The Moss Street Paint-In and my almost lost wallet

I started my day slowly by taking a shower and watching an episode of 'White Collar' with Katrina. Around noon, I cooked some rice and vegetables and ate them with my leftover fish from yesterday. I still think that the 'Red Fish Blue Fish' fish is extremely tasty but not really worth the waiting time.

I met Xue and her husband Charles around 2 PM at Moss Street. It was the Moss Street Paint-In, so the whole street was filled with artists displaying their work and sometimes even drawing, painting or sculpturing live. We spent the next two hours walking down Moss Street and checking out all the different booths.
Once again there were surprisingly many people commenting on my hat. In particular, there was a clown who gave me a balloon to put on my hat.
The Paint-In was just about to close when we reached the end of the street at Dallas Road. From there, we walked in the direction of Beacon Hill Park. While crossing the park, I helped Charles install 'Pokemon Go' on his phone. In return, I could use his phone's wifi and consequently, the two of us spent some time hunting pokemon in Beacon Hill Park.

When we reached Downtown, I bade the Xue and Charles farewell and took a bus to Walmart. Just after arriving at Walmart around 6 PM, I was looking for my wallet. Shockingly, my wallet wasn't where I expected it to be. In fact, it was nowhere to be found. I panicked and then thought about where I had seen it last. Since I remembered taking stuff out of my wallet at home and not using my wallet afterwards, I decided to go home and check if I left it there. It took me 50 minutes to get home, but it seemed a lot longer than that. Luckily, my wallet was at home - I had put it in another bag by accident.
I wasn't sure if I still wanted to go back to Walkmart as it was getting a bit late. However, when I decided to eat a snack first, I discovered that my bread had gone bad. Therefore, I definitely needed to go shopping for groceries.
I was back at Walkmart just past 8 PM. I was a bit annoyed about having wasted 2 hours because of my wallet. As it took some time to find everything I needed at Walmart and the bus back didn't leave immediately, it was almost 10 PM when I arrived back at home.
After putting my groceries away and preparing a snack, I ended the day just how I had started it - with some 'White Collar'.

Goat time

When I woke up this morning, I was still pretty tired and didn't really want to get up. I got up anyway in order to get ready for my volunteer shift. I wasn't really looking forward to it since I didn't feel like doing anything. Nevertheless, as soon as I started working at the Beacon Hill Farm, my mood improved considerably.
At first, I had to cut and collect grass and leaves for two of the goats to eat. While doing that, I was surrounded by peacocks, which was kind of nice. Afterwards, I spent the afternoon in the petting area surrounded by goats. All I had to do was clean up after the goats and cuddle with them. All the while, I was also chatting with Claudia, a German staff member of the farm who has been living in Canada for 6 years now.
I almost didn't want to leave when I was done at the farm. However, I still had a lot of stuff to do so I took the next bus to Downtown. At first, I picked up my paycheck. After a short visit to my bank, I went down to the harbour to finally try and buy fish at the 'Red Fish Blue Fish' store. Just like last time, there was a long line of customers. As I was there more than an hour before my shift at the gift store was supposed to start, I took the chance and queued up. I had to wait in line for about 35 minutes and then it took them another 15 minutes to prepare my meal. Consequently, I only had 10 minutes left to eat. The fish and the chips were actually pretty good, I really liked the quality of the food. However, I am not sure if this meal was really worth the 50 minutes of waiting. As I didn't have time to finish my whole meal before work, I let them wrap up the rest of it.
 

Work wasn't too bad today since I was still in quite a good mood after my shift at the farm. We weren't too busy but there were at least some customers most of the time, which was nice. Just the last hour was a bit too quiet but at least that way we were able to close on time.

Just a long, slow work day

This morning, I had an skype interview for a potential job in Montreal. However, after the interview I wasn't so sure anymore if I really wanted that job. As it turned out, the hours I could work would depend on projects and thus couldn't be predicted. But I guess if I went over to the east coat and didn't get enough hours working at that company, I could always find another job.
As it was already noon and I didn't really have time to go out and do stuff before work, I just lay down in the garden for a while to finish the book I had been reading the past two months. All things considered, I liked 'children of the night' by Mercedes Lackey, even though the finale seemed a bit short and less exciting than I had anticipated.
I had to work from 3:45 to 11:15 tonight and especially the last three hours passed extremely slowly. We had almost no customers, thus tidying up the store was the only thing we could do most of the time. However, after a while there was nothing left to tidy up. As I had to close the store with Grace tonight, at least the last 20 minutes of my shift were a bit more exciting.

