Vancouver

Showers, Showers, Partly Cloudy, Showers, Showers, Few Showers, Showers, Showers, Showers, Showers. That's the 10-day weather forecast for Vancouver. Still, I'm in high spirits, despite the weather and a couple more things.

I'll get the annoyances out of the way. My internal alarm clock woke me up at around 6 in the morning, so after being awake for more than thirteen-and-a-half hours, I'm feeling quite tired at the moment. That's not the worst bit though.

That award goes to customs, who harassed me at the border due to a miscommunication. When asked where I lived, I answered "Australia", assuming they meant my country of residence. However, I was apparently meant to answer "Canada" due to my working holiday visa, despite not having a permanent address because, and despite the purpose of a working holiday visa being an extended vacation with the possibility of work. This slight confusion with semantics prompted the officer to check my bag, which would have been okay but for the fact that he took out half of the contents of my backpack, leaving me to repack everything when he determined that I was fine to cross the border.

But, as I said in my intro, I've been happy to put this behind me, as everything else has gone quite smoothly since - a lot more than I had planned, in fact. After catching a taxi to the hotel (it was far too wet for me to bother with public transport), I got checked in to the hotel expediently, and it was a really nice room. Then, I booked my stay at the nearby HI hostel (for when I check out of this hotel), and checked the bag that I left there almost five months ago - still intact with all its contents. Finally, I ate some sushi then went to the box office for the Vancouver International Film Festival. I'll post my very good first impressions of VIFF later on.