streets I've seen in Amsterdam. Leliestri is actually quiet, has lots of bushes, flowers and trees. It's a huge contrast to the Centrum which is full of people walking, biking, and driving. However, it is not that far away from the centre of the city. And with that, I have come to the last night of my Contiki tour.

St. Goar to Amsterdam

2008-06-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Driving out of Germany, I started to see a lot more flat land, dykes, and cows as the landscape became Dutch. The Bike a Dijk tour in Edam was fun. We rode around on granny bikes which used back pedals for braking through the countryside. It was so flat. Just like Steveston. There were cows everywhere though. The Dutch really like their dairy products. We then visited an Edam cheesemaker as well as a clog maker (which was her son). Clogs were super cool and I was impressed by how quickly he was able to carve a shoe out of a block of wood. There were even some especially designed for playing football on display. When we arrived in Amsterdam, I got a brief walking tour of the famous Red Light District and had a free evening. I watched a part of a Speedminton tournament, which is like Badminton but there is no net. Instead, there are just two boxes about 10 m away from each other that the players need to stay in. Amsterdam is nice, but the stagnant air plus the canal water made the place a bit less desirable.

Lauterbraunnen to St. Goar

2008-06-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

Another long driving day, but that was okay because I was feeling a bit ill in the morning. Crossed back over into Germany to Heidelburg for a stopover. It is a nice student town. A castle on a hill, a river, a university and that's the entire place. St. Goar was another nice little place in the Rhine Valley. Montag Beerstein makers had an insane collection of steins. Some have pieces (or so they claim) of the Berlin wall, others are for different occupations, and the list goes on. I also saw the world's largest cuckoo clock in St. Goar. It was about 1.5 m in diameter, which is pretty considerable since it was just hanging freely outside of a cuckoo clock shop.

Jungfrau

2008-06-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Went up the tallest cog railway today to almost the top of Jungfrau. It was a long train ride, but then again we were ascending to more than 3000 m above sea level. From the observation deck at the train station there were stunning views of the alps and all the way down the valleys. Got a try at snowdisking, which was free and saw an ice palace as well. The temperature was surprisingly warm at this elevation, only about -1 degrees Celsius. There was also lots of sun, so I did not feel cold at all. Sent postcards from the post office at the site, since it is the highest post office in the world before taking the return train back down. This was the first day I actually felt a bit ill on the trip, but I slept it off throughout the evening.

Munich to Luzern to Lauterbraunnen

2008-05-31T22:00:00.000-07:00

Between Germany and Switzerland is a small country called Liechtenstein. Like Monaco, it is tiny and everything was really expensive. The stop in Vaduz, its capital, essentially allowed me to get a passport stamp and that was about it. It's like a stopover country really. Luzern was a nice town, famous for its covered bridges. Buildings were very well kept and the mountain backdrop was pretty. The camp site at Lauterbraunnen was the best site (and last one of the tour). It is nestled in a valley with waterfalls around and views of snow capped mountains as well as a rapids-filled river. The town is a small touristy spot, but the chalets were all beautiful. Nice wooden houses with lots of flowers. It is very evident how much pride the Swiss take in their absolutely perfect looking property.

Prague to Munich

2008-05-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

We didn't arrive in Munich until the afternoon. To make the most of my time, I got an all day pass and went to Englisch Park. It was huge. Lots of forest, a fast flowing river, and a Pagoda with an Oom-Pah-Pah band. An odd combination, but nonetheless something I wouldn't forget. There were sunbathers everywhere (including nude ones). Had a wicked Grosse Bretze. It was really Grosse, about the size of a dinner plate. Afterwards, I returned to Marienplatz to see the world-famous Glockenspiel. I found a cheap place with Internet for only 1 euro for 30 minutes. They use Linux! Supper at Cafe Ignaz was "delicat". Owner spoke little English and I learned a few things in Deutsch. Ate Gnocchi mit Kaze, tomaten, zucchini. Very friendly guy. The cafe was in a residential neighbourhood, away from the tourist district, and full of charm. If only I had another day in this city.

