Canada

Before Boyfriend came along, I was happily single & planning a trip to Canada to live for 6 to 12 months on a working holiday. I’d been talking about going for years, I’d even started saving for it & ready to apply for my visa. I’d also gotten the travel bug having just come back from Fiji (Where I had Swiss), then Vietnam with Boyfriend, but I settled down & bought my house, that I didn’t get go overseas again for many years… So after Boyfriend & I broke up, I moved back in with my parents, rented out my house & went to Canada on a working holiday.

Disclaimer: This is actually my journal from 2008 when I went to live in Canada. I have edited it & added some info to make it make sense for a blog post, but it is mostly the journal I kept.

Here it is!

When I told my friend that I was going to live in Canada, she was positive that I would sit next to my soon to be husband on the plane. She wasn’t the only one to tell me that I would meet the love of my life in Canada & never come back to Adelaide… (Spoiler alert – we all know where I live now! Hahaha)

Well my flight from Adelaide to NZ sure didn’t have ‘the one’ on it as they were ladies next to me & this would require a very different lifestyle change. However getting onto the plane from NZ to Vancouver, two guys were in front of me & of course there are hold ups along the way as people put their stuff in the overheads & stuff about getting into their seat, where they put on their seat belt only to have to take it off again to get something out of their bag, which of course is in the overhead. I was stuck behind these two guys when I noticed they were getting into my row & I had the window seat so I stopped them & as I got into my seat I laughed, thinking that one of these 20 year old boys could be my perfect match! However sitting next to these boys, I realised that these were not the perfect match for me when they started going through the movies that were available on the in-flight channels, where they found a movie & decided that they needed to be started at the same time so that they could watch them together, restarting the movie twice to make sure they would watch it together.

I arrived in Banff & found a job within a few weeks at a currency exchange – I had no idea what I was doing there to be honest. I gave away money all the time by accident but I never got fired… But before I got the job, I had done a tour for 6 days to get to Banff, I met lots of people as a younger backpacker. When I settled in Banff though, I got stuck in a room with 7 other people – all boys! Now I’m no prude, that’s fine, but they didn’t they have to put me in a room with only boys in it… How weird for them, 1 chick?! I wonder if one of these boys could be the one I’m going to stay in Canada for? Not likely, as they’re all fucking Australian! But who knows… Lets just hope they don’t snore!

Ok so the boys snore & they have no respect for anyone because some of them came home, talked at a normal volume & stuff around going through their stuff, peeing with the door open until they finally get into bed & start snoring! So I slept with my mp3 player (Yes, I had a MP3 Player then!) on which meant I didn’t sleep very well at all.

I don’t spend a lot of time in my room because the boys are not really that friendly, so sitting in the common room when I talk to my first Canadian, that’s right I have been in Canada for 8 days now & I’ve only just met my first real Canadian & he seemed quite nice, a bit quiet & didn’t have a good sense of humour plus half the time he didn’t understand what I was saying, which made the conversation a bit stale. But he tried & I tried… I need to make some friends here!

I sit in the common room most of the day trying to meet some new people, but is so hard just butting into people’s conversations & trying to get them to be your friend. A couple of girls came & sat next to me on the couch for a bit & we talked which was really good, but once their dinner was ready they left. They were really nice to talk to & I think that I will probably talk to them again. So at this stage still not job or friends yet. But I’m hopefully, I have only been here on my own for two days. While still looking for my job, I am spending a lot of time in the common room, because I’m not going to meet anyone new in the all boys dorm room!

I chat to the Canadian guy every day when he is in there too… We chat a bit before he goes off to break in his new ski boots. He seems to keep going out to get coffees & break in his boots, I feel like I’m his only friend too, which is a bit sad considering he is from this country – but it’s good to have someone I guess.

I change rooms because I can’t handle being with all these aussie boys. I’m here to meet a Canadian! Though now I’m going into a girls dorm I probably won’t meet any boys, however I am at least going to make some friends.

One morning, I was having some breakfast, in the common room, now looking for some places to live, when the Canadian Guy asked me if I wanted to go up Sulphur Mountain with him, as I had my job interview that afternoon, I had to say no. That kind of sucks, but hopefully he’ll ask me again or we can do something another time.

The girls that I was talking to in the common room have become a bit of a friendship group for me, I have found out that they are sisters & here on a working holiday too but are struggling to get a job too. They invite me out one night to bingo, which I am not sure about but decide to go. We get there & they are closing the doors & not letting people in, like they are turning people away!

This is where the sisters, tell me about how weird this Canadian guy, who I’ve been chatting too thinking, he’s not a bad guy, Apparently. he’s a bit of a stalker, asking both the girls to kiss him one night when they were out, when the both said no he said “Come on its Banff” so now I am glad that I didn’t go on the walk with him. He didn’t have a very good sense of humour anyway – something I am very attracted too, he didn’t really get any of my jokes or understand what I was saying to him & from what I hear, he is pretty close to being kicked out of the hostel. Also, do you know what I just realised, he has worn the same outfit everyday that I have been here!

The bar we’re at closes at 2am so we go back to the hostel only to find the Canadian Guy out the front doing something very strange, which is a little hard to describe, but he was kind of throwing his arms up in the air & walking backwards, looked like some sort of rain dance. He came inside & told us that the lighter he was trying to blow up wasn’t going to blow up. At this point I snuck out & went to bed. It was after all 3am & WTF!

After about a month or 2, living & working in Banff, I was in a bit of routine now. One day I went & had some dinner, bought a book being that I have finished the one I brought with me, I walked home to see some deer or elk on the road wandering around a little bit lost – it’s a small town & there isn’t a lot to do to… I came home to a phone call from one of the women at work. She said she had someone to talk to me, WTF? Who would be calling me at work? It turns out that it was this guy that my boss thinks likes me as he flirts & stuff when he comes in. I just joke around & said that he seemed nice – never thinking that a man would be interested in me. Of course the chick at work, took it further & told him to ask me out, which is kind of weird because I don’t really date in Australia (I guess I do now! Hahaha), usually I would meet the guy with a group of friends so if he’s a loser then you can ditch him, so on the phone with this guy, he asks me out & for my phone number & said he’d give me a call. My boss rang me after he left & said he did a little jump when I gave him my number.I never get a call from that guy, what a surprise! My boss told me that the chick at work had forced him to call me, which I knew because it was her number that came up when she called. But my boss tells me that he came in to work to get my number again because apparently he lost it, so my boss gave it to him on a piece of paper when he passed it back to her & said how about you write your number down too. So that confirms it, guys are all jerks, no matter what country you are in! Nothing changed either, no matter how old you get.

#IBD4U