octobre 2006

il y a un an, a peu pres, j'ai commence ma vie comme assistante de langue a Dinan avec ma nouvelle famille, qui me manque toujours, tous les jours.

more vancouver pics

those beach photos i promised...

pics from vancouver

Firstly there's me putting my Dinan photo up in my room.... :-) Then some shots from Glacier school, which was with a hiking/climbing/paddling club I joined at UBC, and some other Vancouver shots, mostly of the Kitsilano beach area.

vancouver

It has been brought to my attention that I have been neglectful of my blog. It is true, it has been a month since I have written, and much has happened in that month!

I never wrote that for the last 6 weeks of summer I was working at the Visitor Information Centre in Radium for Parks Canada. Well, I was, and I loved it! It was a lot of fun - I was spending the majority of my days talking to people about hiking and learning new things all the time, about Parks, BC, the Valley, and the people I was working with were amazing. really positive, upbeat, fun people. It was awesome!

My parents spent three weeks in August at their cabin in Newfoundland. It was the big test, Mom's first time seeing it. She was so cute the first time she called home and I asked 'so how is it?' And she said, full of forced optimism, "well... it's got potential." A few sentence later she exclaims, "there's not hot water!" But it is right on the ocean, and by the time she came home they had sorted out the hot water issue and she seems to ahve fallen as much in love with the place and Robin did when he bought it, and they are both all talk of when they will be going back.

So they left us alone, us three kids. Christopher and I, working full time, and me working goofy hours, left responsible for hte garden, the yard, and Dennis, the 14 year monster. But have no fear! Grandma came to rescue! She came and stayed with us for a few days, took Dennis home wiht her for a few more, and just generally took care of us. It was awesome! I mean, of course I was thrilled to have supper warm and waiting for me when I got home (who doesn't like to be spoiled like that?), but it was also just really neat to spend so much time with Grandma, hanging out, staying up late chatting. I was very cool.

And among those chats we talked abotu school, adn the fact that I needed to figure out how I was getting to Vancouver and she said, 'I'll drive you!" So she did! Grandma and I took a roadtrip to Vancouver and she stuck around for a few days helping me move in. She's amazing.

So I'm moved to vancouver! And I love it! I love the city so far. It has about a dozen beaches, and I've been doing my best to visit and swim at them all. It's got gorgeous mountains, which I hope to spend some more time climbing, and it's a city, but not really a big city. I was expecting it to be bigger, scarier, but it's really not that bad. Pretty laid back, as far as cities go, it seems. The UBC campus is, of course beautiful, full of gardens and green. I'm inspired just walking around there. and school, well, school is a challenge. I sometimes wonder if I really belong here, but for the most part its going ok. My teachers are amazing, very smart, very interesting. My classmates are good, too. And my roommate is perfect! So life is good.

This is the first time that I've moved somewhere that I actually know people. It's been amazing to be going over for supper to see family, calling up old friends from high school, or running into them on campus!, hanging out with an old biochem friend from MUN, its' been a pretty smooth transition, all around, and that makes me happy.

Hike #5: The Bugaboos

FInally, I ahve seen one of those 'must-sees' of the Columbia Valley! The Bugaboos... what a crazy straight-up climb, but what an amazing place to be. I can see how it's a climbers paradise...

Went with Morgan and Spring. IT was a chilly day, but the perfect hiking temperature. And we timed it ALMOST perfectly for rain... got dumped on about 15 minutes from the truck!

Hike #4: Floe Lake to Numa Falls

This hike was insane. Herman and I did 26 km with over 900 m elevation gain and loss in 8 hours. We rock! THen we made the foolish (or crazy?) choice to walk the 8.3 km back ot the car. That hurt. We hiked up to FLoe lake. The trail is lovely, and it was really intensely burned in 2003 so the landscape is really young and fresh, with loads and loads of fireweed. BEautiful! Then we continued up to Numa Pass, over Numa Pass, adn down the Numa Creek trail. Numa Pass was beautiful - we could see MOunt Assiniboine from up there! and gorgeous alpine meadows.

Hike #3: the Iceline, Little Yoho Valley and Twin Falls

Hike #3 was with my friend Heather, who I've pretty much totally lost touch with since high school, but who I happily bumped into this summer, and joined for a fantastic overnight hike in Yoho National Park with Heather and her boyfriend, John. The hike began and ended at Takkaka Falls, the 2nd highest waterfall in Canada. It climbed up above the treeline to meander beside, I think it was Emerald Glacier, then descended down into Little Yoho Valley, where the Stanley Mitchell ACC hut is located. One of the bridges was out on the other side of the hut, and Heather and I had a little adventure that evening helping a couple of lady hikers cross the river. They were loaded down with gear for four nights, and scrabling across logs was pretty daunting with huge packs on their backs, so we helped them find a way across. We spent the night in the Warden's cabin there, then climbed down a much gentler hike than climbing up the iceline (I think we did it backwards!). The most spectacular parts of the second day were definitely the approach to Twin Falls. I think they are even more impressive than Tak falls, just because the approach is so cool.

