First Impressions of Canada

Canada is definitely more of a foreign country than I thought it would be! I have yet to get Canadian money (every grocery store tells me that they won't give cash back when I use a VISA which is all I have), there is a Canadian accent although I haven't heard too many "eh"s, it is a very diverse city with a lot of asians, and the road system is horrible! Someone told me that Vancouver wasn't made for driving, it was made to be a city of pedestrians. This is very true. They have some of the strangest driving rules, such as no left/right turns at certain times of the day, and there often are not any left hand turn lanes so if a car needs to turn left, they block all the traffic behind them while waiting. And there is always traffic, no matter what time of day it is, and there are no freeways running through the city! Work is only a few miles away but it takes about 30 minutes to get there. As a result, I now take the bus.

When I first arrived at my apartment on campus at University of British Columbia, I had no roommates! However, the previous tenants left me a dirty apartment, particularly the kitchen with all sorts of dirty dishes and molding food. It made me feel much more grateful for BYU's cleaning checks. After a thorough cleaning, I felt much better about life. Other than the dirtiness, the apartment is beautiful! It is more like a townhouse with two stories, 4 bedrooms (all single rooms), 1.5 baths, and lots of windows letting in sunshine.

I finally got my first roommate yesterday, her name is Ivonne and she is from Mexico City. She is very Christian and incredibly nice! She told me that she was living in another apartment on campus a few days before but one of her roommates always had her boyfriend in her room and it made Ivonne feel uncomfortable so she requested to move. She goes to SLC all the time to ski and she immediately asked if I was Mormon and was very happy to see that I read the Bible. I think we were meant to be roommates! And I was getting worried that I would be alone forever because I checked the box on the housing application that said "I dont drink and would prefer to live with other non-drinkers". There is at least one other non-drinker on campus!