Culture shock and lots of rain..

First a beautiful picture taking from the airplane flying over Greenland.

Tree days has now gone, since I arrived in Vancouver B.C. Only tree days and already I have so many stories to tell...
For many years, one of them dreams I carry on my mind has been to go skiing in CANADA!! So when I finally got here I rushed to "Grouse Mountain" and jumped up and down all the way cause I realized that it only takes 30 minutes! You walk out of my hotel placed downtown V.C. take the skytrain and 30 minutes later you rush down a mountain covered in snow! That is just to good to believe. And it was.....imagine one of your dreams coming true - it is all just as you imagined it to be, the snow softer than anywhere else, beautiful view, no people but you on the mountain! It sounds so good - and it would have been, if all these thing weren't caused by THE RAIN!
It was bloody raining all day, but for a ski enthusiast like me a little rain doesn't keep me off the mountain - which is why I never been so soaked after a day on snowboard as I were when we finally went back to our hotel! Not exactly my dream coming true...now I keep thinking about the song "thiiings...can only get betteeer..." And it hopefully will tomorrow when I give it a new go.

The first day I spent with my two lovely new roommates Kamilla and Tone, walking around the city to get a picture of where we are. I had only walked 20 meters, before a man stopped me and aked: "So, when are you gonna finish smoking?" He did it in a friendly tone, but that would never happen at home.
The first thing we had to buy was tree umbrellas. Yes! It was raining the first day as well.. actually we now know that Vancouver is very similar to Bergen in Norway....rainy rainy rainy.
But one thing is for sure, people are extremely friendly, smiling and always helpful. If you are standing looking at a map, they always stop and ask where you are going.

We wanted to end our 12 hour walk in Chinatown and while waiting for the green light to cross the street a man suddenly came to us and said: "there is nothing down there" we explained that we wanted to go to Chinatown and he said: "ok, then you are heading the right way, but do not walk down the street on your left! That's Hastings street, and that's where all the junkies hang around." The best part of this where today, when we got into our "homebase" (the office space where we will be working for the next tree months). Of all places - in a city with apr. 2 mio. inhabitants -the homebase for the danish Kaospilots are of course placed on Hastings st. the only place in V.C were you are surrounded by homeless and drug addicts! But its an experience, and I actually think it will be good learning for all of us. But it is tough watching all these poor destinies. Today I passed a woman walking down the street while injecting her hands with a needle! And another woman taking off all of her close, a man slept all day in front of our main entrance and i could just continue....For the first time I actually got some kind of a culture shock! And I'm counting on more to come...