Vancouver

6/20/09

I'm having trouble posting pictures onto the blog, but they can be viewed at my facebook site.

We are loving Vancouver and the feel of being in a different country. The girls don’t really remember being in Germany, so this feels like their first “foreign” experience.

The drive up was grueling and long. My arm started aching from holding the steering wheel. We spent the first night in Grand Mound, WA, at Great Wolf Inn. This place is a kid fantasy come true. It’s a huge hotel with a water park in the lobby. We played there for 2 days. Normally I don’t do big water slides or anything fast and scary. But this is the first vacation post-cancer where I’ve felt good, and I was really looking forward to playing with the girls. This past year when we’ve gone to pools I’ve sat in the hot tub while they play. I was so excited to be feeling better and my plan for this vacation was/is to be a full participant in it. So, I went down the Tornado slide with Karina. It was SO scary! I was shaking by the end. It made me feel so alive, and I am determined to experience all that life has to offer, so I went again. I played a lot with Kaycee too and we enjoyed ourselves so much. By the time we left, my arm was so sore from all the playing and I still had hours to go to get to Vancouver. By the time we arrived I was exhausted and grumpy and in pain from my arm. Luckily we are staying in a very cool apartment so I got together a quick dinner and we went to bed.

Today was our first full day here. The apartment is right across the street from a nice park and a few blocks away from a busy downtown area. Today we saw a dragon boat festival and went to a science museum (like Omsi). I had such fun. Instead of sitting on a bench watching the kids play, I was able to play with them. Everything was hands-on and so cool. And we had a view of the dragon boat races from most of the windows. Our favorite thing was to have our picture taken, then watch as a computer “aged” us. Kaycee at 70 was very funny!

This evening we hung out at the park across the street and went walking in search of an internet café so I could post some pictures. The people here are so pretty! The men wear the most interesting shoes, and we keep seeing beautiful young women walking past the apartment on their way down town, dressed in high heels and little black dresses. We are amazed at how far and fast they can walk in their heels. There are people from all over the world here and we are trying to count how many different languages we’ve heard. We heard a little girl having a tantrum in French (tantrums are so much less annoying in French) and bought cakes from a man from Transylvania. I checked a Starbucks for free internet and found out that it wasn’t free. As I was leaving, one of the employees, a young Canadian boy, followed me out and pointed out a local coffee shop down the street that he said had better coffee and free internet. The girls and I headed that way and passed an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Greek restaurant, and a Denny’s advertising their Grand Slam Breakfast. What a neat city. It feels European to me and light years away from Eugene, Oregon.
So far we have seen the following sports being played as we’ve driven around: street hockey, lawn bowling, bad mitten, soccer, and tennis. We’ve seen many, many roller bladers and I can’t wait to try ours out along the sea wall.

Vancouver, the city of friendly, pretty people.