A 5-second pause for silliness

Today’s dose of “Grad. Student List-Incredulity”:

An Ode, in pictures, to the ink-strewn hand-list, for keeping me sane.

A weekend jaunt before classes began -or- A Place from Another Time

Today is the second day of classes, and it’s been a happy whirl of a gray-skied morning, running about and finalizing costs and textbook-acquiring, along with a Social Insurance Number so that I can work my small cleaning job on campus this summer…

I can’t wait to tell you more about these classes and how they’ll prepare me for work in PNG, but I thought today, that in honor of “the calm before the storm” of coursework, I would take a moment to celebrate the slow-paced lovely weekend I had, getting to know some of the women in the home I’m living in and re-acquainted with the little town the school is situated in...

On Saturday, I walked myself into Fort Langley, which is a little village in the already little township of Langley, and it’s the cutest! The walk was beautiful, and very good for clearing my travel-head and unpacking-hands. Here are some highlights for those that want to “visualize” my first few days back here:

This woman and her amazingly calm sidekick-pup were volunteering at the old rail station. They show guests around a lonely caboose that sits in a grassy yard, and she unlocked a lovely, tiny, whitewashed room for me in the back of the old station that held some local artists' paintings. 

Another volunteer was waiting in the caboose to show me some relics of the Canadian National (CN) rail. She pointed a long, serious finger at the white cloth suitcase in the center, and said “Do you know what that suitcase’s name is?”... And then answered herself with a cheeky grin and “Its name is ‘Please-Don’t-Rain’!”  

I KNOW some of my family and friends (ahem!..Paul A. and my cousie’s Joyce and Mike!) who watch “Once Upon a Time” might recognize this… They’ve filmed some of the show’s early scenes here, as Storybrooke’s town hall! It is actually the Fort Langley Community Hall.

And then back again…

I've arrived in Canada! And here's some about my travel day...

I’m quite the suspicious character. 

Or at least that’s what the Canadian border officers thought this time! I flew on Wednesday from Atlanta to Dallas, and Dallas to Vancouver, and other than some weather making the first flight's take-off a little late, everything went very smoothly until I arrived in Canada. I had some dear friends from last summer meeting me at the airport, but the process from landing to finally getting to meet them behind a glass door took about two hours! 

The Vancouver airport was considerably quiet in the evening, and by the time I was in line to sort out my student visa, we could see staff was a bit low and everyone had been working for many hours already..   I was part of a motley line of mostly forlorn faces---one plaid-clad young man explaining that he'd been Ecuador-bound but "no one from his charity had been there to meet him, and so he was sent back", one American couple distraught over lost bags, one South American family with an adorable child that needed to breath from his nubilzer treatment while they waited to situate entry plans. There were so many stories, tired and waiting, in front of me, and I found myself grateful for the workers before us, trying to stay positive and discerning  as they looked over each person's documents and asked them questions..

When it was all said and done, everything for my entry was fine, I just hadn't brought official- enough proof of the address I would be living at or of the small on-campus job I will be working. I was granted the visa and was able to tromp out to my waiting chariot of people, and groggily chatter with them all the way to Langley to crash to sleep after 20-some hours of being awake!

The rest of the travel day was beautiful though, and I took a few photos out of the plane windows for you of some of the things that caught my breath:

Sunset over the British Columbia coast as we circled for a landing!