Raccoons in Vancouver

We landed in VC (Vancouver) in the afternoon, but having gone 20 hours without decent sleep, I was pretty pooped out. We were picked up by Mr. Chen, a friend of dad's from church. We were going to stay at their house for the next few days. The house was huge; we had the entire basement floor to ourselves - complete with living room, bathroom, 2 bedrooms and even a kitchen! Oh, and a washer and dryer. I have no idea what the Chen's were thinking when they bought the house - were they secretly planning on our arrival years before we even thought about visiting them?! No, calm down, nothing so sinister; simply amazing convenience.

In fact, it was so amazing that I dumped my bags in the living room and made a beeline for the bedroom, pulled the curtains down and fell instantly asleep.

Later that night I woke up to find every one putting away dinner and getting ready for bed. I didn't feel like sleeping so I ate the leftovers while they fell asleep and then I sketched for about 2 hours while watching the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on tv.




Our second day in VC (Vancouver) was all about Stanley Park - a huge green area with an aquarium and many flowers. The thing that impresses me about VC is that people take their yards very seriously. It's like a badge of honor or something, but the colors are dazzling - whites, purples and yellows. The scene feels very Mediterranean.

First, though, Mr. Chen took us to see his beautiful church. It's very different from either the grand cathedrals or the modern American/ Canadian church buildings. Most of it was clear glass; services are lit by natural sunlight. It's surrounded by natural woodland and there are crows perched on every other tree.





Sorry, got off track.


Stanley Park was pleasant, until we spotted raccoons. Then we were impressed. These raccoons weren't afraid of the people at all; one walked right passed me. I watched it as it approached, waiting for it to see me and run, but it just kept trucking on through. We hung around, watching the raccoons. They fished in the park's stream and ran around in the grass. They were very cute, but hard to get a decent picture of as they were so fast.


We spent most of the day in the aquarium. After the Kenting Aquarium and Zoo, though it seemed a bit small, but the selection of animals were very different from the Kenting though. They had sloths, alligators, and fishes from the Amazon.


We even saw Beluga whales, but we were sleepy by lunch time.

I have to say, the food here this rather ... expensive. A small plate of salad cost me $4.50 (multiply by 30). And the rest of the menu consisted of fries, burgers, and more fried things. We made our way back to the Chens' ASAP but on the way we got to see more of Vancouver city, which is delightful mix of modern and "classical-looking" buildings.



We had a much more simple dinner (in comparison to the lunch) of bread, jam and cherries.