Well its been almost a week since we waved Oz goodbye and arrived in the city of glass. Now looking at our time here I can make a few reflections.

1. I sound a lot more Australian than I thought I did. While the lot downunder may think I sound super-Canadian, I really don’t. Talking to the Vancouverites, I can hear myself sounding so aussie. Maybe I should stop saying things like “flat out like a lizard drinking” and “chuck a sickie this arvo”. I wonder how long it will take for my accent to acclimatize? (< - note the “z”

2. Australians really are tall. While living in Sydney I found myself feeling short for the first time in my life. Even some of my best aussie friends refer to me a as a hobbit. I thought maybe I had just never noticed being short before. But now that I’m back, I really am average height again. Jaime’s noticed (and enjoying) the lack of giants in Canada. Must come from having to duck down to enter the igloos.

3. The air is beautiful. According to the news the air here is currently at “bad” levels of airborn particles. Vancouver on a bad day is so much clearer than Sydney on a good day. Walking home tonight I could smell flowers, grass and the beach (the good beach, not that low-tide smell). Of course, this is in between the great wofts of air that smell like pot.

4. Slow news days. Thanks to a culture of crime and serious sensationalisation, Aussie news is always very serious with massive crime and horror to report. Vancouver does not have any equivalents of “Today Tonight”. While there is a small amount of crime, accidents and annoying politicians doing stupid things here, they still have to fill the news with human interest stories. One day they had a story about how a grizzly bear in a Golden (an interior town) animal reserve had managed to escape his enclosure twice. The first time he was recaptured near a wild female bear. Apparently, the keepers at the animal reserve felt he was getting a bit frisky, so they decided to neuter this bear named “Boo”. Well Boo wasn’t having any of this, so he escaped the second time and is still at large (hopefully getting a little action). What makes it so amusing, was that this made the news for a second night in a row. On the second night they had a indepth look at how Boo had escaped. Apparently he lifted a 400 pound door, shorted out and then scaled a 12 foot electric fence. I guess the thought of having his cajones removed was motivation enough to Boo.

5. Eating out = downfall. Jaime and I had grand plans to eat healthy and get fit when we got here. But that plan is being thwarted by the fantastic food here. So many good, inexpensive restuarants. I think we’re going to have to use some serious willpower not to put on weight. But then again, the scales should go up a bit, we’ve both just gotten taller.