Well I’m back in Canada and enjoying my holiday at home. So what have I done? Well let’s do a little travel diary so I can remember my trip and you can see what life in Canada is like.

July 13th – The last day in Beijing, it’s been four years since I went back home and that is far too long to stay away without a break. I have found myself getting irritated lately by things that usually would never have bothered me at all so I realized it was time to go back home and see my family. My plan so far is as follows, back home for a month and a week, three weeks in the Vancouver area seeing the sites and then three more weeks around the Toronto area doing the same.

Left Beijing at 4:30 PM on an Air Canada flight and arrived in Vancouver 5 hours earlier that same day. I’m a time traveler! The flight was about 11 hours long which is much shorter than it used to be, and the plane was awesome. each seat has it’s own seat with it’s own movies and everything. Air Canada has upgraded! Made the flight very simple. Not only was the flight faster and easier but Canada Customs was fast too! Used to take about half an hour standing in line, but they’ve installed machines to automate it so it only took about 10 minutes and it was all done! Hurray for the Vancouver Airport!

After landing, getting my bags I booked my bus and was on my way to Vancouver Island. My Mom, Brothers and Father all live on Islands off the coast of Vancouver so I’ll be wandering around that area for the next three weeks. The Bus took me to the Ferry and the Ferry took me across the Ocean to Nanaimo where my Mom met me with my brother’s daughter, Seraphim. Drove back to their house in Parksville and relaxed for the evening chatting with my Mom.

July 14th – Today felt terrible, bad case of Jet Lag. Jet Lag is the feeling you get when traveling very far in a short period of time and your body doesn’t really know when is night and when is day so you sleep a lot but never feel well rested. Everyone else here is working as they don’t get summer holidays and Seraphim is in Pre-school during the day. But she gets off class before they get off work so I went to pick her up and we played at home reading books and listening to music until everyone else got home. Was a nice evening and got to spend time with my Niece who I hadn’t seen in a long time. She’s much bigger than last time I was here and very smart. talks all the time and always full of questions.

July 15th – Woke up today to a lovely little deer walking around in our back yard. Other than that, it’s similar to the day before, still feeling bad and sleeping lots. Everyone is working and Seraphim is in school. Walked around Parksville a little as I’ve never been here before. Fairly typical small town Canada anyway. The only problem so far is the weather, its’ been raining since I got home and still cold, apparently before I came it was sunny and warm but not now. Spent the day relaxing and then played with Seraphim again in the evening. Watched “O’ brother Where Art Thou” with her, such a great movie!

July 16th – Today my Mom had the day off, we heard there was a festival on down on the beach with all sorts of fun activities so off my Mom, Seraphim and I went. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, on the plus side the festival was empty anyway so it wasn’t a big loss. After we dropped by the house to grab my camera we took off to go see a town which I remember visiting when I was about 13 years old, Coombs. Coombs was always famous for it’s farmer market that had a grass roof and two goats who lived on the roof.

Since last time I was there Coombs has grown a lot, tons of new places and shops and lots of people wandering around, the goats are still there but not living on the roof when we went there anyway. Sadly the weather is still not all that nice but not too bad when we first arrived anyway. We walked around checking out all the stores and new places, there is tons of Chinese goods there now and lots of carvings direct from China, the strange thing is about 1/3 involved naked breasts or butts in their carvings. After about two hours of walking around we went into what is probably the greatest food store I have ever seen, health, organic food as far as the eye can see and every tasty, amazing thing you could ever want. I will go back there later in the week when there is less people. We buy a flatbread (kind of like a small pizza) and a couple butter pecan tarts (so good) and go outside to leave only to see that while we were inside it started pouring down rain. I’ve never seen so much rain so suddenly since Beijing had that day of flooding a while back. We jump into the car and head home to rest and relax.

July 17th – Today was the first day the sun was out a little, even a little warm for most of the day! it was lucky because it was a day to go back to the beach and see the festival in full swing. Went and saw lots of sand sculptures, was some amazing work and even more amazing because the night before there was a huge rain storm so many of the sand sculptures were destroyed and had to be rebuilt in half the time!

We wandered through the sand area and then went to sit on the beach for a while. The beach there is pretty amazing as it’s very shallow, when the tide is out the beach is HUGE, but when the tide comes back in it’s a very small sliver of a beach. Walking around the beach when the tide is out is great because there are millions of small crabs running around everywhere trying to make sure you don’t step on them.

Later We went to see the Kite festival, apparently it was much bigger the year before, I think the bad weather kept lots of people at home but still had quite a few kites out to look at and the World Champion Kite flier was there, he apparently can fly 39 different kites at one time but that day he was just using 3. Was still pretty nice to see and there was lots of kites out flying in the sky. Also lots of little snack cars so we caught some French Fries, some chocolate Milk and had a small picnic on the beach. After an hour or so of relaxing on the beach the weather started turning colder again so we walked home and had some supper.

It’s nice to be home though I do miss all my great friends back in China. Hope you are all having as great of a summer as I am and will see you all when back in Beijing!

Ethan

LOTS more pictures on my renren.