A noon walk through the Uplands Park

As the weather was just as nice and the temperature as hot as yesterday, I decided to go out and try to seize the day. At first I considered going to the beach, but just lying in the sand didn't seem too appealing to me today. I decided to check out Uplands Park, a park area just north of Willows Beach. Katrina said that she would drop me off at the park, however, when we arrived at Cattle Point, the fresh air was so nice that she joined me.
There was a piano right at the shore and I tried playing a little bit on it. After that, we just walked along the coast until we came to the entrance of Uplands Park. It was a bit hotter in the park but there were still enough shaded areas. So it was really nice to walk around there.
On the way back to the car, we made a short stop at Willow's Beach. We took our shoes off in order to walk through the water. As I couldn't really put my socks and shoes back on, Katrina convinced me to walk back barefoot to the car. This wasn't too pleasant for me as the ground was quite hot and pricky. As my feet were not really used to walking barefoot, I gave up just before we reached the car - it had become too uncomfortable to walk for me. Katrina picked me up and I was happy to be able to wash the dirt off my feet at home.

Back at home, I had some leftover 'Kartoffelpuffer' for lunch. Then, I tidied my room a bit and cleaned the bathroom.

During my 4 hour shift at 'Overboard', my coworker Jennifer insisted that we would listen to the last concert of a Canadian rock band called 'The Tragically Hip', which was broadcasted life. Jennifer claimed that all of Canada was listening to this concert, as the band was somewhat iconic and this was their last concert since the lead singer had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. I guess their music was ok but I didn't like it too much. I also had to close the store on my own tonight and I still think that that is kind of scary.

Another hot day

I still had a lot of potatoes left and since I had wanted to make 'Kartoffelpuffer' (Americans would call them 'hash browns', but it's actually not the same!) with apple sauce for a while, I decided to do just that. While I was eating my lunch outside, I realized that it was a very hot day. It was so hot that I didn't really feel like doing anything.
About two hours before I had to go to work, I felt like I really needed to go out and see something nice. Thus, I decided to go to the little, rocky beach south of the Beacon Hill Park which I liked so much.
When I got there, I only had about 30 minutes left before I had to leave again. Nevertheless, I enjoyed that short time watching the Ocean and the sun while eating a sandwich for dinner.

Work wasn't too bad today. The store had been very busy in the afternoon, thus there were tons of T-shirts to fold, which kept me busy for most of the evening.
When I got home around 11:30, Katrina wasn't there yet. She arrived around midnight and we still chatted for a few minutes before going to bed.

A nice, hot day at the farm and in Downtown

After having been too sick last week, I finally had another shift at the Beacon Hill Children's Farm. As my shift started at 10:30 AM, I had to get up early. The bus only brought me to Downtown so I had to walk a little bit to get to the farm. As the weather was really nice, I enjoyed the walk there. However, walking through Beacon Hill Park in the morning can be quite dangerous if you don't look where you are going: I was almost hit by a sprinkler that was watering the plants on two sides of a path.
My shift at the farm went by pretty quickly. My job was to clean out the goat barn. At first I had been a bit worried about doing that due to my still lingering cough, but then I didn't have any trouble with that.
I took my time walking back to Downtown and sat down in the park just watching the ponds for a while. It was getting quite hot and I was wearing too many clothes. Nevertheless, I kept walking leisurely in the direction of Downtown, taking a few pictures of my beautiful surroundings once again. When I passed the gift store, I checked my schedule for next week. When Kathy saw me taking a picture of the new schedule, she proposed that I should take a picture of her. Somehow, the whole situation turned out to be quite fun and I ended up taking a picture of her, Amy and our store manager Grace.
Because of the warm weather, I felt like eating some ice cream. There was a small ice cream shop that I had passed several times already and everytime, its offer of two scoops of ice cream in a cone with cream and strawberries seemed very tempting. Thus, today I finally gave in to that temptation and tried a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of maple walnut icecream.
After I was done eating, I walked to the other giftstore I work at in order to buy a calender and chat with the manager there about my hours.
Afterwards I walked to the public library to print something once again - hopefully my last time walking there for the next few weeks. It was quite crowded around this time so that I needed to wait a little bit until I could use a PC and start the printing job. By now, it was almost 3 PM and I was getting thirsty. Thus, I decided to take a bus home. I still needed to buy some bread, though. Consequently, I got off the bus on Quadra Street, went to the 'Wild Fire' bakery, bought the 'Rye with Wheat' bread I usually bought there, and then took the next bus home.

I didn't do too much in the afternoon and in the evening as the heat was making me feel a bit exhausted. I tried reading and watching some TV, but somehow nothing could really catch my attention.
After it got dark outside, I decided to sit on the terrace and enjoy the view of the full moon and the stars. Sitting outside was actually quite pleasant since it had cooled down considerably compared to the rather hot temperatures inside the house.
Katrina came home while I was sitting outside and joined me there for a while. Among other things, we talked a bit about languages and that Americans think that German is a rather harsh language. In my opinion, that is definitely not true. Actually, I felt like English was harsher than German as I had to try and pronounce the English 'r' a lot harsher in order to make it sound the way it was supposed to sound.

