Blackberries

Even though Rob's done this before, I'm new to this whole blogging thing, so I'll try to remember to post some quick updates now and then when we do something worth sharing.

Today we took a day trip out to a little town called Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Deborah's mom, Barbara, lives out there in a beautiful little A-frame house with an amazing view of the ocean and Vancouver Island in the distance. Deb bought the house about 20 years ago as an investment and her mom's been living there for the last 10 and has a great community there.

We went over to Gibsons on a 40 minutes ferry ride (beautiful views!) with Deb, Anna (Deb's daughter), and Anna's friend. Rob and I had no idea what to expect of our day's adventure but luckily came prepared with good shoes and sunscreen.

We spent the morning chatting and relaxing on Secret Beach, covered with nice, smooth stones and scattered driftwood. Then after some delicious home cooked food at Barbara's house, we all headed out with buckets in hand for the day's big event - BLACKBERRY PICKING!

Now, Rob said he's done this before, but I hadn't...blueberries - yes, but blackberries - never. I didn't even think I really liked blackberries. But the ones I ate while we were out there were delicious! We went to two of Barbara's favourite spots, the first of which was quite treacherous. Blackberry plants are really thorny!!!!! Who knew?! It made the first place more of a challenge though, and helped me just get into 'the zone'. I phased everything else out and just confronted each new plant without any thoughts or stress and just went after the berries. It was actually very meditative somehow.

MANY buckets later (and after a quick stop at the second picking location), we went back to Barbara's to get cleaned up, relax, read, and get our energy back up. It was really sunny and getting those fresh berries was hard work! Then came another delicious home cooked meal for dinner and a quick dash to catch the ferry home with Deb's brother, Mark (Rob enjoyed his quick wit in the short time we spent with him). We took in some more views on the ferry and then came back to our lovely home with Deb.

We're all ready to take on some unpacking and furniture building in our apartment tomorrow...and hopefully our first night in our new place!! Wish us luck!

~Sara

Adventures Ahead

Hello World!

It seems like everybody is blogging adventures these days. Since Sara and I have decided to move to Vancouver for a year, we want to be cool too and share our adventures with the internet.

We flew into Vancouver on August 15, a week ago today. We found a place to live [the green building at the intersection] that is very close to Kits Beach and we're hoping to move in over the next couple of days. In the meantime we're staying with Deborah, a friend of my dad's from his fisherman days. [Factoid: Deborah and I were both born in Prince Rupert!]



Today was quite...well...impressive. Our mission was to start furnishing our apartment, and furnish we did. We rented a U-Haul cargo van and drove to all sorts of Craigslist pickups, Ikea, and Walmart. In the end, we acquired:

• Large couch (sofa bed - visitors welcome!), 2 footstools
• Coffee table, 2 side tables
• Solid wood bedframe (to go with the mattress and springboard we ordered yesterday)
  
• Dining room table and 4 chairs
• Bookcase
  
• Office chair
• 2 floor lamps
• TV stand

Despite some injuries in the process, we're both happy to have moved all this furniture into our new apartment.

-Rob