Hiking along the coasts of the Lighthouse Park

I was a bit worried about joining today's hike since I had had so much trouble on yesterday's hike. Nevertheless, I took the chance and joined the hostel's group at 12 PM together with my roommate Jodie from Australia. The bus ride to the lighthouse park was quite long again - about an hour - and the traffic in downtown Vancouver was actually pretty bad. When we arrived at the park I felt a bit sick cause of the shaky bus ride but the fresh air quickly helped me to feel fine again.
Unfortunately, we couldn't go to the lighthouse itself. Instead, it was only possible to watch it from afar from several lookouts. The first lookout was a bit disappointing, since you could only see the lighthouse hidden behind some trees. We started hiking along the coast, stopping at several other lookouts along the way. The second lookout we visited gave us a really good view of the lighthouse. In addition to that, we could see the coastline as well as a really nice panorama. The sun was making the sea sparkle, which looked really deamlike. To sum up, the view from those lookouts on the coast was just spectacular.
Getting from one lookout to the next was not always easy as the path was very steep and sometimes it was necessary to climb a little or jump from one rock to the next. Nevertheless, the pace of the tour was not as fast this time and it was also a lot more fun compared to yesterday so I actually enjoyed the challenge.
On the last lookout, there were two lines spanned between two opposite coastlines and there were two people trying to walk on those lines. It looked really hard and dangerous, although those people had safety belts.
We spent a lot of time at the lookouts and took a bus back at 4.45 PM. Since we arrived an hour later at the hostel, I didn't feel like going out anymore. I just ate a sheppards pie at the Beaver (the hostel's bar) and took a nice shower afterwards.

The Quarry Rock hike

Today I fell on my butt. But let me start at the beginning:
When I woke up, it was already 8:50 AM. I was still pretty tired, nevertheless, I hurried to get ready since breakfast was only until 9:30 AM and today's hike was supposed to start at 10 AM. I barely made it down in time. However, there was some misunderstanding about the starting time and so a few people, who thought that it would start at 12, weren't there yet. In the end, we were able to leave just before 11 AM, which was kind of annoying since I had hurried so muchin order to make it by 10.
The bus ride to Deep Cove was quite long and we had to change busses once, which was unfortunate as we had to wait 27 minutes for our second bus.
We arrived in Deep Cove around noon. It was really beautiful there and the weather was just perfect. The hike itself was very exhausting. This time, the path was even steeper than on the Lynn Canyon hike and I was always one of the last few people of our group to arrive anywhere.The way up was really exhausting and I barely had a chance to take a break. Just before reaching the top there were some sections where I actually had to climb up. When we finally arrived at the top of the rock, the view was really amazing.
After a while, when we decided to go back, I was one of the last few people again. This time, our tour guide and half of our group were gone so quickly that the rest of us was standing at a crossing with no clue where to go. We almost took the wrong way (which would have led us to a very long hiking route to Lynn Canyon I think) but luckily, we took the right path in the end. 
I had been looking forward to the way back, as I had thought that it would be easier going down instead of up. However, since there were some really steep sections, my ankles sometimes hurt a little from taking very big steps. Me and Josh, a guy from London who was keeping me company on the way down, were the last ones to reach the end of the Quarry Rock hiking path.
Just when I was glad I made it up to the top of the rock and back without a scratch, I slipped on some wet grass and landed with my butt in the mud. My pants got disgustingly wet and dirty but there was nothing I could do about it, so I tried to ignore it as good as possible after rubbing most of it off in some dry grass.
Before taking another bus home, we ate some ice cream. The bus ride back to the hostel was really long again and this time, the bus was also packed.

In the evening, I watched the first five episodes of Fuller House in the hostel's Netflix room.

Birds and more in China Town

Today I had to do some laundry. Since most of my clothes are rather delicate, I build some kind of clothes line with a rope in my hostel room. There were also a few clothes I could dry in the dryer, which unfortunately took more time than I had expected. In the end, I had to hurry to make it to the SWAP office in time for the orientation event at 11 AM. The orientation itself was - just as I had already expected - not that helpful as I already knew most of the information that was illustrated.
Afterwards I took a detour to the Gastown Steam Clock. I had been told that the clock would play some melody at every full hour, so I hurried to make it there by 12 PM. Unfortunately, the time on the clock was wrong (according to the clock, it was around 8:30). Thus I missed the melody. As I didn't want to wait for half an hour, I went to the bank to put some money in my canadian bank account before returning to the hostel.

In the afternoon, I decided to check out the famous Dr-Sun Yat-Sen Park in China Town. It was a long walk there but also definitely worth it. The park itself was rather small, but there were some Chinese buildings and bridges as well as a few exotic flowers. The center of it all was a pond where you could see several birds, koi carps, and turtles. At first I thought that the turtles weren't real, since the first one I saw just didn't move. However a few minutes later I discovered a second turtle which stretched its leg towards the sun. I stayed at the pond for a while to eat my snack - a breakfast bagel. Actually, I shared some of it with one of the birds there.

On the way back to the hostel I made a short stop at a church where I witnessed a short mass. However, I only stayed for a few minutes since I wasn't entirely sure if vistors were allowed. Furthermore, the preacher had vanished after the first short prayer and I couldn't tell whether and most of all when she'd be back. All things considered, I just felt really out of place there.
Back at the hostel, my new German roommate Julia, who is currently on trip to see the whole world, and me decided to cook something together. After buying some sausages, which for some reason only costed 1 CAD instead of 3 CAD as the price tag had suggested, we both ended up cooking our own meals, since I felt like eating Julia's potatoes and she rather wanted to eat my noodles.