Prague

2008-05-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Bike tour today! Guide was cool and learned lots of stuff about Prague. The guide ended up picking up a duckling by Karlov Most that lost its mother. Saw a dancing building designed by a Canadian. And the highlight, a sculpture of two men urinating over a map of the Czech Republic. In the evening I found soy drink tetras in a supermarket! It got better though, because I had supper at Lehka Hlava. It is an amazing restaurant. The menu was excellent, ingredients were unique and decor is stunning. I sat in the "heaven " room which has a fireplace and a starry sky composed of led lights stuck into the ceiling. It was stunning. I tried a young barley shoots drink, and a platter of assorted specialities called the Big Clear Head (Lehka Hlava is Czech for Clear Head). Afterwards, it was off to a benefit concert at a cathedral. The chamber ensemble was excellent. It was really worth it to hear Die Moldau right by the river itself.

Prague

2008-05-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

Went on a walking tour in the morning of the castle, old town, astrological clock, and famous Charles Bridge. The neighbourhoods were very well preserved since Prague somehow escaped the wars without too much damage. The lunch cruise gave way to a good lunch buffet and interesting commentary on the sights around Prague. The tour guide, Jezka, actually works at a vegetarian restaurant Lehka Hlava. Also visited the Smetana museum. The rest of the day was spent playing beach volleyball at the hostel. I actually improved quite a bit in the game over two days of playing. Definitely a sport to continue in Vancouver.

Vienna to Prague

2008-05-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

Had a stopover at Cesky Krumlov before heading to Prague for lunch and walked through the streets of this old town. Smells a lot like fish though from the river that runs through it. It was surprisingly warm though since the air was quite stagnant unlike the breeze that blew through Vienna. The hostel at Prague was another cool one like Vienna. They have a beach volleyball court, huge cafe/bar, and the best internet rates yet. The first 15 minutes are free, and then it is only about the equivalent of $2 per hour. But of course, you can just keep signing up for 15 minutes at a time and not pay at all. Beach volleyball was lots of fun and a good way to use up some free time. Dinner was really late, at 9pm, but it was good. Not very much food unfortunately.

Vienna

2008-05-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

I learned all about the Habsburg empire in the morning walking tour. They just ruled everything for a long time in Europe. Walked around the main landmarks such as the palace, museums, and many statues around the inner ring around the city centre. The cool place to go in Vienna by far though is the Kunst Haus Wien. This Austrian artist/architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, did not believe in straight lines and was all about making a place flow with nature. So this museum which featured lots of his psychedelic works was full of colour, curved lines (including the walls, floors, stairs, mirrors) and a unique view of the world. Hundertwasser Haus, a social housing project down the street from the museum was also designed by this man. Across the street from the apartment was a "village" of shops, a cafe, and a public toilet art gallery. I tried a peach strudel afterwards because there's no place for strudel like Vienna. I actually didn't really like the cream in it. In any case, the next cool attraction was the Haus der Musik. There were some cool exhibits on the science of sound, breaking down how composers played dice to make music, and a big history lesson on Vienna's influence on music for the past few centuries. There were lots of interactive modules, like one where I got to "conduct" the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It was like playing the Wii. In another area, called the Brain Opera, instruments were re-invented as things that just reacted to large body movements rather than skill. Lots of sensors and interesting sounds there. Finally after my long day of excitement, I got a standing ticket to see the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra perform a choral concert at the Musikverein. I witnessed the longest applause I have ever seen because the audience would not stop clapping until the conductor, musicians and singers returned to the stage to bow about 3 or so times. Definitely worth the 6 euro and 1.5 hours of standing.

Venice to Vienna

2008-05-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

I was looking forward to this part of the trip. Finally, I get to visit Vienna, a place that I heard about so many times in all my piano lessons and music history. Plus, I just think Austria is cool. In any case, the hostel that we stayed at, Wombat's, is really a five-star hostel. It was funky, new, clean, and had uber comfortable beds. They were also all about conservation there as well, using low flow toilets and shower heads, toilet paper that was not bleached, and lots of tips posted everywhere to help the environment. I had a very cheap dinner at a cafe by the hostel and got my taste of greasy Austrian fare. I ordered some pasta and it was just smothered in butter. The Mozart and Strauss concert in the evening was entertaining. The coolest part was the fact that I was in the same hall where lots of famous musicians performed their chamber music not only watching a chamber orchestra, but performing as well (just for one piece called Tic Toc and I played the triangle). I also sat in the room where Mozart first performed for Maria Theresia. Excellent day and only looking forward to more fun stuff the next day.

