The little things

You really don't notice certain things such as selection of foods or options in cell phone plans until you move somewhere (and then move back).

In Canada (well at least Vancouver):
- most juices comes in rectangular containers (which fit into the door of the fridge really well)
- you can't find Campbell's vegetable soup (there's always some kind of meat in it)
- fruits and veggies are cheaper at the local and plentiful produce shops (there seems to be at least two on every block of Broadway)
- you can walk everywhere (we drove less than 1,000 miles in a year)
- there's no Target (and Canadian Tire doesn't come close)
- there's no Macy's (and the Bay doesn't compare)
- there are no outlets (although there is an Aldo outlet on Granville, probably the only exception)
- but you can still find Sears, Gap, Game Stop, the occasional Old Navy, Levi's, the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Safeway and Blockbuster (don't worry Starbucks is there too)
- places to check out Jacob (a mix between Gap and Ann Taylor), RW, M&M Meat shops, and the loads of independent places on Broadway, 4th Street and south Granville.
- when dialing you enter the area code even when it is the same as the one you're calling from
- the silly blinking green street lights (indicating that its a pedestrian controlled intersection)
- there's very few places that have a green arrow for left turns
- car insurance is run through one company (ICBC)
- the local news rarely has violent crime to report on
- people like to sit in their parked cars (whether talking on the phone, reading the paper or maybe just thinking... we saw this quite often)
- there are dedicated streets for bike riders rather then having them ride on the major streets
- the houses are colorful and cute to walk by
- a common drink to order is a Caesar (vodka, clamato (a blend of tomato juice and clam broth), Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce (The legal drinking age in Alberta, Quebec and Manitoba is 18, while the rest of the country is 19)
- And lastly, the iced tea. It's not brewed iced tea... it's Nestea... out of a can, yuck.

Frosty Morning

There's a first for everything, including scrapping ice off of the windows. We headed out the door into the 29 degree cold around 9am and our car seemed to be the only one with ice on the windows.

Driving in BC (I don't want to include the whole of Canada in case there are differences in other Providences) can be challenging at times and I don't just mean the drivers.

J and I went for a shopping trip out in New Westminster. After we finished wandering through Walmart then through Home Outfitters (just like Bed, Bath and Beyond) we decide to head to his cousin's house for homemade stew.

We knew that we needed to head south and we had traveled from New Westminster before with his cousin Colleen - but the highway signs were a little confusing. Can you think of any freeway that travels both west and south with the same name? Well highway 91 does. We got on the freeway heading west and a few short kilometers later there was a spilt for the highway - 91 south or 91 west? Confused? We were too. But luckily we knew we were headed for Richmond (no Richmond, CA) and therefore it was highway 91 west for us.

We learned later that for the 1986 expo they built the west stretch of the 91 as a connector and never bother to rename it. So yes there is a freeway that goes both east/west and north/south with the same highway number.