Okanagan Girls.....hiking boots, headbands on top

Anna, clearly shovelling well from the look of the rock free trench

Hiding from the farmer to avoid any heavy lifting

Okanagan Angels?

We woke bright and early for our first day our willing workerness and were set loose on the squash field, we were told that we were to do 5 hours, Monday to Friday, and 2 and a half hours on Saturdays, which to be honest was quite a relief as we had learnt that the boys had to wake up a 6am and have been working 8-10 hour days, with very few days off. Our job was to weed the fields, and dig holes; it was blissful when looking back on it now. We spent 2 days in the the field, proudly digging our holes, laughing and joking and me playfully throwing soil at Anna. Well it wasn’t quite like that, I’m pretty sure Anna wasn’t really enjoying my soil flinging and it wasn’t exactly playful, it was accidental. Although I don’t really like to compare myself to a dog, my digging did somewhat resemble a mucky puppy flinging mud everywhere so as to dig a perfect hole for bone to be buried in, and Anna was just a victim of my mess, with flakes of soil being swept up into her mouth and up her nose.

Those two days really were wonderful, but I may just be suffering from a case of false nostalgic feelings? The next day we were taken away on the back of a truck, to a far, far land where the evil quad bike driving slave driver Craig controlled our work. In actual fact we were taken up the neighbouring hill, where Craig the beer-bellied farmer got us to help with the construction of the vineyard. Anyone who knows Anna and I, should fully well know we are not very strong, Craig, clearly did not know this, and set us and the Taiwanese girls about moving HEAVY pipes, in and out of 4 foot deep trenches and shovelling boulders. My shovel very quickly for taken from me, and I was told to use my hands as I ‘clearly wasn’t getting anywhere with it’. No longer were we finishing at 2, and no longer were we blissful, but surprisingly our moaning was quite minimal (lies) , especially as we are English, and moaning is what we do. We were never returned to the squash field, and although we felt we were being overworked we ended up having a great time.

A fellow English girl joined our troop of wwoofers, Emma. She had come from doing a study abroad in Edmonton, and being amongst North Americans for such a long time, who don’t quite get the loveable British sarcastic humour, she unleashed a reign of sarcastic snippets which made our working days much more amusing. It was either her being very funny, or the fact that we were breathing in industrial grade primer and glue but we became prone to laughing fits which prevented us from doing any job quickly and efficiently.

Being women of the 20^th century, we all felt we should keep up every effort to keep up with the boys, but in honest fact we A. could not be bothered, and B. even if we could be bothered, it wouldn’t matter because they are stronger than us. Wherever we rake and shovel, they rake and shovel better…this is a fact. If they are working behind us, the parts that we do are generally redone, jobs that require 1 boy, requires 3 girls, or even 4. We carry 2 pipes between 2 of us, the boys carry 4 alone. Our initial thoughts were, screw feminism, we want to go back to doing the girl jobs, send me to a kitchen to bake or sew or knit. But I have become quite strong (not as strong as the Taiwanese, who for such small girls could lift a crazy amount), and I now understand plumbing and irrigation systems for vineyards, I will go far in life and Emma even had a few drives of the insanely massive, clearly built for the manliest of men, monster truck. It was quite alarming, and we will probably still leave that to the boys… but empowering all the same.

The whole wwoofing experience ended with us slowly doing less and less work, with Anna doing no work as she was bed ridden with infected glands ( which the doctor informed her was a child illness, not usually found in 23 year old girls). The less work we did, the more enjoyable it became with our last days ending up in as a production of a Katy Perry Parody of California Girls; Okanagan Girls, coming to youtube soon.

Sneak Peak:

You can travel the world, but nothing comes close to the sleeping lady,
Once you irrigate with us you’ll be really pissed offffff

Okanagan Girls, we’re unforgettable,
Hiking Boots, headbands on top
Dirt-tanned skin, so hot will melt your lightsaber (ohhhhhhh)

Okanagan Girls we’re undeniable
English, French, German we’re so hot.
BC interior represent, now put your rakes up (ohhhhhhh)

A ticket to 'Osoossoausagesyoossooos' please?

