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.