I've been to cities that never close down...

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2008-04-28T10:17:00.000+10:00

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The ring

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Vancouver

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Northside Church Young Adults Ball

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My old room.

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Going home.

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Stephen's new office

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Crazy border crossing

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2006-12-27T15:08:00.000+10:00

And what says Christmas gifts more than talking dolls whose batteries will be worn out in a couple of days (hopefully) and the smiles of very cute children.

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Truly, it's all lost on the young, but they still look cute.

2006-12-27T15:06:00.000+10:00

And this was my Christmas Day, at KBH with a family that really wasn't even larger than mine! I haven't seen that many presents for quite a while though!

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Thank Dan for the vantage point of this shot. Doesn't it look fantastic?!

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Another perspective.

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And even so it was still an amazing view. The Van Duesen Park was filled with lights everywhere. We even got to see some 'dancing' lights.

2006-12-27T15:01:00.000+10:00

So this was Christmas Eve. The plan had originally been to meet up with Andrea and Dan and go look at Christmas lights and then go to dinner. However, this is Vancouver and I forgot to think up wet weather plans. So we just decided to go, and apparently so did everyone else who planned to go that night (I guess you get used to not letting the rain spoil your plans when you live in Vancouver). So this is Stephen standing under the umbrella we used to look at the lights while the rain came down in the cold night air. You can see how absolutely thrilled he is!

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I actually took this, how cool does it look?!

2006-12-27T14:58:00.000+10:00

So this is Vancouver at it's quite unusual. This is just outside my door and the snow was sticking! It actually got a lot deeper than this, and I don't think I will ever outgrow the magic of the first snow (which this was), my first 'first snow'. However, melting snow is not fun, and riding your scooter in the snow is bad. Otherwise it's all good!

2006-12-19T15:29:00.001+10:00

Jenea and Haven

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Investigations of the three way highlighter in her new cheatah hat.

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This is Haven, I mentor her every Wednesday night. We have a lot of fun together and she is extremely cute as well as being in no way camera shy.

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This is the perfect toasted cheese sandwhich as described and crafted by Stephen P Bell

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Joe the painter man

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Ain't it great to be crazy

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Hehe, photos of Xander, Olivia and becs again. (You are aware of the obvious question that needs to be asked here, aren't you?)

2006-12-19T11:18:00.000+10:00

So that you can actually see my new jacket. I love it, I still wear it pretty much every day, and it goes with almost everything that I wear.

2006-12-19T11:17:00.000+10:00

It really was a fantastic birthday - aquarium, new jacket, gloves and a bag to come.

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Fine, we get the point :P

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He would still like to point out that his photos worked and mine didn't.

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Stephen likes ducks, so these are his photos.

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In the Amazon rainforest

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Why was it that all the photos of the ugly animals worked out...?

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Poison arrow frogs, tiny, but very cool and quite dangerous as far as I understand (at least if you are an insect)

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Green tree python

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Amazing big green sea turtles, dude.

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There were so many cool fish. (Chloe, Shan, we should definitely go here when you come over. I will make sure that we have a camera working)

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Weep with me over the lost photographs... :(

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Baby jellies!!

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The blue and yellow just looks exceptional.

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More jellies

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I really liked the jelly fish, they had been set up in tanks to make them look particularly cool. These are still a little dark though, and there are so many good pictures all across the board that are missing.

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Funny carnivorous plants.

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Froggies!

2006-12-19T10:49:00.001+10:00

So now the rest of the pictures are really bad because the camera didn't work properly. Actually, well that's not completely true. I didn't want to use the flash because it reflects off the glass and ruins the picture. But then I couldn't see the screen to see that the pictures weren't working because the screen is broken. (At this point, Stephen would like me to mention that he suggested that I use the flash, but I did not listen to this suggestion as I thought my idea was better.)

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And Mr Photogenic himself :)

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So this is me on my birthday, and wow, my hair is all ringlets there. That's cool!

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Crazy squirrel!

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They really are the weirdest things in the world, aren't they? But I just somehow think that they are cute.

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(It seems that my ability to publish photos on my computer is back to normal, so I will actually be able to update the pictures)

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More beluga

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One more beluga whale

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So this is my montague of the beluga whale.

2006-11-12T11:02:00.000+10:00

So I don't think I have ever seen baluga whales before. Apparently they are one of the kids favourite attractions at the Aquarium. I am discovering that when it comes to things like that, I am very much like a little kid. Everything that the kids liked, I liked too!

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Here he is again, he is so majestic and powerful.

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I wish you could get a picture of how HUGE this guy really is. The picture does him no justice.

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He's a little out of focus, but he is still really cute.

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Stretching out, lazing around, soaking up the attention.

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Sea otters. They were so cute! I liked the sea otters.

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Here fishie, fishie, fishie!

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And this is the trainers holding onto the dolphins' dorsal fins.