We left Fernie about a week ago on a 11 hour greyhound towards Osoyoos…pronounced oh-SOY-oose, not ‘osoossoausagesyoossooo’ which is only met with confusion from greyhound ticket sellers, and results in you having to write your destination down so it can be understood what on earth your trying to say. Osoyoos is in the Okanagan valley, and is considered to be Canada’s answer to California, only about 300 km inland and, I can only assume this, a distinctly lower population of celebrities, probably zero.

The Okanagan is wine country, acres of rolling hills covered in orchards and vineyards, the perfect location to partake in a bit of wwoofing (willing workings on organic farms) after a long cold winter season. Anna, at first was not so keen, but I depicted a wonderful scene to her where we were merrily painting fences and picking grapes by day, and casually sipping wine at night, and on our days off we would cycle around vineyards, and row boats down rivers, all whilst lapping in the ‘Californian’-like sunshine, two weeks of such a relaxing lifestyle? How could she refuse?

We contacted two places, both told us to come along, but we chose Sleeping Lady Farm, named after the mountain shadowing the valley. Anna was quite happy with this decision, as in her mind, sleeping lady meant that a large part of us being here would mean she could BE a sleeping lady. Angie our host came to pick us up from the greyhound stop with 3 very small people, all under the age of six. Clearly taking advantage of the fact that she had grownups in the car, us, she took the opportunity to run a quick errand leaving us alone with the children, one of which burst into loud wails as soon as his mother left, with no amounts of our complementary remarks about his transformer trainers able to stifle his cries, exactly what we wanted to deal with after our long and sleepless greyhound journey.

On our way to the farm we learnt a bit about origins of the sleeping lady. Angie informed us that the mountains was named this because the ridge looked like a naked lady lying on her back asleep, with the highest peak being her nipple. Although the nipple part of this apparent sleeping lady is quite obvious, the rest of her isn’t… I saw no face, I saw no torso, and when I questioned where her legs were, I was told they were under a blanket, of course! Silly me. The rest of this ‘sleeping lady’ was just imagined up, because, the only distinguishable characteristic of the mountain was the breast part, and it was probably thought inappropriate to name it breast mountain, or nipple peak.

Once at the farm we were shown our new home for the next couple of weeks, a cosy little caravan for two, closely located to the outhouse, with its fly-away-expose-a-peeing-person-doors, and two other buildings which had a shower, other wwoofers rooms, a kitchen and a games room.

Three girls from Taiwan had also arrived earlier that day, Sarah, Jamie, and Vera, although it is questionable whether these are their real names. Together we had an explore around the farm, we cooed over the dogs, Anna, following the pug around with continued yells of ‘hello pug’ and petted the horses in the neighbouring farm. We quickly regretted the horse petting as the male, and somewhat aroused horse demonstrated the phrase ‘hung like a horse’ to us, lady horse seemed just as alarmed as we were, as whenever he came near her she would give him an aggressive bite. An added bit of wildlife was the dead ground hog, which I mistook first for a beaver, and then for a flying squirrel, and we have also been informed that there is a dead bear down the road if we fancied a gander. Ahhhh the Okanagan, dead animals, and horny horses, what a dream.

We spent the rest of our night meeting the other wwoofers, 4 guys, a German, a French, and 2 Québécois, and settled down for a good night sleep. Unfortunately we didn’t realise there was a heater in the caravan, and instead had to make do with a cold and shivery night’s sleep before our first day’s work.

So Long, Farewell...

Fernie, view from Lost Boys Cafe

Birthday creation for Annas Birthday

Anna having a casual swing in the playground, infront of Mt Fernie

Anna, the typical struggle down the trail to get to town walk.

Spring has come… which would mean an entire season has passed… and that I have pretty much not ‘blogged’ the entire season….oops. Karmali has issued me with complaints for this terrible behaviour, and challenged me to write another update… although his challenge was weeks ago… again oops. Our last few months haven’t really needed an update as we… I say we, but really I mean I slipped into a pattern of drinking (too much) working (too much) and skiing/snowboarding (not enough),Anna’s routine was more along the lines of sleeping, playing boggle, skiing and working….and sleeping. Life has been wonderful; our biggest decisions have pretty much been whether to buy a 6 pack or a 12 pack or which side of the mountain we feel like being on, old side or new side?

