Again an early wake up and a quick breakfast and we are off on the sky train to Granville Island. In Granville Island, there is a really really big toy store. Inside there were so many toys that it felt like Charlie the Chocolate Factory but it was filled with toys instead. In this amazing toy store, we played around with all the toys but the toys were too expensive and so we returned empty handed. No one was willing to waste like $7 on a small stuffed animal when one can usually get one at like one at $3-4 in Ontario. We looked at other shops that were available such as an art store, small first nation stores and a really weird store. (its actually not weird but some out of the ordinary items that are usually sold). Before I talk about the weird store, I will talk about the first nation store that I walked into. Inside there were different kinds of jewelry and many household items. I decided to purchase a really nice necklace and a small token that said “Spirit within”. This small token that looked really similar to a quarter had a heart shaped with a bird flying out of it. Not sure why but I felt a connection with it and so I bought it.
In the weird shop there were so many different weird items they sold. It included a tap that would display a red light if the water was hot and a blue light if the water was cold. So when the water is gushing out of the tap, you can determine its temperature by looking at its colour. At first I thought the tap was putting in food colouring to make the water have the colours. On second thought, this food colouring would run out if you used the tap many times. Therefore, I decided to read the box which told me a fluorescent light would light it and that had solved my problem. Other weird items were a mini mouse that was a vacuum cleaner and a boxer that can be used as a hat. I forgot the rest of the things but it was really neat to see these interesting products that you would never encounter in a regular store.
Then we took a long walk along a river to do some sightseeing. Basically, we were staring a river that separated the land we were walking on and Vancouver. It was a long and extremely hot walk. I was envious of those bikers that kept wooshing by us because they were able to experience some wind and they would soon be out of the blazing sun. Many of us were forced to put on sun tan lotion but I refused because sun tan lotion felt so sticky and I just didn’t like it. There were many rules that we had to follow during our Vancouver exchange such as … Walking in a single-filed line, no J-walking which meant we had to go to a traffic light before we could cross the road and having a curfew. There were many other rules but these were a few that I could list out. From what I heard, past Vancouver exchange people had said that if we broke these rules we would have to do push-ups which was known as POL “Position of Learning”. That seemed like nonsense to me and so I pushed their advice aside. We had walked past a Science World which was really similar to the Science Centre in Toronto except that the Science World was for kids. Although we had walked past it, we were not able to go inside it. Firstly, it was too expensive and our organization could not afford it. And secondly, we had a very tight schedule ahead of us. In my mind, I was like, what was the point of walking over an hour to see this building and being able to stand an arms width before it but not have a chance to go inside and explore it. I was a little mad but I held in my anger.
After lunch we went to Gastown. I cannot imagine what it would look like because I have never heard of it before. When we arrived, all I saw was a giant pole and apparently at 12 or something gas would blow out which was supposedly a tourist attraction location. So, we decided to wait for it and when it was time, I was not surprised to see 5 seconds of non-stop steaming before it stopped. This was very very interesting... NOT.. We waited like 15 minutes and all we saw as steam. This was just terrible. Afterwards we were led to a very famous shopping street and shopped around for a bit. I came across a few street meat stands and they sold Japanese hot dogs and other different kinds as well. Way more variety than the ones we have in Toronto.
We had dinner at SUCCESS, the place where the Vancouver people had their meetings and stuff. It was pretty good and filling. We had our Welcome Ceremony and a Training after dinner. It was then that I found out that hiking boots was a must for the upcoming expedition. I was so worried because usually for my expeditions I wore running shoes for them and I did not bring or had any hiking boots. I was so screwed and had to ask for help from the counselors. I felt bad for making them worry about me as well.
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