First Day In Vancouver

I’ve arrived!
The flight wasn’t as long as I thought it was going to be, 12 hours and 7 minutes to be exact.
After a very very tearful goodbye at Wellington airport yesterday, I was on my way to Auckland Airport to catch my international flight to YVR (Vancouver)
I thought I would have enough time to do a little bit of Duty Free shopping (as I had a $20 voucher to use) and then head to the lounge in Auckland for a bit more to drink and maybe have a shower, however the flight from Wellington – Auckland was about 20 minutes late and by the time I walked over to the International Terminal in Auckland, it was about 7pm. (My flight left at 8pm)
Talk about a rush!
I quickly chose a perfume that I thought would be nice, paid for it, headed to the Koru lounge, scoffed down some salads and then had a quick shower before boarding the plane.
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I regret what I ate (some onion and broccoli salad thing) because my breath tasted like Onions for the rest of the flight and I had no gum.
I called my boyfriend before we took off where I had another little sob on the phone, told him how much I loved him and how much I was gonna miss him then took an anti-anxiety pill. Haha!
That calmed me down for the rest of the flight and believe it or not, I think I actually had a sleep! Usually I can’t sleep on planes but as I brought my own pillow with me and had a few drinks, I snoozed on and off for the whole flight.
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20180111_202656.jpgI didn’t see much of Vancouver when we landed as it was quite foggy and drizzly (typical Vancouver Weather)
When I got off the plane, I went through passport security and then on to Immigration. There was a bit of a wait in Immigration (about 40 minutes) so I just caught up with messages on Facebook and got in touch with Nathan and some friends back home to let them know I arrived safely.

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My Visa was pretty quick and easy. I got a letter and a stamp in my Passport so now I can officially work in Canada however I wish (except as a stripper, that was a condition on the Visa)

Once I collected my two lonely bags, I headed outside to catch a cab to my Hostel.
The weather wasn’t as cold as I thought it was going to be. It was definitely colder than home, but 2 layers of clothing was enough for me.
The Taxi driver told me a little bit about Vancouver on the drive, I learnt the houses I liked cost about 2 million dollars, it’s a very safe city (day or night) and it’s very easy to get around by public transport.
I’m definitely not looking forward to the cost of living though!

Snapchat-334522769.jpgWhen I got to my hostel, I checked in and 2 guys helped me carry my bags upstairs (I brought 2 suitcases with me, plus a carry on!) thank god I was on the first floor.
My room mate was sleeping (at 2pm!) when I arrived so I tried to be quiet finding things in my suitcase – a very hard thing to do in the dark!
Once I found a spare change of clothes that was suitable for the weather, and my make-up, I went and had a shower and got changed out of my plane clothes.
Then it was off to explore Vancouver! (Well the street I was staying on really)
By the time I got outside, it was around 3pm and it was still raining and starting to get dark. As I don’t have a mobile phone plan yet, I didn’t want to venture too far without data.
The street the hostel is on has lots of places to eat and lots of shops to look at so I had a little look around before having this Falafel Rice Dish for dinner (little bit average)

Now it’s 6pm, I’m in the hostel ‘hang out’ area pondering if I should go downstairs to the bar area to have a drink or head down the road to the ice-cream place for an ice-cream!
It’s never too cold for an ice-cream, however my stomach will hate me for all this Dairy I’ve been eating over Christmas Time.
Tomorrow I think I’m gonna head out to a mall somewhere and try and get a SIM card for my phone. From what I’ve heard, phone plans are quite expensive here so any recommendations with a company with the most data is appreciated!

🙂

I’m Moving To Canada!!

That’s right, you read correctly, I’m off to the land of Maple Syrup, Snow and Ice-Hockey!
Unfortunately out of those three things, I only like one of them….
I don’t do well in the cold and I’ve never played any type of sport on ice before, let alone sat down and watched it on TV.
Why am I going to Canada then you ask?
Because of the life experience and all the Ben & Jerry’s I could ask for!!

Ever since I did my big trip a few years ago, I’ve been wanting to travel again, however I didn’t want to just go to a country, explore and then come home again. I wanted to actually live somewhere. After traveling, I absolutely fell in love with America. I went to Europe and stayed in the UK for a bit afterwards but I never fell in love with it as much as the USA.  I considered moving to London because it was easy, maybe become a nanny or work in some type of Travel job but when I really thought of the idea, it didn’t excite me. I’d be going there because it was the ‘typical kiwi thing’ to do in your 20’s. Pack up your gear and spend 2 years in London on a Working Holiday Visa. I think it’s awesome that other people have done it, but it just wasn’t ‘me’.

