Well, obviously they let us in. Those are the coordinates of the Meridian Hotel in lovely downtown Vancouver.

Getting in was in some ways easier than expected and in some ways bizarrely more difficult. I was applying for a Study Permit as my official status document and, for that, there is a two-page application form and a $125 cdn processing fee ($90 usd). So I downloaded the form from the net well before we left and filled it out. I also checked the web for acceptable forms of payment and learned that the only acceptable forms of payment are cashier's checks, money orders and bank drafts. So we got a $90 money order.

In the process of packing, I apparently left the application out of the big box of documents. I didn't discover this until two weeks later, in Bellingham the night before we crossed the border. (As it ultimately turned out, I had it in the car, just in a different spot that I had promptly forgotten about.) But that was no big problem. I figured I'd just fill it out again at the border. It wasn't very complicated and we had all the required information at hand.

So we get to the border, where customs pretty much just waved us through with an admonition to take our car with us when we left. Immigration, though, was weird. I showed up all ready to fill out the form, and the guy basically says don't bother. He asked us a bunch of questions, typed some stuff on the computer, and printed out a study permit without any application form at all.

When it came time to pay for processing the application we'd never submitted, though, we discover that the truth was in fact the precise inverse of what the Immigration Canada web site had told us. He looked at our money order like we were trying to pay him in cowrie shells, called someone else over to consult, and decided they couldn't take that. What would they accept? Oh, cash, credit cards.

After much smacking of foreheads, we gave them a visa card because it seemed appropriate, and then we were officially in Canada - beyond the reach of Bush's fascist regime, free to smoke pot, worship Baal, drag down the socialized health care system with our disgusting sense of entitlement and all the other things "real" Canadians do.

Well not really, but they do have a weirdly different culture up here, apart from the fact that everything has to be translated into French on the signs and labels. Exxon is still Esso. Reese's Cups are just Reese cups. Yogurt has too many letters, something like yogourt. (I seriously think this is so it counts as both English and French so they don't have to have two different words.) The a in Mazda is pronounced differently. Instead of "ah" its a as in "hat." Kraft macaroni and cheese is "Kraft Dinner" and it comes in more varieties. Digiorno frozen pizza is "Delissio" here for no apparent reason.

My favorite so far is Canadian institution Tim Hortons, a fast food chain where, instead of fries, you get a doughnut with your sandwich. Pretty good doughnuts too, actually. Lots of maple stuff and I like maple. This sounds like a bizarrely bad idea, but a closer look at the menu reveals that none of the sandwiches is fried. It's like chicken salad, or a turkey sandwich with a bowl of soup. And a maple frosted doughnut. All in all it's probably better for you than the greasy burger and fries you get in the states.

God knows the people are in better shape up here. Everyone's always out biking or rollerblading around. Almost nobody's fat. Maybe my perceptions are being slanted by the fairly large gay population in this section of town, but I saw an American tourist family yesterday, waddling across Burrard St. and was like, holy hell, what happened to them?

I've actually been a lot more active since we got here. I sold my car, of course, before we came, so I've been walking and bicycling almost everywhere. Sometimes, if we're going exploring or whatever, we'll take Elisa's car out of the underground garage, but mostly we've been hoofing it.

So far we're adapting to life here pretty well, after a few trial and error attempts at basic life tasks that didn't work quite like we expected them to. Getting Elisa's prescriptions refilled took all day and a short, pointless, excursion back into U.S. territory (where we were promptly cavity searched and flown to Jordan for "questioning." That sucked.) And it turns out that if you want to wire funds from your bank to your new bank in another country, you want to be physically located at the sending end rather than the receiving end. We ended up having to write ourselves a check and wait for it to clear. But now we can write checks to our would-be new landlord and so we'll have an apartment soon.



The weather has been magnificent, after a spate of rain as we first arrived. That's a shot from the back of my bike on Chilco Street, across the "Lost Lagoon" at the edge of Stanley park and the mountains to the north of town. Turn 180 degrees on that spot and you're surrounded by apartment buildings and West End streets.

All in all, I love it here. VFS classes start soon and, I guess, things are going more or less according to plan.