Whats that? You want to know how Anna and I, the girls with no snow skills what so ever before December have progressed in the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains? Well Anna, skiing pro, is shoooooop shooooop shoooopoing down black runs with the grace of a swan, and me? I am still tumbling down in typical Nish form, it was always going to be wasn’t it, clumsy on grass, clumsy on pavement, may as well add clumsy on snow to the list too… sad isn’t it. I am just not cut out to be a skier, in fact I gave up halfway through the season… skiing is stupid, the boots are uncomfortable, and my limbs seem to have the inability to act independently from each. I hope the thoughts of me giving up haven’t met you with shock and horror, I can hear you now ‘she gave up!? She spent $1500 on a pass WHAT WAS SHE THINKING” but no, this is not like when I joined the gym in second year and only managed go to about twice, my ski pass was still completely worthwhile, as I converted to the much cooler and badass sport of snowboarding (because you know I am much cooler and badass than Anna). My friend (Cat- bartender extraordinaire at Lizard Creek) took me on an epic powder day, and instead of starting me on the mighty moose... shoved me on the elk chair lift, for convenience sake as it was right outside Lizard Creek. It did take me 2 hours to get down, but only because I fell over in powder, in a direction Cat did not want me to go down…and then she refused to let me unstrap to clamber back up to her... instead a lot of rolling and crawling occurred, only to end with me tumbling down again, and a lot of deep snow with Anisha shaped imprints in step by step moving up the hill.. but I LOVED every minute of it. I think the fact that it was a power day was a key reason why I loved it, because falling does not hurt at all when you are falling in soft fluffy snow, I have since fallen on horrible ice, but seeing as I already love it this was not to detrimental, I am no pro though… but I will be.

Other key news from the season includes, our replacement housemates for Milly, Ollie, and Rob two Kiwi guys, who’s accents we enjoyed fully especially when we made them say ‘ there is 10 inches of snow my deck’, a number of stupid decisions involving alcohol, the loss of numerous clothes and accessories (due to alcohol), Anna’s birthday, with epic cake number 10 ( poor show at home guys clearly you need us there to keep the birthday creativity alive), hot dog day (80’s themed skiing day) a trip across the US for a spot of bowling, and to end the season a trip to the hot springs with a picnic to sooth our aching muscles from our world wind season.

And with that….see you later Fernie… greyhound out of here 4am 26^th April

I may be 23... but I can still tantrum like a 3 year old

It seems it has been a month since I last updated, and as I didn’t notice my neglect it must mean that I have been a bit of a busy bee. Babs has left, but Milly, Little Miss Popularity had yet more visitors, her parents… so technically she isn’t Little Miss Popularity as they have to love her…but with this news come sad times….today they left, and they took my curly haired pal with them, which means our Sheffield trio has been split, no longer are we Heuy, Dewey and Louie of Ducktales fame, we are just the red one and the green one, and so I dedicate my update to Milly, so her last month here isn’t forgotten from her memory....that is if I can remember it myself.

We came to Canada to experience the winter ski season, and so far my mention of skiing has been limited…in fact it’s been non-existent, but with the December snow, came the opening of the resort, and the development of some skiing action. All of our friends, including Babs, who had come completely ill-equipped for skiing and had to borrow our friends ski pants (which had been super-glued back together in the crotch region… and re-ripped within seconds of him putting them on) had the joy of experience the preview weekend at the resort, me and Anna however had to stay at home, our lack of free season pass was a major hindrance in joining the joy. As they all had fun and frolics in the snow…and babs froze his...ahem, rhymes with frolics off, me and Anna at least had each other for company, and spent our day with glitter glue and coloured paper crafting Christmas cards for our nearest and dearest…these were a fail, and our flatmate questioned whether infants had broken in and had a crafting session. So nearest and dearest don’t be expecting any of our crafted cards, the shame in our artistic ability pointed them straight to the bin.

