The next few days of our Canadian adventure kind of rolled into one as we were suddenly put into limbo when Stewart was offered a job interview for a position on the other side of the country. He applied for it back in August, so we assumed he wouldn’t hear anything now that it was two months later, but it turns out the recruitment process is a lot slower over here. Spoiler alert – he got the job!

Volunteering
We decided to give back to the community and get involved in a bit of volunteering. Ok, I’ll admit that this wasn’t an entirely selfless act. I was keen to continue to keep up on the world of recycling whilst job hunting and this seemed like a good opportunity.

Typical Vancouver it rained. The. Entire. Day. But we headed off optimistic that we could still enjoy ourselves. When we arrived we stood there smugly in our decent waterproof clothing, unlike a lot of others in their more fashionable attire and declined the option of a disposable poncho. A few hours in and we were regretting the no poncho decision and also wished we’d worn our waterproof trousers.

It wasn’t all bad though, we set up lots of recycling stations for the Rock and Roll Half Marathon, helping the event to achieve zero waste and Stewart got the fun job of driving around in a golf buggy all afternoon (he was delivering bits and pieces round the site, and wasn’t just on some escapade)!

Queen Elizabeth Park
On one of the days when it wasn’t raining we headed over to Queen Elizabeth Park in the south of the city. The park is meant to offer ‘tremendous mountain views’ and views of Vancouver, so despite it being a grey day we were hopeful. However it transpired that someone put some trees in the way of downtown so unfortunately we couldn’t see much but we did see some mountains! The park does also offer some mini waterfalls, gardens and a giant rhubarb plant so we enjoyed having a short wander around.

The real reason Stewart took me to this park became obvious later on when he announced that it was close to a mall which housed one of Vancouver’s Lego shops!

On the way home we stopped off at our favourite supermarket grocery store – Whole Foods – and were pleased to discover they had 25% off bulk food. Bulk food is a new concept to us but is a bit like pick and mix but without the mixing and with a lot more than just sweets (think nuts, flour, grains and dried fruit). Our parents will probably tell us that this was how all food came in the olden days before plastic was invented. Anyway, we stocked up on some yummy sweets, safe in the knowledge that because they were from Whole Foods they were most definitely healthy and we could happily stuff our faces on the way back.

Emma