Venice

2008-05-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

This city is just full of canals. No bicycles, cars, or anything. Only means of transportation are walking or on something that floats. Their mass transit is ferry based, which was neat to see. Saw glass blowing and lace making this morning, two trades that Venice is famous for. They were expensive, but hand-made the traditional way so it makes sense. Especially in the case of the lace since some projects take months to complete, so to pay a fair wage it has to be equivalent of paying someone to work for all that time. Since Venice's streets are so windy and difficult to navigate, I decided to just wander. Saw some less touristy areas and observed the life of the locals. Had an interesting language moment at a photo shop where the owner did not speak English, but somehow we communicated through a word here and there. I also picked up a few words that sounded similar to French or English. But the best part was a French woman who walked in and spoke nothing but French. So I spoke to her in French because she could not communicate with the Italian man. Then I did some weird translation to the Italian man in gestures to get what she wanted. It was just a disposable camera, but it was still one of those unforgettable situations.

Verona and Venice

2008-05-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Stopped by Lizase, a little lakeside town en route to Verona. First place I saw lots of German. It was written on menus, signs, etc. I guess that is because it is close to the border to Austria. It was the cleanest place yet in Italy and not full of people. Verona is another touristy city with the whole Romeo and Juliet hype. Interestingly though, it is also quite environmentally conscious. They have these public bikes for borrowing that you can ride around then park back where you found it. Well, a piece of ID needs to be dropped off at the tourist office first to get a key. Verona also has bike lanes (of course) with lots of bike commuters, sorted garbage/recycling, and alternative fuel buses. First place I saw such things in Europe. Perhaps they exist elsewhere but they were very prevalent in Verona. Camp site in Venice was the best yet. The cabins were practically new, clean, and had adequate plumbing for once contrary to the other places in Italy and Greece.

Ferry to Venice

2008-05-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

The ferry really pushed the meaning of the Greek's "ish" timing. It was about 4 hours late, but it yielded some time at the harbour to get to know the other people on the tour. It was something I didn't really get the chance to do yet since I was usually off doing my own thing. The ferry was decent, with lots of deck space and clean rooms. Spent my time doing Sudoku and playing games on my phone mostly. I socialized for once in the evening, playing various card games with Contiki people. It was quite fun actually.

Corfu

2008-05-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

Another day of relaxing in Corfu. Good recovery time for the rest of the tour which will be much more intense since there is a lot more ground to cover. Stayed at hotel, walking around the waterfront. It's good to have some down time during a vacation to take it all in. Besides, it makes you look forward so much more to getting up and travelling again.

Corfu

2008-05-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

Great day on George's boat. Lots of islands and great food. Lively atmosphere. Tzaziki was stellar. Never ending jokes about going skinny dipping, being Greek, and lots of stuff. Got a chance to do nothing before dinner. Supper was one of the best so far on the tour. Vegetarian moussaka was excellent.

Corfu

2008-05-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Relaxed island. Walked around town, which for once did not have people harassing you to buy fake bags. Then again, it is Greece and a remote little place. Just chill everywhere. Afternoon was spent around the hotel. Didn't really do much, which was the best part. The beach was pebbly, like France. There was also lots of garbage lying around, but it was okay. Interesting thing about Greek plumbing is that toilet paper cannot go into the toilet. The pipes just can't handle all that volume.

Rome to Pompeii to Ferry

2008-05-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Pompeii tour was entertaining. The guide was animated and the most fun of all the guides so far. Learned a lot about Pompeii's Greek/Roman history and unfortunate volcano incident. Like the cats of the Colosseum, there were the sleeping dogs of Pompeii. They just sprawl themselves out and nap. Occasionally they will get up to sniff at tourists, but then they just go right back to sleeping. Apparently Pompeii is run my mafia families, which was just a random little known fact. In any case, it was a long driving day going to the ferry, but it had comfortable beds for the few hours of sleep before the 5:30AM start the next day.

