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Oh, Pioneer!: A Condemnation of the American Boy by Josh Abe -
What we have a right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man.
The best boys I know–the best men I know–are good at their studies or their business, fearless and stalwart, hated and feared by all that is wicked and depraved, incapable of submitting to…
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Hello everyone!
Well you probably guessed (or saw on Facebook) that we made it over here OK. Got picked up at the airport by Mike and Kirsty (after a long wait behind two groups of school kids for our visas) and drove back to their place (in Kitsilano - a nice place on the waterfront pretty close to town). They’ve got a second bedroom which they’ve kindly lent out to us.
It’s pretty awesome here - we’re really loving it. A bit of a change from the NZ winter to go straight into 20+ temps, jandals, boardies and it being light until 9m. We’ve been for a few walks down to the kKts waterfront and into town - it’s a super easy place to get around and the public transport is sweet. We’ve got our social insurance numbers and setup our bank accounts and this week we’ll start to look and apply for jobs.
On friday we did the Grouse Grind. Grouse is one of the 3 main mountains here in Van (others are Seymour and Cypress) and all have some form of mountain biking and snowboarding which is sweet! The grind was pretty intense (http://www.grousemountain.com/grousegrind) and it took us just over an hour. Mike and Kirsty do it in around 40mins so we have a way to go yet. It’s funny - everyone we’ve mentioned the grind to always asks what your time is and tells you theirs. Hopefully our times will get a bit more respectable! After the grind we saw a ‘birds of prey’ show where they flew bald eagles, horned owls, falcons etc over the crowd which was pretty cool. After that as we were walking back to catch the gondola down we hear a commotion and it turned out that some of the grizzly bears had woken up and were having a munch on some small child…. nah, they were behind an electric fence, but pretty sweet to see them. They look so cuddly!
On saturday we drove out to Whistler (2 hours north) to go mountain biking (http://www.whistlerbike.com/gallery/videos/index.htm). The drive there is really beautiful - along the coastline the whole way and passing through some nice scenery. Nyree sent me up with Mike to “check it out for me” while she and Kirsty went for a walk around one of the lakes there (which I hear was nice and pretty). In a word, Whistler is insanlyawesome! Lots of very rideable trails, some super unrideable, and some you’d have to be insane to even contemplate! Mike took me down all the very rideable ones and a couple of unrideable ones too which i struggled through. They’ll be pretty cool once I’m a bit better at it! There’s some good tracks for Nyree too, so we’re planning to head back up there in 2 weeks time and try and few tracks out ourselves. It’s so good to be able to get a gondola or a chairlift up from town, ride almost 30 mins of downhill, and then get back on the gondola and do it all again. Needless to say you get pretty tired out (even with the ride up) pretty quickly. We totally forgot to take photos though so sorry, not much to see except check out their website which says it all really. Also saw some Wellington friends there: Matt and Peter who were good to see. They’re up in Whister for a few days riding the park.
Today we went to University Church (UC) with Mike and Kirst. It was a good service - pretty small and old school. It’s the summer holidays here so a lot of the congregation were away. They are having a summer holiday program this week so we stayed afterwards and helped move some pews around. We met some of M&K’s friends and went out for brunch afterwards which was fun. We’ll look around and check out a few more churches in the coming weeks.
Ny’s been awesome in checking out places for us to live and we’ve found a few areas of town that would be cool to live. Jobs are our first priority though which it’s all about this week. I’m going to go into the place where I had the interview to put faces to names and get a feel for the place. May be able to get some contract work through them. This tuesday we’re going out for dinner with some friends of M&K’s we met at church, and this friday we’re heading down to the beach for a BBQ with more of their friends. Meeting lots of people which is good :-)
That’s about all for now. We’ll get back in touch with more news of jobs and places to live soon.
Love Cam & Ny. Xo
ps> We’ll hopefully have a mobile number soon. Need a visa card for that, and need a job to get the visa card so all in good time.
Brilliant take on an old table -
Another Picnic Table
Wouter Nieuwendijk and Jair Straschnow teamed up to challenge the traditional picnic table that provided easier access at the table and with a flip of the seat it converts into a comfortable lounge chair.
Found on The Fox is Black
Oxford English Dictionary ‘Will Not Be Printed Again’ -
Alastair Jamieson, reporting for The Telegraph:
Simon Winchester, author of ‘The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary’, said the switch towards online formats was…
Up in taupo for the long weekend with @nyreetrollope and friends. Tongariro crossing awaits us tomorrow
Remember the days when most iTunes updates came with a slightly or drastically new interface and a different coloured icon? #gladtheyareover
