“Hey Papa! Whut choo looking fo? You lookin foor some flowarhs?”

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This quote is probably the reason why you should, again, probably not spend longer than 50 seconds on the same street corner debating where to go next with your friend at East Hastings, if it is your first time in Vancouver and you are unsure of your bearings.

[Edited note: I’d like to make it clear that this post in no way reflects my views towards the homeless. In fact, I feel quite strongly about domestic poverty and have volunteered with innercity underprivileged youth before. My only intention was to describe my first impressions during my first trip to the downtown core. Continuing on…]

How did we get to E.Hastings?

Well, my friend and I decided to be adventurous and take our first trip downtown a few days ago. After spending some time on the Translink website (Oh, Translink trip planner, how my heart beats for you) we figured out a route to get to Chinatown.

So, we’re in Chinatown, passing all these typical asian markets, some small restaurants, lots of red signs. Of course it smells like roast duck, which I hope isn’t too gross since it seems everybody out here on the West Coast is uber health and/or environmentally-friendly conscious and eating roast duck contributes to my eco-foot print. Dammit. Okay, I try to help out in other ways… I’ll get back to that later.

Anyways, we decided to wander a little bit more and find ourselves on the aforementioned street. As my friend stops to take a picture of… a picture on the ground. This man begins to talk to us. That will definitely stay on my list of priceless Vancouver moments. But this post isn’t just about this infamous rue (I know you love my random french words that just slip in. For those of you that don’t “rue” = “street”.) This post is about Vancouver! Or as my french prof likes to say “Van-coo-vere”. Vancity. Whatever you like to call it.

Like I mentioned though, that incident was a few days ago. I’ve been downtown now three times and funny enough, each of these times I’ve mainly been eating.

What have I been eating, you may ask? Welll…

Anyone heard of Japadog!

Japadog [jap–uh-dawg]: A glorified hot dog stand located at the corner of Smithe and Burrad St. in Vancouver that sells “Japanese” hot dogs, which consists of your basic hot dog with Japanese flavouring, spices and/or sauces. Wasabi!

P.S. I’m totally adding this definition to urbandictionary.com because Japadog is apparently NOT defined there. I was kind of surprised and yes I looked it up then made my own definition.

My friend told me to get the #6 which includes onions, mayo and dried seaweed. It was good. But I was really hungry at the time, so I was totally bias. Definitely one of those things you have to try. Even though it was a little pricey for the poor-broke-student budget. I mean $7.65 for a hot dog? C’mon here. But I tried it. Would probably eat again. But why is this place so famous? I’m not too sure. I’m guessing it’s a real one of the kind but a whole load of sort of famous celebrities have been there. The only one coming to mind right now is Chris Columbus, the director of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. So yeah. Try it if you’re brave enough. That’s to all you folk who think seaweed is spicy. (Seriously? I don’t understand you people. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Just don’t understand you.)

The Old Spaghetti Factory! Brother-sister floor dinner in Gastown. Wooot. We’re so cool we play broken telephone and bond. I think the best part was when our table started pulling the books off the wall. Yeah that’s right. The OSF has really nice vintage decor with all these old books and stuff, like you’re in a library. And well being the curious bunch we are, we wanted to see if there was actually real books. Now that sounds kind of stupid, but these books could totally sell on EBay! At least they looked old enough (hence why they’re in an old spaghetti factory) to have some kind of monetary value. Back to the food, the spaghetti with clam sauce was what I ordered and I quite enjoyed it. I’m not really a food critic, I just love to eat good food. Honestly, like which culture doesn’t? But the OSF is a chain that I’ve been to before so although it was nice. Nothing real one of a kind. However, going to Gastown at night was really pretty because it’s the touristy section and they have all these lights in the trees.

Tomato! Brunch place at Broadway & Bayswater with The blogsquad met up and it was deeee-lish. It was nice having something other than Vector and a banana for breakfast (which has become my typical morning meal these days). The hot chocolate was really nice since it was such a miserable raining day too. Belgian waffles were quite tasty and most things (if not everything) is local, homemade and fresh! Definitely recommend this place for a nice brunch if you’re feeling to go out for a semi-special occassion in the morning.

So those have been my food adventures so far. If you find any good eats, be sure to let me know! Next time downtown, I’m definitely hitting the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Mmmmm candy apples here I come!

How did we get here?

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How the hell? Christmas. Christmas Eve last year.