Although Anna and I missed the preview weekend we have managed to rustle up the cash for our season pass. My first attempt to buy my pass was met with the rejection of my card, as apparently I have a limit to how much I can spend in one day, and trying to spend $1523 was met with a massive REJECT on the debit machine. I had to head to the bank and go through the painful experience of handing it all over a massive wad of cash instead, oh it was a hard thing to watch, but it got exchanged for my nice shiny season pass card, and as it was my birthday AND I was the hundredth customer at the bank, I got given a free cookie and a letter opener, so all in all excellent day.

Having no skiing ability what so ever, and venturing to the slopes with no supervision from our friends, we thought it best to have a lesson, so off we trotted to the bunny slopes kitted out with our boots skis and poles. Our lesson took place on the MINI Moose…this is a slope lower than a green run… it is less steep than the hill we have to walk up to our flat, to put it in mathematical perspective it is probably round a 10 degree angle, and even on this minor angle… I was rubbish. My problem was stopping…..yes I could not stop on this essential flat plain of land. Anna however was a natural, and was being sent higher and higher on the mini-Moose where the angles were progressing to larger degrees of acuteness. Most people progress in the 2hours lesson from the mini-Moose to the Might Moose, a short green run for beginner skiers, Anna with her natural flair for turning and stopping should have, but as I later found out the instructor thought it would ‘knock my moral’ if Anna was sent to more challenging terrain than the baby-baby slope. After our lesson we transferred ourselves to the Mighty Moose. The distance of the Mighty Moose does not merit a chair lift, it is instead a T-bar thing which you shove between your legs and let it slide you upwards and then offload at the flattened part at the top. Anna went in front of me…so I followed her lead, bear that in mind…..the sign at the top of the MM says OFFLOAD HERE….Anna seeing this sign….offloaded…while still on the upward slope…in her skis…this resulted in a slight ski backward panic and Anna falling face first into the snow…I apparently thought this was the norm…and followed suit…I blame myself for the my ungraceful fall, it serves me right for being a sheep. Once at the top, the problem was how to get down again, the obvious answer would be to ski down, so we tried…Anna’s stopping skills had decreased, and the afternoon was spent with us sliding down the hill, half on our bums and half on our skis, our poles flying in the air, and the sounds of our screams as we hurtled down the hill not coping well with our momentum.

Since this initial experience we have improved, Anna more so than me, and we have even become ski and ski boot owners…not poles as we feel the hinder more than help, we have progressed the longer slopes of the Deer even though my heart will always belong with the Moose. I have had one minor hiccup on my ways to developing skills, which involved me being a complete unreasonable crazy person. I basically had a tantrum within 10 minutes of having my boots on (after the 20 it took me to put them on). We got to the top of the MM I had a hissy fit flung myself on the ground and refused to move, stating I was going home….yes at 23 years of age I am massive brat. My friends left me there to sulk and ski patrol came and offered me a lift down to the bottom….remember this wasn’t even a long slope, no chair lift, I was literally around 200 yards from the bottom, and I was being offered a lift down because of grumpiness, bad day, I obviously refused.

Other than skiing, the rest of my time is filled with work, and going out, my weeks are pretty much flying by where I never know the time or the day at any given moment. I am fully enjoying my job, I make excellent money through tips, and the people I work with are all very fun, and as the first few weeks haven’t been that busy, I have literally just been hanging out. I however am unsure if I made the best first impression on all my new lovely work friends, as before I worked any shifts I went to the work Christmas party. I personally had a ball of the time… I was quite nervous about going as I hadn’t met anyone, but the open bar seemed to work wonders on my friendliness, and that combined with the fact it was my birthday the next day and the owner was handing out tequila shots at an alarming rate, resulted in me having no recollection of the end party and no idea how I got off the mountain. My last snippet of memory from the party was lying on the ground in a sumo suite unable to get up as my tiny limbs didn’t reach the end of the arms or legs… imagine upturned turtle lying on a beach, or better yet a beached whale.

I am fully aware that it is now 2011, and I have missed out Christmas and New Year tales… but I started this quite a while ago… so you can wait for that in my next instalment.

Happy New Year!

Highway to death..

