My First Home. Real Life begins

So I’ve moved in to my new place, so far so good. My room mate is a bloke called Paul. He’s from Dublin, near-ish where my granny lives. He’s 27, works selling mortgages, loves football (soccer), has like 5 sibilings (irish catholic, predictable!) and we get along great. We have a local stray cat that visits almost everyday. He’s all white and furry and is called Jackie (as in Jackie chan). Today I met a new stray which I will call Tiger, but he is not a cute, and less friendly. I’m living in a basement suite under a town house. It was redone pretty recently so I’ve got nice wood floors, tasteful paint colour schemes, new appliances, washing machine, dish washer, hob stove. (love it) I’ve been shopping everyday outfitting this place in awesome kitchen trinkets. There were two boys here before me, so there wasn’t much except a spoon, a fork, a knife and a cutting board to make sandwiches on. Now we’ve got TONS of stuff. The living room and kitchen are both huge, and we’ve got comfy couches and a sweet ass music system. No internet yet, but I’ll work on that. Then we I get it… skype and msn and facebook all I want… oh yeah, and looking for a job. Ugh.
Sadly for you readers I dont have CRAZY drinking stories yet. I've only gone out once. I've gone out once with Paul and a couple of his mates, nothing wild. What I CAN tell you the girls drink of choice would be Bulmers, while the boys have a guiness. Its like a fancy apple cider. And by fancy I mean not, but its popular at least. We are working on getting internet in our house right now, and as I sit here after midnight on a Friday night, Paul and I have tapped into local internet and are stealing from our neighbours, sitting on a couch together like nerds, on the internet, cuz we have it, finally, and it's free.
Many of you will be happy to hear that my flatmate will have none of this britney/bsb/pop THING i like to call music be played in our house... at least while he's around. I will try and work on some good country music, but he is doing his best to culture me with music from bands i've never heard of.
Last night was a random night of going for drinks at a few different places and at about 12 or 1am deciding just to come back to the gaf (house) with everyone we were with - only 6 of us. And it ended up becoming a dance party until after 4am. Loud music, and dancing in our living room. At one point the boys left the room and the girls decided it would be funny to play one of MY CD's and see how long it took paul to come back i the room and stop it. I played Everybody by Backstreet Boys for an entire MINUTE! WOOT! It was a gas for sure, Paul and Gail's Place has now become "Pablo and Britney's Gaf." I always felt I was a Britney (as in Spears) deep down inside... and my new friends have decided that I am in fact, so good that we can share names!
Now, hopefully I'll update this thing a few times a month- ish basis... maybe every two weeks... or when ever something really funny and worth while comes up. Hope you appreciate it. Photos to follow, if I can figure it out.

First Vacation: Scottish Highlands, London, Berlin

I met my mum (who had come for a couple days to visit her mum) at my granny’s house. The next morning we travelled to The Highlands in Scotland and met my dad and his mum. Thus beginning three very boring days. We did lots of driving around the country to the coast and to the local “ski hill” (really a small mound with million km winds). I took my gran’s dog for walks and found huge Clydesdale horses around the loch behind her house. Also meeting old family friends I didn’t know, always a highlight.
Then down to London. Went and saw my friend Sergei from Vancouver who is now living where the original Globe Theatre was and working in the heart of London’s financial district. I then went and had the night of my life with an old friend. My sister and I met Connor on a Contiki tour in 2003. He was living in Edmonton at the time, but then upped and left (similarly to myself) and now lives in Bristol. I got in touch with him recently since I was about to struggle as he did, and he mentioned he’d be in London when I was. I met up with him and his friends and had the funniest night in Soho I could imagine. We went to a few gay bars, many of which were predominately covered in sparkles and discoballs. Transvestites ready to show the world their brand new boobies (check). Awkward lesbian couple making out in public for what would seem, the first time ever (double check).
Shirtless men and sweaty bodies gyrating to techno funk music (many checks).
So great.
I also got to have lunch with Jess, a girl I worked with at the JCC who’s going to law school in London. I hung out with my cousin Rosie (who lived with us in Vancouver for about a year) and met her new bf and a friend. Big family lunch with uncles and all the plus ones. Picked up that suitcase and at 3:30am, left my aunts house to go to my third destination.
A good friend of mine, Nelson, from the Canadian lifesaving team was back packing around Europe since the comp in Bath. Since I love all things German, I decided to meet him in Berlin. Highlights being, seeing Nelson, seeing the Holocaust memorial that wasn’t finished the last time I was there, having museum day where hungover I walked through four museums (all within 5 minutes of each other and on “museum island”) in 6 hours. We went on a pub crawl with some moody Mexican dude who fed me vodka and orange between bars. Along with random shots at every bar (including an abysnth one on special at the 3rd establishment!) and a final beer, I was throwing up enroute to the last night club. Oops. Also, if you ever hear anything like “gail hit a small child inside the holocaust memorial” it’s a lie devised by Nelson because he was jealous that I was winning in the running race through said memorial.
All in all Berlin was so awesome, I used a bit of my German, though it is significantly worse than it was last April. Seeing the fam was good, and partying in Soho made Davie and Commerical streets in Vancouver look like shy communities. Back home to the job hunt…