I did research on how I could move to America and the only way possible was to become an Au Pair and look after children on a 1-2 year J1 Working Visa. I’ve been a nanny before and enjoyed it but the thought of living with a family who I might not get along with was a bit nerve racking. But hey, they could be awesome too! So I went ahead and applied for the Au Pair program through Aupairinamerica.com and filled out all the forms (included a medical questionnaire).
I got a call from them a few days later with bad news, unfortunately as I’d been prescribed anti-anxiety medication in the past I couldn’t look after kids until I was ‘off’ the medication for a year.
When I went on my trip, I got a few little pills from my doctor because I was nervous about going overseas and all the flying I would be doing. I only took maybe 2 pills the whole entire time and that was enough to make me ‘unsuitable’ to look after children. I was annoyed because it was one of those things that was just a ‘back up’ for when I was feeling anxious. When I talked to my Doctor about it, he said I shouldn’t have even admitted to it because he never would have put it down on the forms he would have had to fill out too. Oh well, I scrapped that idea pretty quickly and that’s when I started applying for jobs to become a Flight Attendant.
If you read my blog posts, you’ll know how that worked out for me…. (Quick re-cap, my eye-sight isn’t suitable)

Fast forward to 2016, I was working the same job, dreaming of going overseas and trying to convince my boyfriend to go with me. He’s a builder and has a really good job so he wasn’t too keen to just up and leave. Completely understandable, he’s worked hard to get where he is, however I felt I was ‘running out of time’ to go and do something with my life.
So I applied for a 2-year working Visa for Canada and in the midst of doing that, applied for a job at a Travel Agency. I got the Travel Agent job and then a few weeks later got a notification saying I was accepted for the IEC Visa program for Canada.
Half of me thought I should just opt out of the Visa while I still could, whereas the other part of me thought if I don’t do this now I could end up hating my new job and wish I went to Canada! I was in a bit of a predicament…
Fate would have it I received my Visa in about 2 weeks (it usually takes 8-9 weeks) so I actually didn’t have very long to think about things!
When you get your visa, you receive something called a ‘Letter of Acceptance’ that you need to take to the boarder with you for entering Canada. Once you get the letter, you have 1 year to enter into Canada for it to be activated. That gave me nearly 1 year to save some money and give this new job a go!
Turns out, I ended up really enjoying my job (and I still do). There was a lot to learn when I first started but I enjoyed the challenge. It’s crazy how complicated airfares are but once you get the hang of it, you can sell someone a flight around the world with stops in San Francisco, London, Singapore and back to New Zealand for just over $2,500 which I never would have known about beforehand! It’s a rewarding job when your clients come back to you and really loved their holiday – all because of your planning!
Even though my job is fun, I didn’t want to give up my opportunity to live in Canada so I’m leaving this month!
I resigned from my job a few months ago and thankfully they were supportive about it. I’ve even been in contact with the same Travel Company I currently work for but in Canada and they may have a position for me if I’m lucky!

So far, I have accommodation for the first few month in Vancouver so I won’t be completely homeless. After that I hope to find somewhere more permanent that isn’t crazy expensive – anyone who lives in Canada knows how expensive the rent is over there!

My visa is valid for 2 years from the day I arrive but who knows how long I’ll actually stay. I’m definitely going to give it a go for 6 months, If I hate it than I’ll move somewhere else in Canada. If I still hate it, I might just have to do a trip around the USA or if my funds are getting low – South East Asia.
Life will be an adventure for me next year!
I’ll try and update my blog so everyone can keep up 😉

Happy New Year!

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Rarotonga Day 2 (Feb 2017)

We made it in time for breakfast this morning!
It was the usual fruit, cereal and toast ( 2 pieces of Vegemite toast for me please) before the three of us went to the reception to inquire about activities in Rarotonga.

We liked the look of this Village tour and Water Dancing Dinner so booked that through the resort for Tuesday night before trying on some snorkeling gear the resort provided to take with us to Muri Beach.
It had rained the night before and it was still a little bit cloudy in the morning but that soon passed before the sun was out and shining at a lovely 27°

While Kerri and Glen where getting ready, Nathan quickly taught me how to ride the scooter as I’d never done so before. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be but I defiantly wouldn’t be prepared for the streets of Thailand.
I can go in a straight line and speed up all good but I’m pretty bad when it comes to taking off smoothly. I ended up leaving the scooter duties up to Nathan on the way to Muri beach as I didn’t think I would do very well with him on the back of me.
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We had asked at reception before we left and was told the best place nearby for snorkeling was at Muri Beach across from a shop called ‘Fruits of Rarotonga’. On the way we stopped off at the supermarket for some more water and I came across the biggest piece of Kumara I’d ever seen! (It’s also called a Sweet Potato for you overseas readers) I’m the biggest Kumara lover so this was amazing for me haha.
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Once I’d made Nathan take a photo of me with a vegetable, we found the snorkeling location about 15 minutes drive up the road. We parked up our scooters, grabbed our towels and all our snorkeling gear then found a nice spot under some palm tree’s to set up for the day.