I am officially employed, and so is Anna, although not by the resort, by ‘partner’ companies…which give you no benefits at all, but how can I complain I have a job, and I am dam well grateful for it, wages are enough of a benefit for me. I am a hostess/waitress for the Lizard Creek lodge, and I’m hoping that what I make in tips will be able to purchase my ski pass…yes yes I have changed my tune about tipping since I got here...please tip away, the balancing act I shall be performing with food laden plates I now consider worth an extra few dollars, and maybe even a few more dollars after that for my award winning ‘it was such a pleasure serving you’ smile. Anna, with her keen eye to detail and her mother as her apparent role model (as she stated in her interview) managed to get a job in housekeeping, I would normally say that she would be very good at this, but I am looking around our room and its definitely not just my side that’s a little messy….I’m sure she’s scowling as she reads this. Anyway we both have jobs, and Anna started a couple of days ago, because she had started work it meant that she was unable to come on our very exciting road trip to Calgary, to pick up Mill’s other half, Babs. But before I get onto our trip…I will first tell you about the legend of the Griz.

Fernie is well known for its amazing powder, which over the last few days I have experienced as I trudged through the fine snow on my way to and from the flat… as that’s right, the snow is finally here. But what is responsible for this amazing snow, and when it arrives? Air circulation? Altitude? Latitude? No, no, no… a better question is WHO is responsible? Who decides when the sky opens ups and lets powder fall….. The Griz, that’s who.

As legend goes, deep in a cave of a grizzly bear, high up in the mountains of Fernie, a baby boy was born, he was born in the cruel and hostile winter of 1879. Sometime later, the bear awoke, and a battle to the death occurred between the hungry savage bear and the child, but surely the child would have no luck against such a creature? The noise of the battle was heard by the towns people, and the next day they set out to seek the source of the noise, they found nothing, but one man swore he saw a child playing in the snow and rocks, with the skin of a bear draped around him, but no one took his claim seriously and the incident was forgotten. Years later a group of ski-tourists were climbing around what is now the resort area, and when they looked up towards the summit of the mountain they saw the frame of a massive man, shoulder 6ft across, draped in the skin of a grizzly bear and in his hand he held a giant musket, which he shot towards the sky, the more he shot, the more powder fell. This wild bear man, is the Griz… and he is responsible for the snow.

Now this legend is all very well, and I am very excited by the knee deep snow which I can see through my window…but I would have appreciated if the Griz could have held off the snow just one day, because the Griz’s antics very nearly killed us. It is really unfair of me to put all the blame on the Griz, the decision to drive to Calgary in the snow and ice was after all our own.

Milly was always going to go to Calgary to pick up Babs, and what type of awful friend would I be if I made her do the 4 hour journey on her own….and a road trip sounded quite fun. The trip was perfectly timed for me as Fernie does not have a phone shop… and I required one, as on Monday I accidently dropped my phone down the toilet… while it was flushing. Now in English toilets, I’m quite sure that the main issue would be that the phone would have sucked up loads of water, and that it had been at the bottom of a disgusting toilet, but here I didn’t even have a chance to have these concerns, as the crazy powerful flush took my phone away as I just watched in drunken awe, a dead fish couldn’t have disappeared faster. Now if anyone in England would like to test this at home, I would be very interested to find out the results.

Back to our trip to Calgary…we borrowed a friend’s 600 dollar car, obviously equipped with everything we needed… except winters tires, a rear window screen wipers, and oh yeah it had dying headlights, but it would get us from A to B…safely? We prepared ourselves the night before, the roads were clear, the weather was cold…not yet snowy. But overnight, the Griz struck, he shot his musket in the air, and we woke to find everything covered in snow… and it was still falling, this did not deter us though, what’s a little snow? Milly’s driven in snow before, it’s all good. Within the first 10 minutes we had encountered our first hitch…we didn’t know how to put petrol in the car…no not because we are women and incapable of such tasks, but because the car was old school, somewhere in the car was a button which let us open the petrol thing (I say thing because I am one of those girls who doesn’t really know car stuff…but Milly isn’t) so we spent half an hour looking like fools while the petrol pump man watched us fuss around, when the task was finally done, we went to pick up the girls, Kate and Rachel, two English girls who we have been hanging out with. In all honestly the drive on the way wasn’t that bad, we drove past cars that had obviously been abandoned on the sides of the road because of the snow, but we were going okay, the roads were icy, but Milly handled it well, a few sharp stops here and there but we made it to Calgary. We were planning on having a bit of a shopping day while we were in a big city, however our errands seemed to take 3 hours and I achieved nothing apart from getting a new phone and it was time to get Babs.