The Lynn Canyon hike

Today's hostel activity was the 'Lynn Canyon hike'. There is a suspension brindge at Lynn Canyon, so I had rally been looking forward to this trip. We started at 10 AM with a private bus from the hostel. The Bus was actually packed - I guess we were about 30 travellers - and the ride was about 40 minutes long.
Right after arriving, we started our hike up the rather steep trail. After hiking for just about 5 minutes, I was beginning to wonder if joining this trip had been a good idea as I had only more or less normal boots. The trail was not only steeper than I had anticipated but also a bit slithery. Still, I kept on walking - quitting was not an option and the scenery was beautiful. The first hour was the most exhausting, as it was only going up.
Occasionally, there was also some rain. It didn't make much of a difference, though, since the whole forest was rather moist either way.
After a while, there were also some flat or downward trails, so the hike got a bit easier and apart from the gentle rain now and then, I was starting to really enjoy the tour.
There were some people from Switzerland in our group. I was listening to them talk in Swiss-German and it sounded to me like some weird nordic language - I didn't understand a word!
The highlight of the hike was the suspension bridge - a bridge which is about 50 meters high from the bottom of the canyon with an amazing view of a mountain river.
In the end, the whole hike was not as difficult and exhausting as I had feared in the beginning. It was actually rather short, since we were back at the entrance after about 4 hours. It was still a very nice tour.
Before heading back, we visited a Gift Shop that also had some interesting ecological exhibits.
On our way back to the hostel we were quite lucky: Our bus driver was too lazy to sell a single ticket to every one of us, so he just let us take the bus for free.

Shortly after arriving back at the hostel, I went out to buy some vegetables for dinner. I didn't go to a grocery store directly, though. Instead I took a detour to check out the 'HMV' shop, which Anelle had told me about before going back home (she actually gave me an amazing supernatural bag from that shop *__*). They have a lot of cool merchandise stuff for popular TV shows like Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Star Wars or Anime shows at HMV. Since my suitcase is already too heavy, I didn't buy anything there for now.

Getting to know a lot of people on the way to Stanley Park

Today was really about meeting a lot of different people from different countries, which was pretty cool.
Just like yesterday, me and my roommate Anelle decided to join the hostel activity. At first I was a bit worried since it was supposed to rain, but in the end the weather was just perfect.
We went to Stanley Park which is just a huge park northwest of Downtown Vancouver. The way there was actually quite beautiful, even though it was very long and exhausting. We didn't even rest after arriving at the park since our tour guide was on a tight schedule (he had to work at 4 PM) and someone really wanted to see the 'hollow tree'. It took us more than two and a half hours to get from the hostel to that tree, which really wasn't that special to be honest.
Nevertheless, the way was really lovely, I took a lot of pictures of birds and I had a lot of fun getting to know the other travellers on the tour. There was for example Alena from Germany, who had been to several asian countries before coming here (I still need to ask her about her blog!), as well as Eric from Saskatchewan (a Canadian province). 
On the way back from the tree, we stopped at a beach to eat a snack (I ate a bagel, which I still had from my hostel's breakfast). Our tour guide and a few others left to go back to the hostel pretty quickly, however, the weather and everything there was so nice that I decided to stay a bit longer. 
I walked back with Sarah from Chicago and Moses from Australia. We had fun taking a few more pictures before arriving back at the hostel. 

After taking a quick shower (there was sand everywhere on me), I went out to see if I could find a summer hat somewhere since my head was starting to become kind of red from all the sun. Unfortunately, even though I checked about six shops, I couldn't find any decently priced hats that I liked. 
In the evening, I decided to go and eat at the hostels bar/restaurant, the beaver. Since I joined the hostel activity, I was supposed to get 15% off of the regular menus. There were already a few people so I just joined a table. Since I felt like eating a burger, I ordered the 'Greek burger' with fries. The burger itself was pretty good, however, the fries were a bit dry. I also orded a 'Sex on the Beach' as I just felt like drinking something fancy. The two people already sitting at my table were from Washington (the US state) and somewhere close to Toronto. After the two left, Sarah and Moses joined me. Later on another Canadian who was just visiting some friends in Vancouver joined our table. I ordered a Cider and talked with those three until a beer pong tournament was supposed to start at the bar. Since I am not very fond of beer, I paid and left to go up to my room.   

Rainy, busy day

Since the weather today wasn't as good as the last few days (it rained until around 2 PM), I didn't feel too bad about spending the day organising stuff and doing some internet research.
So right after breakfast, I decided to go to the SWAP office. On the way there, I stopped at a 1 dollar store 'Dollarama', where I finally found - among other things - a hat, which I surprisingly liked at once. After a short visit to the SWAP organisation, I got my SIN number at the Sinclair centre. Afterwards I also got a bank account at the CIBC, which is absolutely free for me for one year.

This evening, I cooked myself some spaghetti with tomato sauce.

After that, I hurried to take a shower since I wanted to join a rock paper scissors tournament at the hostel's bar. Unfortunately, I already lost in the first round of that tournament.

Granville Island

Today, I joined the hostel's daily activity and went to Granville Island, which is a part of Vancouver. We were a group of 8 people, among them my mexican roommate Anelle and a few australians.
Granville Island is a 30 minute walk from the hostel. At first, we went to the 'trash mound' to take a group picture. After that, we checked out a few local shops, one of which was a broom shop. Our guide told us that there is acually a Quidditich team at the UBC (University of British Colombia) and that they usually buy their broomsticks in that broom shop.
There was also a guy making huge soap bubbles.
After we had watched him for quite a while, we went on to the public market. Here, you could find a variety of food and other shops as well as a lot of street artists. Two of us went to take a brewery tour while the rest of us decided to go and buy some food. I just bought an australian peach and after that, I got a bit lost trying to find our meeting point. In the end, I found the way and after eating, we returned to the hostel together.