I was pretty keen to get under the water so I was in there straight away. Annoyingly though, my goggles kept fogging up (even after doing the whole spit your saliva into them trick) so I wasn’t under the water for very long before having to come back up again. The water however was wonderful, Rarotonga is surrounded by a nice lagoon so it’s really easy to snorkel and swim in without being pounded by waves or murky water.

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Nathan joined me in the water soon after I’d gone in and we swum around the coral reefs for a bit and took picture and videos on the GoPro. Not without injuring ourselves though, Nathan scratched his hand and I got a graze on my knee from the reef. Thankfully I had some prescription cream I brought with me to put on them that afternoon to keep them from getting infected.

We where in the water for around an hour before getting out and laying our towels out on the sand.
The clouds had formed a bit and it wasn’t as sunny as it was before so I didn’t put any sunscreen on. We where under a palm tree anyways so I assumed I would be protected from getting burnt. Turns out I was wrong and I went to bed that night with the worst sunburn! – but more on that later.
Being the typical tourists that we are, we took some more pictures on the beach and also being typical girls we then complained about how gross we looked while the boys rolled their eyes at us.
Now that I’m uploading them however, we brushed up quite well!
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As it was Sunday, many places where shut in Rarotonga so we went back to the resort for lunch. If you read my previous post, you’d remember we ordered about 3 massive pizza’s the night before that we couldn’t get through, so we re-heated them up for lunch instead and ate them while sitting next to the pool.
The bar at the resort wasn’t open, so Nathan collected our bottles of Vodka & Bourbon from our room and we took them downstairs so we could drink them while we swum. He was our own personal bartender for the afternoon!

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The next few hours where spent drinking, swimming, lying down with a book and more drinking.
Around 5pm, it begun to get close to dinner time so Kerri & I headed upstairs to make ourselves presentable for the BBQ dinner the resort was providing.
This was when I realized how bloody sunburnt I was! The whole back of my legs where turning bright red and it hurt to touch. It’s crazy how it takes a little while for a sunburn to actually show instead of right away 😦

Thankfully Glen had some aloe vera from when he got sunburnt the previous day, so I put that on my legs to cool them down a bit.
Just before we headed downstairs for dinner, we all took some Vodka shots and as I had been drinking for most of the afternoon, I started to feel a little giggly when we got to dinner.
We where told in the morning from the restaurant staff that the BBQ was on the resort’s beach so Nathan and I walked ahead of Kerri and Glen to the beach where we where then told that we had to go back to the restaurant to get the food.
We turned back and told Kerri and Glen that the food was inside (as they hadn’t made it to the beach yet) so we all went in and loaded up our plates with the BBQ buffet. Suddenly, Kerri and Glen take a seat inside (where no one was by the way) and so I assumed in my fuzzy little state that they wanted to sit inside instead of out on the beach with everyone else.
Finally, after we’d all eaten and had dessert, Kerri said something like “I feel bad, like we’re the only ones who turned up for the BBQ and the chefs like made all this food”
Me and Nathan looked at each other and were like “Oh what – no, everyone else is on the beach having dinner”
Kerri looked at me in shock – “WHAT! We thought you said the BBQ was inside!?”
Me – “Yeah, the food is inside but everyone else is sitting at tables on the beach while they listen to live music”
Kerri and Glen couldn’t believe it. They assumed no one had turned up for the BBQ apart from us and a couple of other people they saw who came into the restaurant – who actually just came in to fill up their plates then head back outside.
They couldn’t believe we didn’t tell them everyone was outside!
Me and Nathan honestly assumed they just wanted to sit inside and eat hahahaha.
We all got up then and headed outside to the beach but by this stage the music had finished, everyone had finished eating and there where just a couple of tables of people left. Woops!

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It’s funny because I was GoPro-ing us going to the buffet dinner and I’ve watched the video back and there’s even footage of me going to head outside with my plate of food and then seeing the others sit down at a table and saying to myself “Oh, guess we’re sitting inside then”

Oh well – just a mis-communication.
Even though we missed the sunset and the music, we still enjoyed our meals and defiantly got our $40 worth of food haha.