Of course Milly and Babs had a beautiful reunion, and I’m sure it was made even better by the crowed car of girls who weren’t his girlfriend also greeting him, everyone loves a third, fourth and fifth wheel in romantic moments. With Milly and Babs reunited and loved up, Kate began the long drive home which we soon realised would not be as simple as the drive there, the safety of daylight had disappeared.

The first 45 minutes went well, beside the petrol light flashing for a little longer than we felt comfortable with, so we headed off the highway in hope of finding fuel, which turned out to be easy enough, and we even had a little pit stop at MacDonalds (of course road trip and maccas go hand in hand). We and the car were all fueled up and ready to go, the difficulty came when we were trying to find a way of the 2A and onto the 2 in a homebound direction, in our map muddle, and the on-and-offing of the car lamp we suddenly swerved of the icy road and found ourselves door deep in a snow ditch…with not a chance of getting out. Milly, Babs and I got out of the car, in hope that lightening the load would maybe make it more movable….Rachel… who we hadn’t realised was stuck in the other side of the car without the option to get out, meanwhile merrily carried on with her knitting in the front seat, as if this was a perfectly reasonable situation, although I understand her reasoning, because if you don’t knit.. you can only cry… we were stuck in minus something conditions, surrounded by door deep snow,# 3 and half hours from Fernie….I would have loved some knitting to distract me. A passer-by did stop and attempt to help us lug our car out of the snow but to no avail…matters were then made worse by the Police. PC Grumpy-stiltskin was horrible, flashing his torch in our eyes like we were reckless youths, who clearly must have been speeding, high, or drunk, and not the innocent responsible(ish) young adults that we are. After some questioning on why we were driving a car which wasn’t ours, and if the owner knew we had it, oh and some more torch flashing, he eventually helped find a tow, and informed us that they were backed up for hours so we were likely to be stuck in the freezing cold till then…. Thanks mate. Luckily grumpy was wrong, and a tow arrived within half hour…. This however was long enough for me to start losing feeling in my fingers because of the cold, and then the tow man, to get us out of the way, made us stand in the snow ditch, I initially didn’t mind this as I have recently purchased snow boots for -40 conditions… and this was nowhere near -40, but it seemed standing in the snow ditch for another half hour was too much for my shoes to handle and my feet were become increasingly unhappy, in fact I’m pretty sure my toes had frozen inside my boots and were threatening to snap off. 86 dollars, 50 frozen toes and me getting chucked out of 7/11 for loitering later… we were back on the road, and the snow had started to fall again. As we drove further out of the city, darkness descended more as the street lights got taken away from us, then we saw a light....a flashing light… red and blue in colour….the police…and it was our favourite officer, officer Grumpy-stiltskin, who greeted us with ‘Oh you guys are having a bad night aren’t you, I hope you know what you were doing wrong!?’ Turns out our headlights weren’t even coming on anymore! He left us with instructions to leave full beam on and sent us on our away again. I don’t know if he thought he left us with advice that would improve our journey, because he certainly did not. Driving in complete darkness, with full beam on, and snow falling towards the windscreen, absolutely does not improve visibility, if anything, it causes more panic, because all you can see is snow hurtling towards you and nothing else, Milly’s driving was amazing, and she coped with having our lives in her hands very well, but I can honestly say that I was quite sure I was going to die, it was terrible. Hours passed with us driving at the fastest pace we could manage and not being able to see anything until we decided to stay in a motel, which I never thought I would really experience unless I was married woman having an affair or… a prostitute, it was quite nice though.

The next day we set off again, although our journey hardly improved in the daylight, as dusts of snow meant we could see nothing, but a 360 spin on the highway, and the swerving out of the way of 3 cars coming towards us later… we made it back.. nerves fried, but back and unharmed.