Tivoli

2008-05-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

I decided that I saw enough of Rome so I went to Tivoli. I didn't know it was the Giro d'Italia, so the traffic going up to Tivoli was really backed up. It was worth it though because I witnessed the eighth stage of the equivalent of the Tour de France in Italy. Villa Gregorina, a stunning park filled with caves and waterfalls was a definite trip highlight. It was an engineering marvel as twin tunnels were constructed through this canyon, making an artificial waterfall and prevented the region from flooding. There were also some ruins from about the first century A.D. and my first encounter with some real nature in Europe. This park made the trek out to Tivoli worth it. Even though it was the Giro d'Italia, the streets were nowhere nearly as crowded with tourists as Florence or Rome.

Florence to Rome

2008-05-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

Rome made Paris look calm. Traffic was chaotic. Some streets don't have lane markings so it is just a free for all. The Vespas just add to the madness. In any case, I took a walking tour of the Forum and Colosseum. Learned all about the many layers of Rome and how they just build on top of old civilizations. The coolest thing was how the organized the Colosseum was. People had a certain social class and each entrance had a number. So they will go through the entrance with their class number (all 72 or so of them). There were also some resident cats of the Colosseum running around. Then there was another walking tour of the other sites in Rome such as the Trevi fountain, Spanish Steps (or rather the crowds of people sitting on steps), Pantheon, and all around the centre. I ate for once at a sit down restaurant. It was relatively inexpensive and good. I had to eat some gnocchi in Italy. It blew away my misconception that portions were actually normal in Europe though. I had enough food for about four people. Following my overly sized meal, my dessert consisted of leftover portions of gelato from three people on the tour because they had a bit of an overdose on gelato eating for the day.

Florence

2008-05-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

I learned today that it is really difficult to tell the difference between real leather and fake leather. The only way really is to look for suede on the other side or trust that the "genuine leather" stamp is telling the truth. Good thing I don't really care for leather products. The Florentine leather boxes that they make though are cool because they don't contain anything but leather. They are super expensive, but of course they take lots of work to make since it is all by hand. Visited the sites around Florence (didn't bother going to seeing the real David though) which were cathedrals, more cathedrals, and sculptures. All about the Renaissance but the place is quite filthy and ghetto. The Orsanmichele was the best because it was an actual sanctuary. No photo-happy tourists milling about and its history is cool because it was a grain tower in the past. The gelato that I tried was very unique as it was only semi-frozen. My evening was even more amusing as I ended up having a conversation with a prof from University of Edinburgh about everything from informatics to politics. One of those stereotypical academics with the disjointed thought pattern, glasses, and big beard.

French Riviera to Pisa to Florence

2008-05-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Visited a perfumery in the morning and all its potent scents. Good to see how perfume is made and the vast amount of resources it takes. Leaning Tower of Pisa was leaning as expected. The drive was the most interesting part of the day though. Saw marble mountains in Tuscany and lots of tunnels. The Italians just blasted their way through everything but that makes trips a lot faster. None of the tunnels were really that long though and I'm sure if they went around the mountains with their highways, that would tack on a few hours of travelling.

Nice/Antibes

2008-05-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

Rain day! Finally got justification for bringing my rain jacket. Nice was "nice". Walked up to the chateau and got a good view of France, Monaco, and Italy (in the distance). Bus ride there took a long time but it was worth it to see some of the other small towns. Beach was okay in Nice, but it was pebbly. Vieille ville was full of little shops, restaurants, and of course tourists. Antibes was a true gem. Few tourists, relaxed, and turquoise waters. It's a very pretty town and I saw the best Laverie sign ever.

Chateau de Cruix to French Riviera

2008-05-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

Had a refreshing run through the countryside in the morning and had a great view from the top of a hill. I wish I had my camera. The drive to the Riviera was long, but at least the camp site was nice. Spent the evening in Monaco, not in a casino though. I ended up walking across half the country, looking at its poshness. Resorts everywhere, fancy cars guzzling an immense amount of unnecessary gasoline, but it did not look as glitzy as I expected. Lots of the apartment buildings looked pretty ordinary, but of course had extraordinary prices. Definitely not a place for me. I got the amusement though of going to the border and doing the "I'm in Monaco, but now I'm not" dance.