Week Three, Part 1: Parental Supervision Required

Drat! Just when I thought I’d gotten away, my mother Shawna and stepfather Jack decided to spend their vacation in British Columbia!

They arrived on June 13th and met me after I finished work. We went out to Budgie’s Burritos for dinner, at my request. The food was really good, really spicy, and really vegetarian-friendly!

Me and my folks!

…To be honest, even though I rolled my eyes when my parents first told me they were planning to visit, my attitude changed after the two weeks I’d spent in Richmond. When they arrived, I was actually very happy to see them. It was comforting to see a familiar face in this strange new place!

But not everything was going so well for me. I tried to renew my AirBnB rental until July 1st, when I’d move into my new apartment, but someone else had already booked it after June 15th!

Week Two: Apartment-Hunting Boogaloo

I’m so forgetful–I didn’t include the most interesting thing that happened to me at the end of the first week. But since it happened on Sunday (June 5th),  I guess you could say it happened at the beginning of the second week, depending on where you’re from. On Sunday evening, I took a ride on the SkyTrain down to the waterfront of Vancouver, to meet up with my cousin Ariana!
The SkyTrain gave me a breathtaking view of Richmond, Vancouver, and the river between them. But that was just the start.
After meeting up with Ariana, we sat down to a hearty meal at Steamworks, right near the waterfront of Vancouver. We caught up while eating freshly-baked pretzel and some kind of horseradish mustard, and discussed everything from US politics to how big a change living on your own can be. After, we got some decadent but messy gelato (I don’t know “the art” of cleanly eating gelato/ice cream yet) while walking around Canada Place on the waterfront. The vista was truly extraordinary–Anna was kind enough to take a picture (see below), but it doesn’t fully capture how grand the scenery is.

As for my job, I did more training this week. I feel like I have a good grasp of what my employer does and how my work fits into it. In brief, they provide library and knowledge management software. It lets the public view items held by a library or museum, and it lets the staff manage their collection. My role will be to find solutions for bugs and glitches that are reported in the software. My coworkers seem like very nice and intelligent people, and so far things are going very smoothly.

Homesickness set in pretty hard this week. I kept thinking about everything I left behind, and my old life in Peterborough, ON was on my mind constantly. Call it bizarre, but I dreamt about my dog Penny several times–for some reason I was really worried about her. I recovered as time went on, but it still hurts to think about just how far away I am from my friends and family.

I also did a lot of apartment hunting, this week and the one before. I sent out requests to a lot of places, but of course received very few answers. Because I was hoping to move into an apartment before July 1st, I was extending my AirBnB rental in installments, which meant I could get kicked out if someone else booked my rental for the following week, before I did. It was quite stressful, and tedious.

Finally, after much searching, stressing, and waiting, I found an apartment on Friday (June 10th)! 8D It’s a one-bedroom unit in the first floor of a house. There’s a clothes washer and dryer in the unit, and utilities are included in the rent.
It’s in a very convenient spot; my workplace is only 20 minutes away by bus, to the east. The downtown area is about the same distance away, to the southwest.
The downside is that I can’t move in until July 1st, which means paying for more time in someone else’s house, via AirBnB. Not the worst arrangement, but I’d rather have the privacy of my own place.

The First Week (AKA The Pilot Episode)

Well, I made it. And I’m still alive out here.

The journey from Toronto to Richmond was all right, and my first day went fairly well.
Though I made the mistake of trying to find a restaurant for dinner during a storm… and got soaked. :/

Walking around on May 28th… before the rain.

Thankfully, the weather’s been much more even-tempered, sunny and warm since then.

I started my new job this week! I’ve just been doing training since then, but my new coworkers gave me a warm welcome and have been very supportive.
My trainer’s given me a lot of good information about housing in Richmond–I can’t thank him enough for that.

I’ve already spent a lot of time researching apartments, and I looked at a couple
after I arrived. One seemed like a good deal–one bedroom in a new house, shared laundry available–but I discovered when I went there that the place was a basement unit. The windows were just small slots at the top of each room! That, coupled with the tiled floors throughout the apartment, made it feel like a cave. Didn’t seem right for me.

I don’t know what I would have done without my Compass Card and the local transit system. Without a driver’s license and without a bicycle, the only way to travel any significant distance in this region is by bus. The SkyTrain is also very impressive; it’s totally automated and the price is very reasonable on weekends and holidays.

I’ve seen some interesting things while waiting for the bus, by the way. …Like this huge tree, for example–check it out!

Haven’t seen one of those in Ontario