Canada

Yesterday was a long day. 32 hours long, in fact, the majority of which were spent sitting on a plane reading trashy magazines or watching pretty bad rom-coms. We set of for Canada at 4pm and arrived at 6pm (with a 10 hour flight in between) where we made our way to our house for the next three weeks. We've done a house exchange with a grandmother called Betty so we're in her pad in North Vancouver whilst she's gone to our house in London. It's such an old lady's house. There's not a lot of modern technology and we're all sleeping in perfumed guest bedrooms (my room contains a bed, a chair, and a small bedside table. Oh, and a stopped clock).

Today we went out to the shops. Betty's car is only a couple of years old, but it doesn't have centralised locking and the windows have to be wound down with a little handle. It does, however, have automatic gear shifting. Canada is like America in that the cities seem to have been built for cars. There aren't many pavements, and there is very little public transport. You're even supposed to drive to the ecology centre! which is where we visited this afternoon. We arrived to see a sign warning us that the trees could fall down at any time and told us to "use considerdate judgement". We then went into the ecology centre, which warned us about the different types of bear attack we might experience in the park and what to do about them. My favorite section was the one describing the difference between defensive and predatory attacks, which included the immortal line, "if the bear starts eating you, it is no longer a defensive attack". I was all ready to go home at that point, but instead we went for a brief stroll around the park, after first reading the list of all the danger point we might encounter and a list of the people who had died. Then it was on past a memorial stone to "Jaquie" who had died there whilst sunbathing... you get the point. We eventually returned to the safety of the street and returned home, thank goodness.

I'm off to bed now, it's half past ten here. More from me tomorrow, if I manage to avoid the falling trees and bears.

Goodnight