No? Nobody else likes to break out into songs from Rent. (Rent: kind of amazing Broadway rock musical from 1996 about Bohemians living in NYC). Alrighty then. Check it out later.

Clearly my friend (and fellow blogger!) KrystalV like sneezed on me or something because her blogger’s block caught a hold of me too recently. But there isn’t enough room here for apologies for why I haven’t written something in the past seven days. The truth is I’ve gone from super-uber-dee-duper-excited, to holy-crap-information-overload-it’s-nice-to-meet-you, to pchyeahh-I’m-a-university-student, to omg-omg-omg-what-am-I-doing-in-a-second-year-french-course, and finally to Wow-I’m-here.

The long awaited here.

So let me explain. It’s almost like the five stages of grieving. Just completely not the grieving part.

Stage One: Move In Adrenaline

Move in day was crazy and now that I think of it the most exciting 24 hours on campus. In one day I went from packing up my Uncle’s trunk with piles of stuff. And then 15 hours later I was making a team pyramid with 8 people in some random guy’s dorm room. What? I was pumped up like A-Rod on steroids.

That first day sure seemed to last forever.

Stage Two: Meeting people like you’ll die if don’t introduce yourself to somebody new in the next 40 seconds .
This lasts for the first 48 hours of move-in. I’ve been incredible lucky that just after the first day at Totem, I met two really cool people I’d even go as far as already calling my friends now. (Considering the fact that I’ve only really known them for a week). I just say that because it’s strange how you spend a week hanging out with people and you can feel like you’ve been BFF’s since gr. 2 and you start reminding them about stuff from their hometown.
But living on rez, there’s a thousand and one things designed for first years to get to know each other. Such as the ice cream House social. This promotes mix ‘n’ mingling by literally luring down students with the promise of free ice cream, then forcing them to talk to people because everyone can only fit in the room if they are standing 3 inches apart.

As if being in a room that you can hardly breathe in wasn’t enough, students can easily get over any self-esteem issues by going to the pool party at the UBC Aquatic Centre. It is hil-LARH-rious watching kids trying to race on banana boats (aka. Yellow Styrofoam canoes) in a pool. Okay, that was me and my new found friends and anyone else we could gather around.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast at these events worthy enough to make a rocketship jealous. But it was like an A.D. D. kids dream since it’s impossible to focus on one thing.

Stage Three: IMAGINE.

I’m not going to lie, my expectation for Imagine Day were quite high after hearing about it from friends. Can I say it exceeded them? Not really. Although, I really did enjoy it because it was a positive motivational day where you could meet people that you were actually going to see again. Once we arrived at the Pep Rally it really does hit you that you are here.The figurative student that the President keeps talking about is really you. You’ve been chosen to be here. You deserve to be here. And now you are here. I realize now that it was amazing being surrounded by my entire incoming class of 2010 and that that will probably never happen ever again. But for that moment, we were all here together.

Stage Four: The anxiety and nervousness of classes actually starting.

When you live at Totem you have to schedule in and extra thirty minutes of walking time if you want to get anywhere. Some people say less. But I’ve come to realize people’s sense of time is not universal. If you have a class on the third floor (or higher) – goodluck. The phrase I find running through my head is “Oh jeeze, uni is going to make me fit.”

Another sentence I find myself commonly thinking is “Dammit, I should’ve worn pants today.” When you wake up at 6:40 a.m. for your class at 8 o’clock, don’t be fooled by that little crack of light shining through your window, which you are keeping closed because you’re trying to be as quiet as possible and not wake your roommate. It lies. It will be overcast, cloudy and have a percentage of precipitation higher than 70 once you walk out the door. This is your warning and future reminder to myself because I know this will happen to me again… tomorrow.

Overall, I get the impression that people are nervous about classes. In general, my profs don’t seem that bad. None have a crazy foreign accent, à la exception de mon prof du français. My goal is just to breathe, hopefully participate and not get overwhelmed. Let’s be honest. Right before my first class, I was kind of freaking out, thinking to myself “What am I doing? I’m not ready for this!”. If this is happening to you, my advice is to sit down, take a deep breath. Everybody’s a little nervous and that’s a good thing.

Stage Five: Finally starting to catch on to the phrase “I am UBC.”

I really can’t believe it’s only been a week. Already I have stayed up ‘til 4:00 a.m. eating Dominoes, watching Star Wars and randomly meeting drunken fellows fiercely debating over the best movies they’ve seen, shouted the loudest I could on the echo rock and walked lingeringly through the Rose Garden.