The OFFICIAL Move. Travelling and moving into Dublin, Ireland!!!

So my team left me early on the morning of Sept. 30th, I slept another hour and then got myself to the train station for my official “I’m moving to Ireland” day. My train was cancelled and had to re-route myself minorly, but no worries. I was able to call my uncle and I arrived half an hour later, to a different ferry terminal, the one closer to him in fact. A day of travelling, sure was fun, but I made it to Dublin. Went and said hello to my granny, went out to dinner with my uncle and then was dropped off at my friend’s house where I would live for the next 3 weeks or so.
Louise is a good friend of mine, her mum and my mum are bff of sorts and Louise has come and stayed with my family in Vancouver three or four times before. Her husband Keith has come the last two times and so out of the kindness of their hearts (and a feeling of indebtedness to my parents) they gave me a room for free. I spent most days sitting on the computer looking for houses, checking email, joining facebook (damnit!) and sort of looking for jobs. It was actually the most unproductive time of my life. I watched all the good movies Keith owned (ok, that was only a few) and at one point Keith and I acquired season 1 and 2 of Scrubs. We watched that religiously every night.
Throughout this gruelling time of hanging out a home by myself all day, I did get a bank account, a mobile, and a PPS number (SIN equivilant). These things consumed week one, as they are not easy to get without proof of address. But through my savy connections (have business-important cousins) and british passport I got myself sorted. I took an afternoon with Keith and went to Dalkey this cute seaside town where the loaded live. Like Bono, the Edge and Enya. Enya lives in a castle that one day I would like to call my own. I hung out with Lianne, my down-the-street neighbour, in my class since I was 5, friend who convienently also moved to Dublin to go to med school. Went out with her friends once to the bar. Had Canadian Thanksgiving Potluck at her house and met up a couple times cuz we can.
My cousins are all busy having baby’s and moving house, so I haven’t seen them much, though I anticipate that will come soon. One cousin just had a baby mid-October, who I haven’t met yet, another is due in early December, and Louise is due Feb. 4th. Babyland, I have arrived.
The real work came when for two and a half weeks I would take the train into town and walk around looking at rooms and houses to rent. I would email the people, and half of them wouldn’t write back. Sometimes I would show up at a house and there would be a line up 10 people long of people waiting to see the same room I wanted. Point is, 50 houses later, I still hadn’t been offered a room. Some were dumps, some were perfect… none for me. I gave up and decided to take a vacation. The night I was leaving, I had 5 places to look at, and after 3 places I was about to get a bus across the city, and got a text. I got a room. FINALLY!

Leaving Vancouver: First Stop: Bath, England; Commonwealth Lifesaving Championships

Where to begin? I’ve been here over a month and I guess now I’ve found some time… to procrastinate from finding a job (it’s just like being back at school, work I don’t want to do!) Here it is in chunks.

