Travelog for: Hedgie Hedgehog

Today I'm leaving Russia and go to Canada. I will miss all my friends which I have met here! I hope we will meet again some day! Bye-bye!

Hi Mum, I have arrived in Canada!

This is the famous horse clock in Maple Ridge, basically the only interesting thing in the city.  There's a legend that goes with the clock and the horse.  The horse represents a beast that fought for Mother Nature against those who were hurting the environment, but was gravely hurt in the process.  Mother Nature set up the clock as a reminder to not hurt the environment.

It's pouring outside, so everyone decided to see what we could do as a group to keep us amused.  Alizée decided to show us some yoga poses.  Greedy opted out and decided to just watch.



Here we are doing the cobra.



Hey, look!  I can do the splits!



After all that yoga, everyone was exhausted.

After yoga, we made tea.



The cup is actually Abby's; she found a smaller, ToyVoyager-sized cup for everyone.  Nothing beats Earl Grey on a cold, wet day

Then, we decided to read to each other.  Shirley Sheep went first, reading us a fairy tale called Princess Abigail and the Wonderful Hat.  It was apparently Abby's favourite when she was younger, because of the name.



Abby encouraged Greedy to read next.  He chose When Vegetables Go Bad.



Vladimir offered to go next, and instead of choosing a nice picture book to read and look at, he chose one of Abby's textbooks, Environmental Policy.



Zzzzzz...What?  Oh, right, we were reading about environmental policies...zzzzz.

Just look at this view!  Maple Ridge, where Abby lives is on the edge of the Vancouver suburbs, so there is a lot of farmland and there are also a lot of dikes around, because it's a fairly low-lying area.  In the background, on the right, you can see the mountains called Goldenears.  Lots of wildlife lives in the marshes, including herons, muskrats and beavers, but I didn't see any.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, and that means a good, old-fashioned turkey dinner.  If you want to see the entire process, you can read Greedy's travelog, but I was just interested in the final product.  Bon appetit!

I have been spending a lot of time attending school with Aby, so today she decided to show me around during her break.  Her school, Simon Fraser University, is on the top of Burnaby Mountain (which makes it very cold these days!)

This is one of the residential areas.



This is the Convocation Mall, a covered, open area where graduation ceremonies and other events are held.  Today (on the other side) was Games Day.  There was a giant gmae of Scrabble, music and snacks!



This is the Academic Quadrangle, where a lot of the classrooms are.  It's a giant square, hence why it is called a quadrangle.  The ground floor is actually the 'fourth floor' and there are two floors up in the air.  In the floors below are lecture halls and places to eat and study.



This is the view from the roof, looking towards the North.  The mountains you can see include Seymour, Cypress and Grouse, and they are all popular skiing and snowboarding destinations. 

Today we went to the Apple Festival at the botanical gardens at the University of British Columbia.



The main event was the apple tasting and Abby bought everyone tickets.



We had a while to wait, so we bought hot apple cider (with cinnamon and nutmeg, yum!) and wandered around the grounds.



There is a garden below.  I decided to get a closer look.



It is full of vegetables!  These gardens are maintained year-round with different, seasonal vegetables.  There was swiss chard, squash, pumpkins and a lot of other vegetables, and, of course, apple trees around the perimeter of the garden.



Then, we got in line for the apple tasting.  While we were waiting, we listened to some people play the fiddle.



I don't have any pictures to show you of the tasting itself, because it was very hectic in there, but I got to try quite a few different kinds of apples before I was full and made myself comfortable in Abby's bag.  Some people were troopers, though.  Abby, her sister and Greedy managed to try all sixty types of apple!

UBC is on the west end of Vancouver and we paused at a lookout.  Unfortunately it was a little grey and foggy and you couldn't see much, but this is the mouth of the Fraser River, the largest river in Western Canada.



The plaque reads:  Exploration of the Fraser River - Although Spanish seamen had noted the Fraser estuary in 1791, when Alexander Mackenzie reached the upper Fraser in 1793 on his way to the Pacific, he thought he was on the columbia.  Simon Fraser and John Stuart of the North West Company explored the river under the same misapprehension in 1808, realizing only when they reached the sea that two great river systems drained the north Pacific slope.  Although the Fraser was not throughout its course a practical canoe route, the Hudson's Bay Company integrated it into a new supply system when forced in 1848 to abandon the Columbia.

Twice a week a Hare Krishna guy cooks lots of vegetarian food and gives a large plateful to anyone for a small donation.  The story is that he feels that it is his mission to provide hungry university students with nutritious, vegetarian food.  It's a good mission, I think, and his cooking is wonderful.  Unfortunately, I only got a few bites in before Greedy took over my plate, but I'd rather he do that, than chew off my arm, or something...

Today we went to the local pumpkin patch!



We didn't spend a lot of time there, unfortunately, because Abby and her sister had homework, but we still walked around the entire pumpkin patch looking for the right pumpkin!



I think I see one!



Watch this space, because I get to help carve it in a few days!

Today we are carving the pumpkin that we picked out!  Sorry for the picture quality; we were outside and it was dark...



I helped Abby scoop out the inside of the pumpkin.



Then, Abby attached her stencil to the pumpkin and started to poke holes along the lines.



All ready to carve!  Abby did this because she didn't want to have to explain to any of our mentors that one of us had an 'accident.'



Here's the finished pumpkin!  It's a duck!



And here it is with the other carved pumpkins (Abby's sister was more ambitious; she carved the horse from Guernica).



After the carving we took the seeds and roasted them.  Yum!

Happy Halloween!  I am at Abby's best friend's house to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show.

What a beautiful view!  This photo doesn't quite capture how colourful everything is here.  This is in the countryside of Aggasiz (pronounced Ay-gah-see) and right after a torrential rainfall.  Unfortunately there were some other places that were slightly more scenic, but Abby couldn't take any pictures because she was too busy driving through the torrential rain (and she isn't the most experienced driver in the world).