long live matthew cuthbert: Vancouver Three

We’ve found and started our jobs this week, and settled into the new apartment this weekend so we haven’t had much of a chance to be tourists anymore. This has been exciting though- because we have finally ticked off everything we needed to do!

The apartment was awful when we arrived. The landlady had already called me at work a few days before to ask for our rent money to be deposited in her account early so there was bad feeling by the time we came to move in. As we walked into the bathroom and kitchen especially she tried to act like it was fine when it was clearly horrendous. We spent the whole weekend cleaning. Not the best start to our first apartment together- but I think we’ve got it looking really good now. We’re excited about getting a little Christmas tree and hanging fairy lights everywhere (because there aren’t actually any lights in the bedroom/living room!)

I now work at the Salty Tongue in Gastown. It’s a trendy cafe/coffee shop in the historic part of Vancouver near the bay. It’s also the boozy part of town. They really make a lot of fuss about their coffee- I’m learning to calibrate my shots and I’m sure to be learning latte-art any day now. It’s really nice though that they make a big deal of it- I’m learning loads. My manager is a competitive barista so it’s a pretty high standard, I’m not even allowed to start serving the coffee yet!

I had a couple more interviews last week, one was at a soup market on Granville Island- very cute and wholesome and I had to do a food quiz when I got there! Unfortunately I’d forgotten everything I’d learnt from Masterchef and a few Canadian-isms like mornay and arugula didn’t help. I got a trial shift but cancelled it because I got the other job. I also had an interview to work at a crisis shelter for young people. I was most excited about this and it sounded like the most rewarding but I ran into a sticky phone interview where they explained their catholic founder (which I was obviously fine with) and therefore their stance on pro-life and anti-contraception. I was in a bit of a moral dilemma, so I’m really glad some other jobs came up.

I’ve also spent the last couple of weeks doing the odd shift at the American Apparel warehouse sale. This was supposed to be a form of trial shift with opportunities for full time employment in one of their stores, but so far it just seems like they needed bodies to pick up after rummaging shoppers!

Last weekend we went to our fist gig in Vancouver- UH HUH HER- at the ‘Keep A Breast’ cancer awareness tour. It was jam packed with hard core Lword fans, but they were actually really good in their own right and it was nice to do something that wasn’t the usual tourist stuff. The same day I also had my trial shift at Salty and managed to spill my first latte all down myself in front of my manager and the other new staff member- the embarrassment there continues.

On one of our frequent rainy days when we can’t decide what to do (of which there are many), we visited Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park. As much as I’m not a huge fan of this kind of rainy day activity, weaving amongst hundreds of school kids and mommies with prams, we actually had a great time! It was really interesting because all the weird sea creatures weren’t from some far off exotic place, but from along the coast all over BC.