Commonwealth Lifesaving Championships – Bath, England. Sept 17-30
So I left Vancouver, all my life packed up and ready to never come back. (At least for a while!) I had mailed a 20kg box to my uncle’s house in Ireland, with winter clothes, cookbooks etc. which I figured would arrive around the end of October (the 31st actually as it turned out!) I had a second suitcase that my parents would bring to London for me when they were there in mid-October, more winter stuff and non-essentials. Then I was taking with me a ‘Bath Suitcase’ and an ‘Ireland Suitcase.’ The idea was that I wouldn’t have to open the Ireland one in Bath; well I did anyway. Whatever! It was organised, I’m a nerd.
We flew in to London, and rented vans. Not like the comfy ones at home, but ones with small upright seats, where there was no room for shoulders next to the window. Good Times. We had about 8 days to train twice a day and see the city. We did a boat tour around the river, on which there was about 5 minutes I was allowed to drive the boat myself. (If you ask me, I was awesome, if you ask my team mates, it might have been a bit swervey – but totally worth it!) We did a bus tour around the city and the guide was INSANE. We took buses one day to Stonehenge which was really cool. I’m not sure why I felt it so important to take about 50 pictures, from all angles and with every friend there, but when you’re there its pretty surreal. Big, huge stones. Half fallen, some missing, but so old and in so many textbooks, I’m sure it was the first foreign monument I ever heard of. So yeah, good times. We also had time to wander around the city as much as we liked outside of training times. I avoided shopping at all costs, I couldn’t afford to spend next month’s rent on clothes I would more than likely be able to buy in Dublin when I could afford it. But they have great, tall buildings, everything is made from the same stone, surrounded by very tiny streets and lots and lots of narrow, steep stairwells (Bath sits across a valley, everything is on a hill!) On the last day after the comp and before we left we went and had a guided tour of the Roman Baths, which reminded me a lot of Latin class in grade 7. Weird.
There was actually a conference related to the lifesaving society going on at the same time as the competition, and so every night we had these meet and great schmoozing sessions in different locations around the city. One that was memorable was actually at the Roman Baths in the dark. It was all lit up and looked absolutely fab. Not to mention that the whole area was blocked off just for people at the event. Made me feel just a little bit important.
More related to the training though, we were given the worst training times. Around 8-10 am, and around 12-2pm. So yay you’re thinking, you sleep in AAAND you still have the afternoon to chill. But no, not good because there was less than two hours between said workouts, it was tiring, and our coach tried to start early and go overtime for pretty much all the workouts. Needless to say, I got sick. I spent an entire day in bed, two days before the start of the competition. The next day wasn’t much better but I went swimming anyway. I woke up on the day of the meet and went with the ‘healthy day’ theme and pretended I felt like a million bucks from that point on. It proved successful.
I was entered in the 200m obstacle swim and the 100m tow with fins. I really wanted to race the 200m super lifesaver (or super guard, as I like to call it) But you can only enter two girls per event and I already had two races that day, so I let my team mates, who I think performed better than I could have do the race, no need to compete for the spot. I ended up doing really well that first day. I came 2nd in the 200m obs, getting crushed by the 1st place auzzie, but outtouching the 2nd Aussie. I also (due to some key DQ’s) came 1st in the 100m tow. But really, if they didn’t race properly when it counted, its their fault for not winning. The next day was a lot of relays. We had three and our team came 2nd in one, and 3rd (behind the auzzies and south Africans) in the other two relays. The final day of races were the line throw events and the SERC. Canada came 2nd in SERC and after time trials and my team mates and I fighting over who wouldn’t do line throw (none of us really specialized in that event), I championed and threw the best in practice. I sucks real bad in the heats, but made the consol anyway. And despite coming 8th/8 in the consol (16th) I made the throw on the first try, which was a first for me ever in a race. Woot. Overall Canada came 3rd in the National Team category and 2nd in the Development Team. We all pleased with ourselves and went out to the after party to get hammered.
The meet organisers really didn’t get a good grasp on the idea of running a meet, but they did get the taking us to Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales right. It was an hour bus ride away, everyone piled into big buses and drinking and partying began with the coaches and officials around us. We got the grand tour (at least I thought it was pretty grand) of the locker room area downstairs, the field and the box seating where the Queen had watched a match of what I can assume was a football game but a lot goes on there. We were taken to a banquet hall and given a nice meal, few awards and medals given out, and then we were trucked back to Bath at 10pm. Quick change/drink at the hostel where Canada, Wales, Scotland, South Africa were all staying and then off to the night club. Good times all around. Most of the English guys ended up shirtless, and I ended up running around with my Canadian friend Jean-Michel (jish-mish) drinking with the South African devo team and their coach. Jish-Mish was particularly fun because his English was not perfect and I often found myself using my hands and body to explain things, and he would for me as well. He’s the same age as me, but about to have a child sometime early November. If you could sum up our relationship that last night, it would be that we thought we were the best looking people alive. Hilar.