Vancouver

Hey.

I made it to Vancouver! I had an interesting day yesterday. I hate flying. Not because I fear airplanes or anything like that, but because I always feel extremely rushed at the airports. Its like, once you get your boarding pass and get into security, bam, you better move as fast as possible. Oh well. So the flight itself was pretty ok. I was tired as hell though. It was about 4 hours from Chicago to Seattle. I sat at the window seat, the seat next to me was empty, and the one next to that a really nice grandpa sat. Everything was good, but, there was an annoying kid behind me that occasionally kicked my seat.

I made it to Seattle, and navigated the airport fairly easily. I had to wait in line at customer service at United for literally 1 to 1.5 hours. It sucked. I finally got my boarding pass and headed to the correct gate. The plane from Seattle to Vancouver was realllly tiny. It had propellers! The flight was 30 mins.

Arriving in Vancouver was easy. I had to go to Customs and they quickly showed me where to go next. I had to go to immigration after getting my bags, and by chance, saw my roommate. He got there about 1 and a half hours before me, but was stuck at agriculture forever because he had some plums... hah At immigration, the workers were kind of pushy, to the point of assholishness. The guy and girl helping me were pretty nice, and funny too. They told me that most people hate immigration officers and that they rank somewhere between meter-maids and lawyers. So i paid for my study visa and Justin mentioned the date his was good until, and I checked mine. It said I had to be out of Canada by Oct. 17th 2009. School doesn't end until Oct. 23 of 2009. So, i went back to immigration and they fixed it after some confusion.

We got a taxi to the apartment and passed through some very nice looking residential areas. Its cool to see the ocean and mountains too. I met my landlord, a very personable woman who is very welcoming. We got food after putting our stuff down. We walked around the city for a while, looking at stuff and buying some essentials. At one point, as we were walking down the street, i noticed that the English I heard being spoken gradually changed to Japanese, and Korean. Then I noticed I was the only white person.. it was strange, but cool.

There are tons of Asians here. Most are Chinese (from Hong Kong), Japanese, and Korean. I heard quite a bit of Spanish too, suprisingly. I read that Vancouver has a pretty sizable Peruvian population too. Oh, and if Mahasti is reading this, I met a Persian woman too!

So today, I walked around some more. We went to get more stuff for the apartment and walked all the way to near china town. The area went from upscale stores like Gucci, versace and whatnot, to crackhead filled street! Yea... China town was huge.

We went back home, and on the way, saw a little hot dog stand on the street corner. what was interesting is that it had like 20 people waiting in line. So, we had to see what was up. It was this http://www.japadog.com/en/ Its Japanese hot dogs, if that makes any sense. The guy taking the orders had a laminated sign over his shirt that said "I apologize, my English is very poor." or something like that. It was funny. As for the hot dogs, I had a miso mayo hot dog. It was on a toasted sesame bun, and the hot dog itself was called Kurobuta (meaning black pig in Japanese. Kurobuta is 100% pure all-natural Berkshire pork. Its the so-called "Kobe beef" of pork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef

It was one of, if not the most, delicious hot dogs Ive ever had. I cant even call it a hot dog, because the meat was actually meat. The miso added an interesting sweetness to it all and it was topped of with sprouts. I will definitely be going here again.

So, that was the excitement of my 2 days. I have orientation at school tomorrow, so I will get to meet all of my classmates. I'm pretty excited.