Swimming in the Sooke Potholes

Today, Katrina and I finally went on a tour to the Sooke Potholes. We left around noon and since the drive to Sooke took about an hour, we arrived just past 1 PM. We had planned to set up camp and make a picnic somewhere, so we started walking up the path up the provincial park. It was really a beautiful scenery and there were several nice spots close to the water. We had hoped to settle in a more remote spot, however, there were few small groups of people everywhere.
We considered crossing the river at one spot in order to get somewhere a bit more remote, but the stones seemed a bit too slippery for that. I had taken off my shoes in order to try and cross the river and just before I could put them back on, there was a wasp sitting on my leg, which totally freaked me out. I tried getting away from it but there were rocks everywhere and thus it was hard to move, especially without shoes. The wasp managed to land on my feet one more time before I finally got away from that spot. I just wanted to get away then and I was glad that the wasp hadn't stung me.
We kept walking up for a bit in the direction of a viewpoint. Before arriving there, we discovered a picnic area and as we were both hungry for some lunch, we sat down and ate a snack we had packed. Here, we had a nice view of a hill covered by trees while eating. Afterwards, we went to two different viewpoints, where we could even see small waterfalls.
After we had enjoyed the view for a while, we walked back in the direction of the car. Halfway down, there was one of the nice spots we had seen earlier and by now, it was a bit less crowded so we did decide to settle down there for a while. I was feeling very hot from the short hike, so I decided to change into my bathing suit and go swimming. At first the water was a bit cool, but after getting used to it it felt just perfect and I really enjoyed it. Katrina and Jakki joined me, too, although Jakki stayed closer to the shore. The water wasn't too deep, even at the deepest point my feet could touch the ground.
We then lay down on a towel to dry in the sun. After we had another snack, we went back to the car.
Before going home, we drove into Sooke and made a short stop at 'Serious Coffe', where Katrina wanted to get a cup of coffee. We also shared a 'World famour lemon bar', which tasted quite nice in combination with the hot chocolate I got.
The drive back to Victoria was a bit more than an hour but I really enjoyed it, since it offered so many beautiful views.

Interesting conversations at work

Working today was kind of fun since I had a lot of interesting conversations with some customers.
There was one lady from the US who asked me where I was from and what I was doing here. When I told her that I was work and travelling on my own, she was fascinated by it but said that she'd be too shy to try travelling on her own. When she left the store, I heard her say to her friend 'I wish I was like her', which made me feel kidn of special.
A bit later there was a kid who wanted to buy a whole basket full of gifts. While I was scanning the items, I saw his eyes getting bigger and bigger with the increasing price of the items. When I asked him if he wanted all of this and if I should keep scanning, he said yes. The final amount was about 120 CAD, but as it turned out, the boy only had 45 CAD. Thus, he chose just a few of the items he had wanted earlier and I had to rescan than.  I had thought that it would end that way from the beginning, but well...
There were also a few German tourists. They had seen a sweater in our window which they liked but for some reason, I had never seen the sweater in the color it has in the window. As the customers didn't settle for any other color, I couldn't really help them. However, they told me that they really wanted to have a Canadian bill as a souvenir, so I advised them to buy some postcards and give me a few more USD bills, so that I could give them a full Canadian 5 Dollar bill back. While doing so, I actually messed up a little bit and made a mistake at the till, but with the help of my coworker, I could fix it later on.
After work, I went to the library once again to print two more documents. Then I went home, where I spent the evening doing some planning and watching 'White Collar' with Katrina.

Uptown

I only had to work for 4 hours today, which was nice. As today was the 15th, I could pick up my paycheck on the way home. At home, I made myself a nice lunch with the letover noodles and vegetables from yesterday.
I had been wanting to go to Walmart again for a few days now and my free afternoon seemed to be perfect for that trip. Thus, I took the bus to Uptown, which only needed about 40 minutes this time.
At first I went to the Dollarama store, where I actually bought another hat (just like the one people keep complimenting me about, only in a slightly different color).
As the weather was quite nice, I felt like shopping and so I checked out some of the stores in Uptown. After trying on a few things, I ended up buying a quite interesting T-shirt with a print reading 'every moment matters'.
There was also a piano in the middle of the Uptown area that everyone could play on. I immediately loved the idea of that 'town pino'. I tried playing on that piano for a minute or so but unfortunately, it felt like I had forgotten everything about playing the piano. In addition to that, I just didn't have the inner quiet to sit and play today. Thus, I quickly went on to Walmart.

Once again I took advantage of all the cheap offers at Walmart and bought way too much food. Sitting with a backpack and three full bags of groceries at the bus stop or in the bus was not really comfortable, but at least I was quite lucky with the buses today and got home in about 45 minutes, which was quite good compared to some other times when I went to Walmart.
Back at home, Katrina, who had just come back from her holiday last night, was sitting and chatting in the kitchen with her son Josh. He left just when I was done with putting the groceries away, taking a shower, and taking care of some other stuff. Then Katrina and I could finally watch another episode of 'White Collar'.

Working, reading, and cooking

A few days ago I finished the book 'The Wind Singer', which I had been reading in the past few weeks. Consequently, I could start reading its sequel 'Slaves of the Mastery' today.
Around noon, I cooked a nice lunch consisting of vegetables, noodles, cheese, and tomato sauce. After eating, I already had to leave for work.
I had a 5 hour afternoon shift at Overboard today. Once again, the store was just the right amount of busy so that I didn't mind being on my own for most of the time.
As it turned out, Caryl, the manager of Overboard, had canceled one of my shifts next week since all of the stores were supposed to cut back a few hours. Due to my week off at the end of August, working a few hours less did seem a bit worrisome to me. Thus I called and asked Caryl about it and she said that she'd see if she can do something about it in the next few days. If she can't, I guess I'll just have three days off in the following week, which might also be nice.
On my way home, I apparently decided on waiting for the wrong bus - I ended up waiting almost 20 minutes for it. However, I felt a bit exhausted so I didn't want to go to any other bus stop. Therefore, when I got home I just relaxed, watched some TV, and continued reading.