Oak Bay Tea Party

I had thought that it was an US thing but now I have seen it here in Victoria, too: There are people who actually put some kind of leash on their little kids to keep them from running away too far or on the street or something.
Anyway, this morning I walked in the direction of Willows Beach again in order to watch the Oak Bay Tea Party parade. After I had chosen a spot in the shade and sat down in the grass, someone living right there actually offered me a chair from his house to sit on, which was extremely kind. The parade had started at 10.30 AM, but it was already past 11 when it arrived at my spot. The parade wasn't too big but quite nice, there were some amazing marching school bands and gymnastics groups.
After the parade, I walked to the beach where they had a little fair with rides, games and food. I had a jumbo beef hot dog, which was really good, and sat down at the beach to listen to some live music and the judging of the parade acts.
There was also kayaking for donations and since I had wanted to try it anyway, I signed up.
The kayaking was extremely fun although I had some trouble with steering the kayak at first. I just had 15 minutes but it was enough for trying it out. When I arrived back at the shore, there was a big wave that splashed into the kayak and my pants got all wet. Consequently, I had to take my pants of and sit a while on the beach while they dried at least a little bit in the sun.
 

After my pants had almost dried, I walked back home, where I arrived around 3 PM. I was a bit too lazy to walk back to the beach with some lighter clothes, which had been my original plan. Instead, I sat in the garden for a while, where I chatted with my landlady and read a little bit. In the end it was a good thing that I didn't spent much more time out in the sun because I already had a sunburn on my arms now.

First day at 'Garden City'

Today was my first day of work in a gift store. I was working in 'Garden City', which is part of the double gift store 'Royal Garden', consisting of 'Royal Victoria' and 'Garden City'. In the end, it's just like one really big gift store with two tills.
My work consisted mostly of restocking goods, helping costumers and handling the till. The first half of the day was quite nice, but after my lunch break, the day seemed to be taking forever and I was pretty exhausted from standing all the time. Working at the till isn't too bad, it just sometimes gets a little complicated when costumers want to pay in USD or with some weird kind of credit card or whatever. And if there are a lot of costumers lining up, it gets a little stressful and hectic, which can easily lead to mistakes at the till. Especially the rounding that has to be done for cash payments (there are no 1 or 2 cent coins in Canada!) can be easily forgotten.
All things considered, I think I didn't do too bad for my first day. However, I was pretty exhausted afterwards. It was definitely more exhausting than working at the hostel, but that might just be due to the longer shift - 8 hours instead of 5.
This evening, I was too tired to go out again and thus I just relaxed a little anfter cooking some noodles with tomato sauce for dinner.

Beacon Hill and Willows Beach

As I didn't have any plans for today, I slept in late. After breakfast, I had to do some laundry (almost all of my t-shirts were dirty by now so it was definitely time to do it). It was nice to be able to hang my stuff outside again and not to have to use the dryer.
In the early afternoon, I did a short trip to Beacon Hill park and the petting zoo in order to hand in my application for the volunteer program.
Around 4:30 pm, Sara visited me at home. I had given her the wrong street number by accident (2761 instead of 1761) and felt really bad about it, since she had to drive so much further because of it. We walked to Willows Beach together. It was an actual beach with sand, which is rare around here, so that was nice. Sara told me how to skim a stone on water - so far I had thought that it's only possible with some kind of special effects or whatever, but it was actually quite simple.
In the evening, I took the bus to the hostel again. It was quiz night and I had a poutine style potato with a cider. Our group consisting of Brielle, Janina and me didn't do too well at the quiz. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun teaching Brielle some German.

Working... at the hostel?!

Today was my first day at the gift shop. However as it turned out, it was just some kind of orientation and I am actually supposed to start working on Friday.
I was done with the orientation by 1 PM and had no plans, thus I decided to help out at the hostel - Jay and Adam had told me yesterday that two new workers, who were supposed to start today, hadn't shown up and that they'd need an extra hand today. Even though I had been so glad last week after I had had my last shift at the hostel, I kind of enjoyed working there today. As I was not officially working at the hostel anymore and this was all very spontaneously, I got 'fake' money (Ocean Island Dollars, the hostel's currency) as a payment, which is just as fine for me since I'll be spending a lot of time eating and drinking stuff at the hostel anyway.
This evening, I went to the library to get a library card and to print some formal stuff which I need to hand in at work. Afterwards, I went shopping at Walmart where I bought way too much food because everything was quite cheap. The way back home was a bit annoying, since it was raining and the buses didn't come very frequently.

My new home

As I had already packed all my bags, I couldn't really go hiking or anything today. Unfortunately I also couldn't move into my new home until 4:30 PM, so I had to do something else. I went to the bank to get some stuff done, bought a bus ticket and then decided to walk to Beacon Hill park again. It was nice to relax there for a bit. Once again, I walked to the petting zoo. There were a few people working at the zoo and since I love spending time there, I asked about volunteer positions. They told me they'd just have one spot left and gave me an application. I'll have to fill it out and bring it back there soon. I guess volunteering could be fun so I'll try it out.
As it was still only 2 PM, I went down to the coast and sat on a rock watching the ocean for a while.
I was back at the hostel around 3:30 PM and half an hour later, I took all my bags and took the bus to my new home. After I arrived, I took care of the formalities with the house owner and unpacked my bags. Then I went to the nearby supermarket, which offers a lot of good discounts, to get some food for breakfast tomorrow.