Walking around Beaver and Elk Lake

This afternoon, I went with Katrina, Jakki and Jasper on a walk around Beaver and Elk Lake, two big joined lakes on the way from Victoria to the airport / ferry. The whole walk around the lakes would have been 10 km, but since we didn't want to go too far, we turned around after a bit more than 3 km. Consequently, we walked for about 7 km.
As the weather turned out to be real nice, spending the afternoon outside was great and I had a lot of fun watching the two dogs. Jasper is still quite young, thus he was always playing around and acted quite impulsively. Due to his size, it sometimes seemed a bit intimidating when he was running at me, but he really just wanted to play.
During the walk, we always had to try and keep the two dogs from eating horse poo, which turned out to be almost impossible: As soon as we got one of the dogs out of the danger zone, the other one went for the poo. It was still a lot of fun. Jakki also went for a few short swims in the lakes. We had tried to get Jasper to join her by throwing sticks into the water, but he was always scared of getting wet. He only changed his mind and ran into the water at the end of our walk in order to try and catch some ducks.
After we dropped Jasper off and went back home, we spent most of the evening watching 'White Collar' and enjoying some cookies which Katrina had made.

Gifts and Shakespeare in the rain

I had to work the early shift again, which means that I had to be at work at 7:30. Consequently, I felt quite sleepy all day long. At the end of my shift, Xue was coming by my workplace. She was applying for some jobs nearby and dropped by to say hello. She also left me a little gift - some bath salts that I definitely have to try out sometime.
When I got home after work, I received another gift: A care package my mum had sent me from Germany had arrived today.
I had planned to go and see a Shakespearean theatre play tonight and Katrina had decided to join me. Since there was still some time before we had to leave, we watched one episode of 'White Collar'.
The play took place on a lawn in front of the Camosun College. The stage and everything was outside and people could either bring chairs or a blanket to sit on. We had a blanket to sit on and some more blankets to keep us warm, which had been a god idea as it got really cold. Just when the play was about the start, it also started to rain a little bit. Due to us sitting right in front of the stage, we couldn't really open any umbrellas. Thus, a rain jacket and a blanket was all we could use to keep us dry. The weather kind of matched the setting of the play, though, which made it more interesting.
The play itself was really good, the actors were great and even though we didn't understand everything that they were saying due to the typically old English expressions, I really liked the story, too. It was 'The Winter's Tale', a story about a king who looses everything due to his jealousy and is later reunited with his supposedly lost daughter and a wrongly accused friend in a happy ending.
The play ended around 10:30 PM, so it took almost 3 hours (including a 20 minute break). Since we were feeling a bit chilled, we were happy to get back to Katrina's car. Sitting on the grund definitely wasn't the most comfortable position, but it was definitely an interesting experience.

Nachos and a Sphinx?!

When I got up this morning, my eye was still a little red and iing but since it was already a bit better than yesterday, I didn't worry too much about it anymore. Luckily, as the day progressed, it got even better.
After work, I had planned to visit Sara at her new home. Since we wanted to cook together, I picked up some nachos and carrots on the way to her, which was pretty long. Sara lives in a huge house with really fancy looking furniture. However, it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and it isn't easy to get there without a car or a bike.
At first we went on a walk in her neighborhood, which was really nice. We made a short stop at a playground, saw some sheep and an Egyptian Sphinx statue in some field! We were pretty surprised to see that Sphinx and it took us some time to get a close look at it. It seemed to be part of some maze, which wasn't open at that time.
After our walk, we cooked a really nice dinner: Nachos topped with a mix of tomatoes, beans, carrots, onions, apples and cheese. It was extremely tasty!

I got home around 8:30 PM and took a quick shower before watching one more episode of 'White Collar' with Katrina and enjoying some chocolate chip cookies she had baked.

Pride Parade and Festival

Today was the Pride Parade in Victoria. I took the bus going Downtown and was actually pretty lucky to get into the bus - just two busstops later, the bus didn't stop anymore to accept more passengers as it was overcrowded. I got off the bus one stop early since I still had to buy bread. As my bus had already been a bit late, I missed the first two or three minutes of the parade, but there was still a lot too see. So many different people in colorful and extravagant clothes marched in the parade; there were people playing instruments, handing out candy, tattoos, and small gifts, making bubbles and spattering water on the bystanders.
When the last participants of the parade had passed my location, I and so many others joined the parade, partying to music coming from its last vehicle.
The parade ended at Mc Donald park, where you could find a lot of booths and two stages. I took my time checking out all the booths and collecting some more free stuff - among them a usb hub, a polaroid picture and juice.
I also bought a hotdog for lunch and then sat a while on the grass eating and watching the people there. There was a fenced over 21 area, where you could buy alcohol among other things. Since I didn't feel like drinking, I didn't bother standing in line in order to get in.

Since I had to transfer to another bus on the way home anyway, I made a short stop at a supermarket to buy a few things.
Back at home, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing, watching some movies and cooking dinner. While I was peeling potatoes, one of my eyes suddenly started itching and feeling very irritated - it seemed like my conjunctiva was even a bit swollen. I couldn't find any reason for it, so I just decided to try and relax my eye, hoping that it would be better the next morning.