parkland somewhere near Langleylanded sleepless and unsure in vancouver while the hometown hockey team lost to some other country, causing uproar in the airport. 24 hours on a plane is a long time. Was met by my permaculture-mad friends J+T, and whisked away to begin 2 days of hard-core assimilation. This involved a park, a lake, a river, a dog, a starbucks, a community garden, a treefarm, a grafting lesson, a cookup, a supermarket of quaking proportions, a wormfarm, a genuine canadian breakfast with hashbrowns but sadly no maple syrup for the bacon, a mountain, some crunchy old snow, a squirrel, lots of driving, lots of highways, byways and general 8-lane freeway complexity, and a walk along the waterfront at Gastown.
first impressions of Canada, and particularly the outer suburbs of Vancouver, centre around an obscene amount of rainfall and a general fecundity, juxtaposed completely with the "sametown" feel of each suburb, and laced with an emphasis on the mall over the corner store. Filter coffee overflows everywhere, is mandatory, is essential, is assumed. Alot of things look the same each place we go, the cars are all new and very big. The grass is very very green. Houses are very perfect. Tulips everywhere. I find it all a bit scary.
But the company I'm in is grand and I cannot wait to come back and explore without the veil of jetlag and culture-shock.. plans are forming for a camping trip, and there's other community gardens I'm super keen to check out. I would like to spend time in amoungst all of these contradictions that crash together quite comfortably in this city. I'm aware, however, that my focus needs to be up in the mountains eastways from here, so I'm going to clamp down and come back.
first impressions of Canada, and particularly the outer suburbs of Vancouver, centre around an obscene amount of rainfall and a general fecundity, juxtaposed completely with the "sametown" feel of each suburb, and laced with an emphasis on the mall over the corner store. Filter coffee overflows everywhere, is mandatory, is essential, is assumed. Alot of things look the same each place we go, the cars are all new and very big. The grass is very very green. Houses are very perfect. Tulips everywhere. I find it all a bit scary.
But the company I'm in is grand and I cannot wait to come back and explore without the veil of jetlag and culture-shock.. plans are forming for a camping trip, and there's other community gardens I'm super keen to check out. I would like to spend time in amoungst all of these contradictions that crash together quite comfortably in this city. I'm aware, however, that my focus needs to be up in the mountains eastways from here, so I'm going to clamp down and come back.
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