Since Leon is leaving tomorrow, I went back to the hostel to join him and the others for the goodbye party. We walked to the 'Irish Times Pub', where a good live band was playing. The evening was fun andI had a pretty expensive double hot chocolate with rum. Originally, I had thought that the 'double' meant that it was twice the size. However, double actually means twice the alcohol, so that one drink was definitely enough for me.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stay too long, because I wanted to be fit for my first day of work tomorrow. Consequently, I left already around 10:30 PM.

Waking up in Tofino and partying in Victoria

I started my birthday with a nice walk to the beach. At first I went to Tonquin beach again. Even though it was quite big, I was the only one there when I arrived. As soon as a few other people started coming to the beach, I decided to take the trail to the third beach. It was a really beautiful walk through the rainforest with several nice viewpoints. I enjoyed the remote path and the quiet. The third beach was rather small but extremely beautiful. It was so nice that the only sound I could hear there was the soothing swoosh of the ocean. As I had to catch a bus, I already started walking back to the hostel around 11AM.
On the way, I bought some snacks for my journey: Noodle salad, a bun, cake and juice.

The bus ride back to Victoria was rather uneventful and tiring. The bus left at 12.50 PM and arrived in Victoria around 7 PM. 

It was rock paper scissors night at the hostel and since pretty much everyone was there, I took part in the tournaments. The first time I played, the whole bar sang 'Happy Birthday' for me, which was pretty cool. I was quite lucky today: In the first tournament I got to the semifinals, I won the second tournament, and I lost in the final round of the third tournament to Brielle.With the 10 Ocean Island Dollars I got as a prize, I bought a potato with cheese and beans for dinner. 

Since everyone had told me how cool the pub Big Bad Johns was, I wanted to check it out tonight. Before we left, Leon and Alex tried singing 'Happy Birthday' in a canon to me, which was just hilarious.

Big Bad Johns was definitey interesting. There were bras hanging from the ceiling and you could just stick or draw stuff on the walls. Since I won't need it anymore anyway, I left my university's bus pass on the wall. You could get buckets of peanuts and everyone was eating them and throwing the leftovers on the floor, which was kind of weird but fun. There was also some weird guy in an orange high-visibility vest. He asked me to dance and I accepted at first, but then dancing in the pub just wasn't such a good idea and the guy was a bit too weird so I quickly went back to the others. We were mostly just talking and joking around, but it was a nice evening. Since almost everyone had to work in the morning, we didn't stay too long. I was back at the hostel around 1 AM.

A perfect day with whales, hot springs and a bear

I went on a tour to the hot springs today, which had been recommended to me by several people in Victoria. The tour was quite expensive (130 CAD) but definitely worth it.
The motorboat left at 11 AM. It was almost like riding a rollercoaster, since we were sometimes almost jumping from one wave to the next. On the way to the hot springs there were a lot of whales. It wasn't easy to take a picture of them since they were always gone so quickly. I saw at least five grey whales: Sometimes I could only glimpse their back and twice I could even see their tail. The driver of the boat told us that we were unusually lucky with the amount of whales that surfaced close to us.
I was getting a little sick from the rough ride, thus I was happy when we finally arrived.
It was a 2 km hike to the hot springs, which was quite exhausting but also very beautiful. The path went through a rainforest and there were a lot of interesting plants and birds to behold.
After arriving at the hot springs, I changed into my bathing suit. However it took me a while until I was in the water, since it was actually surprisingly hot. After getting used to the heat, it was extremely comfortable to sit and relax in the water - it was almost like a hot tub. There was also a big dog running around in and around the hot springs. He was very keen on small rocks - whenever someone picked up a rock, he loved to take it from him and sometimes ran away with it.
I guess I was in the hot water for a bit too long as I was feeling a little sick afterwards. But that only lasted for a few minutes. On the walk back to the boat, I felt extremely relaxed in a weird way.
I was still feeling rather relaxed on the boat ride back to Tofino. In fact, I sometimes felt as if I'd fall asleep and my eyes were falling shut a few times. The water around us was unusually green. This time, we didn't see any whales. Instead, we actually managed to see a black bear, which was looking for food on a beach. I felt so lucky, it was almost like an early birthday present to see all these amazing things today!

I arrived back in Tofino around 5 PM and went back to the hostel to take a shower.
Around 7 PM I met with Johanna, whom I had met in Victoria before and who is currently working in a resort here in Tofino. We had a really nice evening. At first we went down to Jacks Waterfront Pub, where we had a really nice Burger with fries. I also had a coke and a cider. We spent a few hours in the pub and talked a lot about our experiences here and how they are changing us. After the pub, we wanted to walk to the beach to watch the stars. However, there were no lights on the road to the beach, so we decided to stay just where we were, which was in the middle of a small remote street. We sat down on the ground and watched the sky for a while, until we heard some sound, which was a bit scary. After that, we walked on and ended up sitting on a bench that was like some kind of big rocking chair.
Around midnight, Johanna was the first to sing me a short 'Happy Birthday' song. We still sat and talked for a while until a small black cat joined us. It was kind of cute but also a bit scary, since it was jumping around hunting after shadows.