January Highlights

To the average Canadian, the Pacific Northwest climate is considered especially mild. 
In Vancouver, two newly-arrived immigrants weather their first winter in the city. 
These are their stories (now supplemented with drawings because who can actually be bothered to take photos??).

* dun dun *

The scene fades in to reveal a grey morning sky and that annoying amount of rain that makes you feel like you need rain pants but as soon as you go outside you realize you’re overdressed; so you preemptively correct and leave them at home, only to find 10 minutes into your walk that you actually should have worn them. 

Cynthia: What do you want to do today?
Jamie: The same thing we do every day…try to take over the world. 

Here We Go

January 1: Rang in the New Year in the usual way by playing charades with our friends. If I could watch Lindsay try to mime “Batman” every single day for the rest of my life, I’d die a happy clam. 

January 15: Snowshoed our way up Dog Mountain at Mount Seymour, where I got to see ravens and whiskey jacks (birds, obviously) for the first time (don’t tell anyone but I was literally Snow White and hand fed the birds some dog food and it was positively magical). Resolving to do more snow sports next year. 

January 16: We initially wanted to go for a cold swim in the ocean on Christmas, but it was -12℃ (yeah I’m using Celcius now) so we decided to do a New Year’s plunge instead. Then New Year’s came and it was -3℃ so we put it off some more. The polar vortex finally broke and we saw a dry day with positive temperatures, so we did the thing! I felt really proud of myself until I saw a group of adults and children just casually wading in the water in preparation for a much longer swim. Damn Canadians. 

January 26: Sunny days must be savored, so we took a long walk along the sea wall and found some rocks to jump on. I have a bruise above my butt to prove we had a good time. 

XOXO