Travelog for: Vladimir

I have been spending a lot of time attending school with Abby, 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 tried to helped Abby scoop out the inside of the pumpkin, but my arms were too short and I gave up.



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).

There's a small cafe in a small airport that claims to have the best pie in the world.  People literally fly here to eat a slice of pie.



Unfortunately, sharing a host with Greedy means that one doesn't get to eat very much, so I only recieved a bite of pie before he took over.

As you probably know, the presidential election for the United States is tomorrow and even though I'm not in America, I'm in the closest country to the United States, and so everyone has been paying close attention.  Tonight I am watching Saturday Night Live's Presidential Bash.

I'm watching the American election tonight.



President Elect Obama is making his victory speech!

Can you see the crowd behind me?  There's an event on winter preparedness in the Convo Mall at Abby's school. 



Nobody was particularly interested (living in Canada means that you should know about winter preparedness), but they were giving out snacks inside reusable shopping bags!



I heard a rustling from the inside the bag, which startled me, but it was only Greedy, who had discovered the snacks.

Today Gina Giraffe arrived.

I got to attend the Grande Finale concert of the CBC Radio Orchestra.  It was the last remaining radio orchestra in North America, but due to budget cuts, the CBC cannot afford the one million dollars it takes to fund the orchestra each year.  It's sad, because everyone was really talented and it was such a good concert.

The concert was held at the Chan Centre at the University of British Columbia.  You can't tell, but the theatre is designed to look like a cello.



Abby snapped this photo of the stage at the beginning of intermission.

I visited a craft fair at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre.





They have a boat and a dala horse outside.





It was very crowded inside, so Abby couldn't get any photos.  There were many interesting booths and live music.  Unfortunately we had other things to do, so I did't even have time to sit down with a cup of glogg.  Oh well.

There was a windstorm and Abby and her sister were afraid that the power was going to go out, so everyone turned off computers and tvs and moved into the kitchen.  While Greedy ate all the pistachio pudding, everyone else played cribbage.