A Bucket List for 2015

January 11, 2015 / Maria / 2 Comments

“Dear God, let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry… have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere – be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honourable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” – Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

I never make New Year’s resolutions, but now that I’ve finally settled into my life in BC, I decided to make myself a bucket list for the next year! The quote above is from one of my favourite books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and if I have one resolution for 2015, it would be to do my best to make each day count. I feel like I’m at the opportune part of my life for self exploration and discovery and there’s so many opportunities that I want to take advantage of this year.

In 2014 I had some great milestones and adventures; I moved out on my own, found a job that I love, drove from Vancouver to San Francisco, signed up for an adult beginner dance class, took control of my physical health, and even cooked my first traditional Newfoundland turkey dinner. There are lots of days where I miss my amazing friends and Newfoundland’s beautiful rocky coast, but I feel so lucky to be living in BC and the longer I live here the more I realize there’s still so much here to discover.

It’s easy to let time pass you by once you settle into a routine, so I decided to make a bucket list for 2015 to motivate me to get out there and make every minute count. My list grew in no time, so I decided on some nice little categories to break it up. Here’s to another excellent year of adventure; I’ll do my best to chronicle it and I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

Maria’s 2015 Bucket List

Winter Fun
– Make a ski trip to Whistler
– Go snowshoeing
– Check out Vancouver’s night skiing after work
– Check out the skiing across the border at Mount Baker

Explore Nearby Attractions
– Go on a long weekend trip to Victoria
– Visit a winery in the lower mainland
– Make a trip to Portland with friends
– Go on the Camel Safari in Washington

Get back to Travel
– Jet off to Brazil for a vacation with my sister
– Knock an item off my long-term bucket list with a visit to Iguazu Falls
– Connect with mine and Seth’s family in Ontario

Newfoundland Roots
– Attend the Greenham Family Reunion in Twillingate
– Get up at the crack of dawn to go cod fishing
– Celebrate the marriage of two of my friends
– See Hey Rosetta! play in Vancouver

Expand my Horizons
– Learn the basics of Portuguese for my trip to Brazil
– Find a new organization to volunteer with
– Pass my law and ethics exam as I work towards my P.Eng
– Try an exotic new food that I haven’t had before
– Get creative in the kitchen
– Start a summer hooping club at work

Personal Wellness
– Keep off the weight I lost in 2014 with healthy eating
– Continue exercising at least 3 times a week
– Run Vancouver’s largest run, the Sun Run (10km)

Summer Adventures
– Put my ‘101 Walks in the Lower Mainland’ book to work
– Go hiking in Garibaldi Park
– Camp in three different Provincial Parks
– Climb the Grouse Grind
– Go biking in Stanley Park

Special Events
– Go to the Women’s FIFA World Cup in June
– Cheer on the Canucks at my first NHL game
– Go to comedy show
– Go to a concert
– See a baseball game

Rain for Days: A Whirlwind Tour of Vancouver

July 25, 2014May 21, 2015 / Maria / 1 Comment

It’s been an adventurous start to the trip for Melissa, Gill, and Karen! Unfortunately for me, while they’ve been out exploring Vancouver, I’ve been working, but I am now officially on vacation! The trip had a bit of rocky start – Gill and Mel got detained in Montreal for several hours on their way here and as a a result of having to get up at 4am (11:30pm PST), they were exhausted (and starving) when they finally arrived in Vancouver 14 hours later.

There was no time for rest though as we had already purchased tickets to see the Shrek Musical outside at Theatre Under The Stars in Stanley Park! In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best idea to go see a show the same day everyone arrived, but we were optimistic about it! Even the rain couldn’t dampen our spirits as we made our way to the Park and at first we viewed the free poncho’s that were provided for the show as a novelty. But as the show started, the drizzle turned to rain, and the rain turned to heavy rain and before we knew it, it was pouring! The musical was quite good, but I can’t lie, watching anything in the pouring rain is pretty miserable. When we heard the sound of distant thunder just before intermission, we decided we’d had enough. We grabbed our free hot chocolates and decided to head for home.

