So, I'm sitting on the Greyhound bus to Belligham, Washington, USA. Yeah. And I'm having flashbacks to just how charming and helpful the US customs officials (and some Greyhound bus drivers) can be. Yeah. ME: Mate, can you please point me in the direction of the bus stop for the bus coming back to Vancouver when we get to the border? BUS DRIVER: No. Ask Them.

Uh huh…them…cheers! Yeah, so turns out in the midst of all my US visa debarkles (remember that all those many months ago??) that I came to Canada naively thinking the whole working visa thing had all been totally sorted months before I even left Perth! Turns out, there's a tiny clause that got wiped from my mind in the midst of thinking I wouldn't even get out of Australia - when I got into Canada, I was supposed to hand them a print out of an email so they could go, yep, OK, cool, and THEN I'd be properly approved. I discovered this last week when trying to apply for a Canadian Social Insurance Number and after several minutes spent hyperventilating and a few desperate emails to the customs officials I discovered it was no big deal, the visa had been issued, I was A-OK,…I just needed to leave the country. Now, I'm basically sitting three exams within 24 hours on Friday/Saturday so I'm thinking this is not great timing but then, if you're gonna have to sit and study for hours on end each day, it doesn't make much difference whether you do it in the library down town or on a bus to the states! So here I am, fingers crossed really REALLY tight that this is all just gonna work out just fine!

Actually, the past couple of weeks have been surprisingly pleasant, given it's exam period and my days are filled with the joys of pulvinar nuclei, regression analysis, and the symptoms of adolescent conduct disorder! The girls and I have discovered a way to escape Burnaby mountain's grey, eery fog but coming down town every day to the public library on West Georgia street. It's a beautiful building that looks suspiciously like the colosseum in Rome (though the architect claims that in no way was that his inspiration…) and we've discovered that premium seating it on the 6th floor over by the big tall windows where there's a lot of light. But you've gotta be pretty hard core to get good library seating. It's not for the faint hearted. Most mornings we get there right when the library opens and ten and line up with all our fellow library-lovers - an eclectic mix of bleary eyed uni students on exams, die-harm book worms, and vagrants coming in the use the washroom facilities and have a warm, safe spot to hang out for the day. When they open the doors people run (I kid you not) to get the best desks in the library so you see it's pretty fierce nerd competition! Haha

But we've got our technique totally down - us girls marching in there with our travel coffee mugs, filled minutes earlier at the most amazing coffee shop just a few streets away. It's a place called Artigiano Café, and there's about four of them in the city and oh…my…God. It has been months since I had good coffee! Literally, I don't think I'd had a truly decent cup of coffee since I'd left Aus before I went to Artigiano, and it was like I'd died and gone to creamy, rich, perfectly brewed latte heaven. *Sigh* Helle calls it her "little bit of pleasure" in the day, and we've become something of regulars with the barristers in there, sometimes making return trips throughout the day when sleep has been a little short the night before! (Fortunately this doesn't happen quite so often now as Rez has enforced "23 hour quiet hours" and are taking it pretty seriously during exam period so finally my lovely neighbour's bass has been silenced! We have signs around the floor saying, "Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver." Haha now why didn't I think of that…) Helle's a particularly die hard fan (thanks in no small part I'm sure to one very cute barrister there who she's too shy to even look at!) and has even received a few free coffees!

So we find ways to make the days enjoyable, whether it be with good coffee, good conversation on the bus trips, good Swedish cookies Jessie found at the amazingly versatile London Drugs, and of course our evening Sex and the City episodes! Without a doubt the finest hour of my day is spent squished up on Helle's bed with the five of us watching her tiny temperamental laptop's screen. We also celebrated Sinterklaas last Friday night; it's a traditional Dutch holiday that involves gift giving and little soot-faced Sinterklaas helpers and fun games!! (because Christmas just isn't enough in the Netherlands! Hehe). A whole bunch of us international students met in the international students lounge (no way!) and we played games and swapped presents and ate yummy Dutch candy and tiny Dutch Sinterklaas cookies. Everyone was eyeing off a large box of chocolates in the present swapping game, but personally I think the beer I brought wouldn't have been such a bad thing to receive either! So I'm celebrating Dutch holidays, listening to Swedish music (Jessie put me on to a band called Snook that I'm totally loving although I get frustrated not being able to sing along…or trying to and having it go terribly awry! Haha), and living in North America!

And ever since Sinterklaas I've finally been starting to feel a little more like it's actually Christmas time now. Because it's a little hard for me to wrap my head around when it's cold and rainy and I'm still at school! Despite the Christmas decorations everywhere…the Christmas tree in the dining hall and our common room decorated to look like a giant present from our CA's. Down town looks just beautiful with all the lights everywhere. One of my favourite times of the day is when I leave the library in the evening to walk to the bus stop on Hastings and I put my ipod on with some groovy Christmas tunes and try and walk a creative route that takes me past the prettiest light displays.

***and this is where we enter crazy town…AKA I got so busy that I forgot to finish this blog and then about a million things happened in the following week, so I'm gonna wrap up here, start and new entry and try and adequately explain the events that followed…

LIVxo