ROAD TRIP!!!

Well I have finally decided it is about time that I sat down and spent some time blogging rather than emailing off a zillion resumes to potential employees - but we will get to that later.

I think I have been in Canada for just over a week now and - WOW - I am loving it. I don't think I am coming home for a while considering I can keep getting a visa until I am 30.. I spent a few days in Vancouver and had some amazing weather. I got my bank account and SIN set up which is basically like a tax file number in Australia. When I met up with Kirsty the day before we drove to Calgary she took me to get my mobile phone. I went with Koodo which is a cheap phone provider. Phones aren't like they are back home, they're pretty shitty but hey, it's cheap and it will get the job done. I was shocked at first but then I thought that if these are the only options open to Canadians then it can't be that bad. $25 a month gets me unlimited texts - international too - and 100 minutes, although, stupidly, when people call me on their phones, I still get minutes charged from MY phone - happens on all networks. Canada is a little backwards.

So, the road trip was hilarious! Kirsty and I are going to be so much trouble together.. It's amazing what happened in the whole day drive it took us to get to Calgary.

We saw a dead cow in the back of some rednecks ute with its poor hoof dangling lifelessly over the edge which was one of the two times that Kirsty and I actually stopped talking the entire trip. We were shocked. Poor cow. Oh, did I mention we had hamburgers for lunch? Actually, we stopped off at White Spot and grabbed some burgers and fries (is that more American than Canadian?) but as I was parking the car, Kirsty was excitedly yelling "Maccas" and because she was garbling on about that I kind of accidently forgot to brake and our nice, new, RENTED Chrysler ended up with a nasty scratch on the front bumper.. oops. Luckily they had included a fee that covered us for such stupid incidents.

It was a really long drive and Kirsty and I took shifts. Whenever I was driving, Kirsty would FREAK out and shriek for me to get back in the lane - she had this fear that I would hit the side railings, which I was totally never anywhere near! Whenever Kirsty drove, I was gripping the edges of my seat tightly! Needless to say, neither of us slept on the drive. Neither of us veered onto the Australian side of the road either, we both managed to stay completely alert to the new and weird Canadian driving expectations of driving on the right... Awesome. At one point, I freaked out because I thought someone was driving on our side of the road and was heading straight for us - turns out the other side of the road had an overtaking lane added for a few kms... but a few hours later, the unthinkable actually happened and we really DID have someone veering onto our side of the road because they were overtaking a truck but chose to ignore the double yellow lines ... I acted really calmly and slowed down and they managed to scrape back into their lane in the nick of time. This was the second time that Kirsty and I managed to say zilch because real fear had kicked in. It was quite scary.

Anyways, continuing on our way, Kirsty randomly blurts out "Simone, do you want to steal a traffic cone?" and of course, I say "sure". So, she pulls over and out I jump trying to grab one of these bright orange sticks with the fluorescent white strips at the top... It's amazing - the once empty road was now littered with cars. So I pretend to stand there stretching waiting for them to leave when suddenly a car pulls over on the opposite side of the road.. Kirsty and I were like "fuck, let's hope they aren't coming over to us" because we had a traffic cone sitting right next to our open car door - turns out they just wanted a stretch too and went on their merry way. We hoisted the traffic cone and continued onto Calgary!

We finally reach Calgary at ridiculous o'clock at night and we were exhausted. We were so happy that we were FINALLY there and almost at our awesome house - and drove down the highway for ages trying to find our turnoff... except, we drove about 20 minutes too far. At the time we didn't know this and stopped off at a petrol station to figure out where we had to go and got about 3 people trying to give us directions. I was tired and cranky so was a little rude and walked out while Kirsty got the rest of the details and we backtracked so we could find our house! Another half an hour later and about 4 cop cars later we still had no idea where we were going and Kirsty was freaking out with all the cop cars driving past and pulling people over so we decided to ditch the traffic cone... *sorry sigh*

It seems that after we did this good deed it didn't take us long to find the house and we passed no more cop cars. Damn, we could have had a bright orange traffic cone as a backyard decoration.. We were so excited to finally reach our house and we went looking for the keys which they said they'd put under one of the pot plants... Now, this pot plant was fucking heavy and it was placed on wooden decking, so of course, what happens.... the keys fall UNDER the decking and onto the grass - at 1am! Why would we have ever thought to have brought a flashlight, so we had to use our phones to try and see where the keys had fallen - Kirsty used her camera to try and see if she could see it from the flash and took a million photos of grass.. excellent! We couldn't find the keys on the grass at all - turns out they'd fallen into this super tiny bucket which was full of disgustingly dirty looking stuff... Kirsty got the keys out... :-)

Quickly explored the house which is awesome and jumped into bed.

The house is double story and it's a 1/4 acre block that goes right along to the river. It's a gorgeous view. We have a backyard decking which is great and a massive kitchen. There is an upstairs living area where we spend most of our time and a downstairs living area with a fireplace and really comfy leather couches. Two bathrooms but we're only using the upstairs one because it is nicer and bigger than the downstairs one and will be easier to keep clean. Kirsty is in the master bedroom upstairs and I chose the downstairs bedroom because it was the only other room with a double bed and the single beds are kid beds and really springy and uncomfortable. I want to take the canoe out but it is really dirty and gross and I am scared of bugs hiding in there and getting stuck on the river!

Have more random thoughts about Canada and the differences with home but am running out of battery power and I need to keep you coming back for more now, don't I!?

Hope you are all well back at home
xxx