We have been in Fernie for two weeks now, so I should have heaps to write about…but I don’t. The end of October/November are dead months in Fernie. We all had our interviews, Milly successfully got a job at the Lost Boys Café as a waitress/’greek chef’, but Anna and I have still been waiting on our replies…. I unfortunately found out this morning that I was not successful, even though I was definitely VERY charming in my interviews, this basically means goodbye free ski pass, good bye half price rentals and good bye free lessons. This should put in a worse mood than I’m in, but handily having been here two weeks I have collected enough friends in each department at the resort that this will hopefully not end up being the most expensive problem in the world and there is still the chance that I may get a job in housekeeping aka toilet cleaner, the dream job of every university graduate.

Our two weeks here have basically consisted of watching a lot of films, pool, spending far too much money on going out, and desperately seeking jobs. Even though we have guaranteed jobs in Vancouver, desperation is still the word I would use for our job search, because we are most defiantly not leaving Fernie because a. we love it, and b. because the over-confidence we had in our ability to get jobs resulted in us signing a 6 month lease and giving up 800 dollars of our non-existent money for our first month’s rent and security deposit.

I originally though that Fernie would be lacking in many vital attributes required for city folk, but i turns out I don’t need a lot, give me a swimming pool, a couple of bars, an amazing bagel shop and Canadian Tire the all-purpose shop and I’m good to go, oh and not forgetting a supermarket. The supermarket here however does unfortunately, or fortunately, have the unusual ability to make you regret your porky decisions even before you enter… it goes by the name Overwaitea… yes like fatty put down those biscuits before you become over-weighty. Although the supermarket has discouraging name, everywhere else is happy to provide me with an insulating layer be it through Rocky Mountain Beer or through amusingly named bagels e.g ‘please brie mine’; I’m just waiting for the romantic moment where prince charming buys my this bagel as a gesture of his love.

Talking of prince charming… or just men in general, I very embarrassingly got taken away by a Fernie ski season regular while innocently talking to a male friend, and told ‘not jump on the first guy I see’ as the ratio of men to women is 3:1, I believe she mentioned the words ‘sausage-fest’ and with those parting words of wisdom she sent me back to go awkwardly go finish my conversation, with the paranoid feeling that she was watching me, making sure I wasn’t whore-ing myself, and considering herself the guardian angel of promiscuity.

Halloween has also come and gone, and was more successful than our previous attempt to throw ourselves into ghoulish state-of-mind, we crafted, we dressed up, we sung karaoke (badly) and we danced… then I ran-away back to the hostel because ‘I needed a sandwich’.

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Seeing as we are in North America we wanted to embrace their cultures, you know massive pizza, Starbucks and the very important October holiday of Halloween. Walking around Vancouver we were inundated with flyers from costumed theatre groups, for the many, many, month long Halloween events that were happening, there were parties, haunted houses and ghost trains, some of them looked like they could be truly frightening… some not so much. I was very enthused to try out one of these scary delights…my choice, and I will take responsibility for this bad decision, as I do remember the words ‘Come on guys, this will be amazing!’ coming out my mouth, was the Stanley Park Alice in Wonderland Halloween ghost train. We timed our journey to the park so that we would be able to get the last train which was at 9.30, quite an early finish time for a spooky ghost train really...hmmm. Although we did managed to make the train, we had a dramatic journey there, as we think the bus changed numbers and location while we were on it without telling us… that must have been what happened, because there no way we all mistook the number 6 bus for the number 5….yes that must have been what happened. When we finally got there we realised that this haunting, spooky event….was for the under 7’s but with the huge amount of effort it took to get there I was insistent on wasting the 8 dollars the train cost only to realise the error of my ways when the majority of the set was floating ‘scary’ cardboard cut outs, and an actress playing Alice who has a short battle with a dragon…using her trusty lightsaber… must have been the Lewis Carrol-George Lucas Version.

In other news... we also went to Capilano Bridge, “Vancouver’s top tourist attraction”, which is a 450ft suspension bridge. From my childhood memories I remembered the bridge as a death trap made of rope and wood, with huge gaps in so children could fall off, but it seems in the 18 years since being here my memories were greatly exaggerated as it is very sturdy and made of metal...so I was pretty safe, my scary description did however result in a massive anti-climax for Milly.

Then it was time, time for our 18 hour trip to Fernie… woe.