I’m figuring out that the campus is just made up of Malls and my keen Girl Guide intuition really does come in handy, considering I find myself without a map many a time.

Moral of the story: we’re all here and we’re all going to survive.

Originally I wrote this last night and wanted to sign off with “I’m off to dinner and a movie.” But now I’m off to brunch. So cheers!

I want to be the Pagemaster.

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Do you guys remember that movie? The Pagemaster?

Yeah, well neither do I much. For those of you who don’t let me fill you in on what I remember:

There was this movie that came out around 1994. It was about this young boy namd Richard Tyler. (Seriously? Two first names) played by none other than Macaulay Culkin(! Wait he made movies other than Home Alone?) who basically gets caught in a tremendous thunderstorm on his way to pick up some nails for his Dad. Lucky for Richy Rich, I mean um… Richard Tyler, our protagonist, he is able to take shelter in a library. And the movie continues…

Point of this story? Well a few days ago I made a short visit to UBC Bookstore to get as many of my textbooks as I could. This was on… Tuesday? If any of you are in Vancouver or just arrived you may be enjoying the lovely warm sunny day because on Tuesday there was a down pour. I was excited because I have yet to purchase some rain boots and got the chance to scope out the fashionable footwear on campus. But as I began looking for my books little did I know this would lead to an entire adventure. If only Fantasy, Adventure and Horror could have joined me.

I found some of my books in the bookstore, but as a future Arts One student there’s quite a few books on my list so I’m trying to save a buck or two. I knew that I wanted to check out the Discount Textbook store in the market. Located right above the McDonalds on 10th Ave. Walking distance off of campus. This place seems to be great for textbooks, but not so great for any miscellaneous literature and novels. I’d definitely look into selling my textbooks there and they seem to make a conscious effort to be cheaper than the UBC Bookstore, if you’re buying brand new. I’m going to try and sell my books near the end of the term.

Next, I was redirected to a second hand bookstore at 41st street & Dunbar St. This is where things got interesting my friends.

Lawrence Books. That’s the name. To set the scene again, let us remember two things: 1) It is raining, very hard. 2) My search for shelter at this point may be nearing the same level as my search for these books. Once I walked into this store though something else happened.

To be honest, I felt like Matilda, Belle and sure what’s his face Macaulay at the same time. It was like magic. The shelves were what I would call 12 feet tall. But then again my shorter stature really gives me no sense of vertical proportions or height. Everyone seems 6 feet to me. Stacks and stacks of books jam packed in rows and columns. Sure there was like dust everywhere, with a carpet that doesn’t look like it’s been vacuumed or cleaned since the 70’s. Actually that may be a lie, only because I wasn’t looking down at the floor. I was looking at the books.

I mentioned it before that I’m kind of nerdy like this, all into books and stuff (maybe just in my bio – And I totally understand if you didn’t make it that far…yet). I hope I meet somebody who likes discussing literature avec moi. But I most definitely think everyone or anyone who loves reading should check out this place and you’ll be amazed at what you find. There was books and books galore. Novels and non-fiction, all categorized. Plays and science fiction, mysteries and children stories. Ancient classics to geography. Even some National Geographic magazines as well. I felt as though it was the perfect quiet place to cuddle up on a rainy day. And the books are all second hand and around $5. Some are in fantastic state. Others are the same edition my Mom read in high school.

After having everyone in the book store help me (which basically included my two family members with me and the two other people who run the shop) I was lucky enough to find a few books. Now, as I hold the books in my hand I feel as though I am holding history. I know I have to go back and check out the first edition section. I’m pretty sure I saw the Holy Bible written on the spine of one of the books…

I know I’m a first year student and most first years don’t go into all this trouble of hunting down books but it’s fun. You get to see some new shops. And you save money. It’s a win-win. I know it might be a little late for most people buying textbooks now but I’m just saying there’s more than one option than textbook registration and I only know this because of my older sibs. Oh, there’s also Amazon.com if you have more time for shipping.

Random fact: My favourite public library I’ve been to is the Seattle Public Library downtown, if anybody is going across the line sometime soon, you should check it out. There’s lots of bright shiny neon lights if that attracts you too.

In other news, I think I have finally repacked all my [junk/crap/clothes] very very dearly beloved belongings. It’s funny because I swear I did all of this like two weeks ago when I was flying out here to BC. Hmmm… strange.

Final thoughts du jour:
Warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream are amazing.
Question: does anyone know where to buy Tretorn boots?
One more sleep! Tomorrow I get to make a new category. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?