Pic1 - Tak Falls from across the valley. 2 - next to the glacier. 3 - descending back down into the trees. 4 - the view from the cabin - what a sight to wake up to! 5 - Twin Falls 6 - Tak falls at the end of the hike

Hike #2: Top of the World Provincial Park

(Herman and Mom at Sparkle Lake)

So Mom and Herman and I went to Fish Lake in Top of the World Provincial Park. It was a really nice hike, nice and gentle, easy sort of walk to the lake, beautiful campground. Easy walk in to camp there, and do lots of hikes based out of there, because there are lots of nice hikes extending from there. We did one of them, walked on to Sparkle Lake, which was truly exquisite. A climb up, more or less straight up an avalanche chute, and we encountered snow on the way, which made things interesting! We had some fun skiing in our shoes, and way too much fun having snowball fights! The lake, as I said, was exquisite, adn the way down was good, except the snow became a bit of a hazard, as some of us (ahem, yours truly not included) fell on our butts numerous times in the snow. All in all it was a laugh, and a joy to spend the day hiking with Mom.

(flowers growing the ice on the hike to Sparkle Lake)

(Mom and I on the hike)

Hike #1: Castle Rock

(Alexis, Natalie, Ray adn Dennis on top of Castle Rock)

So I've decided to talk about the hikes I've done this year, because it's been pretty amazing, and I've done more this year than I've ever done before. SO the first hike, as I already mentioned, was with Natalie and her bf Ray, as well as my dear friend Alexis and my little bro Dennis. We went up Castle Rock, which has one of my favourite views of the valley, but which is a ridiculous straight up climb and a pretty boring one at that, totally through the trees. Anyway, despite almost hyperventilating adn giving up on the way up, and much grumbling from some, we all made it to the top. Alexis, who had been in training to be a forest fire fighter for the summer, left us all totally in her dust, and stopped to wait for us periodically whenever we could no longer hear ourselves shouting "Marco! Polo!" to each other! Anyway, here's a few pics of that hike.

(Me and Alexis on top of Castle Rock)

testing testing 1,2,3

this is my cousin hayley who is coming to live in Invermere soon! She's a Camerican. :-)

I was just testing to see if I could add a photo directly to blogger... this seemed like a good photo to test with. Welcome home to Wilmer Hayley!!!

its funny how friendships form sometimes.
shared experience, shared interests, one wild crazy thing done together.
someone you've known for years suddenly becomes someone new in your eyes.
new perspective, new friend.

summer so far

Wow, this summer is turning out well! Its been busy, let's see if I can summarize quickly while still doing it justice...

When I got back my room was in a state of disarray as we were attempting some DIY... so I stayed at Morgans for few week while we pulled out a wall and did some painting. That was fun. A little stressful at times, but fun. I did some casual work for an old classmate, but remained pretty much unemployed until about midway through June when I started two days a week at the Radium Hot Springs pools as a Pool Attendent. The last weekend in June, an aunt from Vancouver came out to visit, as did Natalie and her boyfriend from Calgary. It was great to hang out with her, and we even managed to go for a hike! A brutal, straight up, killer kind of hike,but a hike all hhte same! More family came out for the long weekend in July and had a great time going to the lake and hanging out with them. It is so neat to see my cousins growing up, adn seeing what smart, beautiful, interesting people they are turning into. I mean, they always were, but smart, beautiful, interesting kids are one thing, and now they are becoming smart, beautiful, intersting adults. Then the July 5-7 weekend was the Clarke family reunion campout, so its been a summer of family time! After getting back from the Clarke family thing Mom and I went for a wonderful hike up in Top of the World provincial park on the Monday, and I went rockclimbing for the first time in my life of Tuesday evening with Morgan, Christopher, and some workfriends.



Been doing lots of swimming. Me and five guests get in free at the pools now that I work there. And as of July 16 I work at the info center in Radium 3 days a week for Parks Canada. So im officially working full time! yay!!

Ive been on four hikes this summer, a personal record, and Ill be adding a post soon about them, cause some of them have been pretty spectacular.

Oh, and I got into both UBC and SFU, and it looks like I'll be going ot UBC this fall. So the hunt is out for an apartment. If anyone knows of anything available near the UBC campus, let me know!