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So for my birthday we went to the Aquarium. It was so much fun!!! There were seals, and baluga whales and lots and lots of fish. And of course there were dolphins, but I learnt something that day. Whenever I have gone to shows with dolphins in the past I have seen them in Aus. And the dolphins that we get in Aus are all bottlenose dolphins. So it had never really occurred to me that there were a whole other bunch of dolphins as well. So even though you can't see it that well, these dolphins have completely different noses to bottlenose dolphins and their colouring is very different.

2006-11-12T05:35:00.000+10:00

And on this same day, this was a lot of the work that I did - loading an entire library (albeit a very small one) of books. It was a time of reminiscing (can't spell) as I found books that had captured my imagination throughout my childhood. However one did particularly stand out, "Are You My Mother?" was there, still allowing children to hear the baby bird say, "No, you're a snort!"

The Third Day, The Frost

2006-11-12T05:26:00.000+10:00

So this was a while ago, but it was the third day of frost in Van, as I walked to work. It was funny to hear the gravel crunching under your feet as the hardened moisture in the dirt was broken up, or to make indents in the grass with your feet as the pressure of your soul causes the ice to melt. I guess the sad realty is that it means that it really is getting cold here.

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The lights of the city.

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Again, not sure of the significance of this. Don't even know what it means. I'll get back to you when I've learnt enough Greek to know - which will hopefully be soon, past 300 words in vocab yesterday.

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The caffeteria, albeit a little blurry. Apparently, the guy who runs this place, when told, "You have a very beautiful daughter," replied, "Never eat in my cafeteria again." I guess that's what you get for having a gorgeous child in a Bible college.

2006-11-05T13:42:00.000+10:00

So this is it - Stephen spent something like 5 or 6 years here (I can never get a full handle on the time scale)

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Tyndale (Stephen's Bible College, in case you hadn't caught that) lives on Ballyconnor St in a very nice neighbourhood with lots of trees and expensive cars parked on roads and in driveways and garages.

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The joke goes like this: How do you get married at Tyndal? 1) Find girl 2) Take girl to Second Cup twice 3) Ask girl to marry you at Second Cup 4) Get married.

Apparently it works, pretty much the entire seminary (master program) students are engaged or married.

We only went once, hmm....

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Swings, very good for long conversations with ones we love...

2006-11-05T13:36:00.000+10:00

So instead of going to visit the major tourist attractions, we went to visit Stephen's old Bible College, namely because I wasn't really interested in Toronto as a city, but far more interested in it because of all the time that Stephen has spent there. So some of the following the photos mean very little to me but mean a lot to Stephen. Like this one!

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Stephen on the train, in a very close close-up.

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So I'm not exactly sure what TTC stands for, but it's something to do with the Toronto trains. Provides for nice kind of picture though.

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The Subway - more essential Toronto. (Pity the picture's out of focus.) Interestingly enough, public transport in Toronto works such that you only pay in directions. That is, if you start a trip and then just keep going in the same direction along the buses and trains, you only have to pay at the start of your journey - it's the one price for any distance as long as you keep travelling the same way. Then once you want to turn around, you have to pay again. Interesting, I think efficiency is one of the big considerations.

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Essential Toronto - huge buildings. This is the CIBC bank building. Interestingly enough, the bank actually owns the building and so apparently this makes them a killing. Besides that, this is their main office for all of Canada (as far as I understand) except for the one in Vancouver - which is also considerably smaller.

2006-11-01T00:52:00.000+10:00

Ok, I'm not completely sure what this is, but I believe that Harvey's makes great burgers. So much so that eating them really convinces you while you never want to eat McDonald's again. I might be wrong. Correct me if you want! :)

2006-11-01T00:48:00.000+10:00

So this is downtown Toronto. And I learnt some things about myself on this trip. You will notice that there are no pictures of the country towns we stayed in and went through. While I regret that now (because it would have been nice to show you all), I realised that it is because I use large cities to measure my travel, and it is when I go to a new city that I realise that I am in a new place that I have never been before. Strange, huh? The other thing I realised is that while Toronto is an amazing city, it is on the scale that I find myself enjoying visiting the place, but never thinking that it would be a place that I live. It's almost too international or something. So I think this means that I am a city girl, but maybe not quite sophisticated enough to be a big city girl.

2006-11-01T00:45:00.000+10:00

Ok, so I have never been a huge fan of hot dogs. But this is street meat. A hot dog I know, but with more. You know all those American movies where people go to the stand on the street and you can't imagine why anyone would regularly choose to eat that stuff (so much so that you can walk up to the vendor and order "the regular")? Well, I found out why. This stuff was really good. Without a doubt the best hot dog I have ever had.

2006-10-30T16:34:00.000+10:00

So this is walking through the mall that Stephen that he used to work in. Apparently it is so long that it takes up two subway stops in distance. And this is eating caramel popcorn from Kernels.

2006-10-30T01:46:00.000+10:00

Walking through the mall that Stephen used to work in (and it really was huge - apparently so long that I think it covers at least two train station stops) and eating caramel popcorn from kernels.