Fortunately, the second day in Vancouver was a huge improvement over the first and included a visit to the Vancouver Aquarium, a bike ride in Stanley Park, a walk around the downtown waterfront, and shopping on Granville Street and Granville Island! The group started the day with the Aquarium, which everyone enjoyed, but thus far it seems Gill and Mel have been plagued by whiny children. They were forced to tolerate a screaming child kicking the back of their seats on their 6 hour flight to Vancouver and then at the Aquarium they had to navigate the hoards of children’s camps that frequent the Aquarium in the summer. Although an educational summer camp on marine life might benefit Gill who mistakenly refers to the porpoises at the Aquarium as “portopussies”!

After a disappointing lunch of “creamy” spinach soup (it was so terrible I was forced to listen to a detailed description of just how awful it was), the day picked up with a bike ride through Stanley Park along the seawall. I’m told this was the highlight of the day and everyone was enamoured of their bright green rental bikes! The photos are courtesy of Melissa’s instagram account, but judging by Karen’s ability to text and ride in these photos, we think she might be after Mel’s title of social media guru and internet junkie!

The day continued with a trip to the waterfront in downtown Vancouver where you can take pictures with the Olympic Cauldron and this giant pixilated whale of a piece of art! I finally joined up with everyone at Granville Island and we did a little bit more exploring before heading back to my house for an earlier night. Since we won’t be together for our birthdays this year, we had a little birthday celebration to finish off the night!

But the real treat for this blog post is the youtube video below! Gill has been hard at work capturing our trip in video format – you should really be impressed because she editted this entire video on her iPhone! Enjoy!

First Month in Vancouver

February 24, 2014 / Maria / 2 Comments

It’s time for a much overdue post on my move to BC. I’ve been struggling to figure out what to share with you and I can’t believe almost a month has passed already! My travels have always been short-term and as a result, I crammed as much sight-seeing as I could into my travels. This move has been different. I’ve spent the last few weeks attempting to settle into my new home and explore my new neighbourhood. As a result, I haven’t even been into Vancouver for more than a few hours. The urgency to make every moment an adventure isn’t really there when you make a permanent move, but let me tell you a little bit about my new home.

At the beginning of February I moved into an above ground suite in New Westminster and I started my new job in Burnaby. I’m pretty sure most of my readers aren’t from BC, so let me help you out with the geography. Coming from a small city, I’m not used to having a large metro area that makes up a region. The greater Vancouver area is made up of a number of different municipalities, but they almost feel like one big city. Burnaby is located directly east of Vancouver, with Richmond and Surrey to the south and North Vancouver to the north. There’s a small municipality (approx. 65,000) called New Westminster located on the southeast end of Burnaby next to the Fraser River – this is where I live!

New Westminster looks pretty far away from downtown Vancouver, but I live close to the skytrain, so I can get to Vancouver in about a half hour when I want to. The skytrain is basically an above ground subway system – although I enjoy it a lot more than travelling on an underground system because the view is much nicer!

So far, I really like New Westminster and I love my apartment! Like I said, it’s an above ground suite and it has lots of big windows, so it’s always bright and it has a pretty big living area. It also came fully furnished, which was a huge bonus and made the move so much easier (and cheaper)! There’s a little bit of greenery around the suite and it’s a close walk to several parks.

I’ve spent a bit of time exploring New Westminster and I have discovered that it has quite a bit of history. It used to be the capital of BC – named after Queen Victoria’s favourite part of London – and it’s known as the Royal City. It has a nice downtown area next to the Fraser River and has a huge selection of restaurants to choose from. Thus far my favourite discovery has been the River Market, although it’s one of the bigger attractions, so it’s probably not the biggest discovery. The regular market space is open every day, with several delicious food kiosks and shops to choose from, and every second Saturday in the winter there’s a farmers market held there.

Fraser River from New Westminster

Seth and I did make a trip out to Granville Island over the weekend to catch up with a friend and discovered another great food market (although it’s a bit too far from where we live to visit on a regular basis). Granville Island is filled with small shops where you can find lots of fair trade and locally made knick knacks that you never knew you wanted. The food was definitely my favourite though and we all gorged ourselves on delicious treats from the food stalls!

We also had a big surprise with the weather this past weekend. The weather in Vancouver seems to either be sunny and chilly or damp and warm. However, this weekend we finally got some snow! I haven’t seen any snow since arriving in Vancouver, but it started snowing overnight on Friday and hasn’t stopped snowing since. I’m going out snowshoeing tomorrow evening and I’m hoping to get some nice pictures from Mount Seymour, so stay tuned for that!

Missing everyone back home and would love to hear from you!
Maria