Mon, April 2nd

Just had a brilliant weekend so I thought i'd better update ye good folks before I forget it all. Firstly though i'll give ye a quick update on my St Patrick's day. It's actually a pretty big deal over here as everyone hits the pubs for the day, just like home so. It was handy that it happened to fall on a Sat this year so we were able to hit the pub nice and early. Amazingly there were a lot of queues to get into pubs as early as 2pm. Well myself and Kelly went to an Irish bar called Smiley O'Neals at 2pm and stayed there all day. We had a great day and partied for a good 12 hours. The pub had a live band and dancing all day too to keep the drunken Canadians happy. I even had a pint of Guinness and a pint of green beer. I went all out. And our waitress was so impressed by our drinking that she bought us a round of shots, like we needed them.

Probably the highlight of the day was when an Aussie girl came up to me at one stage and asked to explain to her what St Patrick actually did. I convinced her that he brought leprechauns to Ireland in the 4th century as a religious symbol. Obviously they're extinct now though. And the colour of the leprechaun is green so that's why everyone wears green now. She then asked me what about banishing the snakes and I told her not to be silly, that that was only a myth. How I kept a straight face throughout the story I'll never know, especially as Kelly was laughing away behind her. It was classic stuff.

So the following morning when I woke I managed to piece together my trip home by reading the texts I sent. Apparently I got lost, went into a coffee shop, then got lost, then went into a 7/11 for a while where some girls invited me to a party, then I got lost for a bit and eventually made it home in one piece. So an average night out for me then.

Last weekend then, myself and Kelly went to Granville Island which is just outside Downtown Vancouver, it was a beautiful day so the place was packed. It's a really nice area with great markets, shops, lots of live music and just a great buzz about the place. It's very popular for both tourists and the locals. It's a cool place to hang out on a nice day so i'll prob be back there quite a bit during the summer.

Ok, that brings me up to the weekend just gone, which was my second time up on the local ski mountains. Except this time I wasn't going skiing. It was time for some tubing (or chooobin if you're Scottish). I went to Cypress Mountain instead of Grouse. It was a special SWAP organised event so there was a group of about 20 of us from all over the world. Tubing, by the way, is when you sit in a rubber tube, like the tube in a wheel for a car, and fly down a specially made slope in the snow. The fun really starts when you go down in a group of people all hanging onto each other. A couple of times all of the SWAP people went down at once. We had 22 people going down the slope at once all hanging onto each other. Great craic. It was a strange day to be on the snow as it was about 20 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, so we were running around in the snow in t-shirts for the day. I even got a bit burnt.

A few hours of tubing later we all went to the pub and went drinking for the night. I met a lot of cool new people that day and exchanged numbers. There was more crazy coincidences again when two girls we were out with had previously met me in Toronto. They hadn't met each other before so i'm starting to think that I must be some sort of beacon that people get to know each other through. Almost everyone i've been out with in Vancouver i've met in Toronto already. Not that I remember half of them as there was a lot of crazy nights out in Toronto. So now i've got lots more people to go out for drinks with, then again i'm not too sure that's such a good idea.

That pretty much covers the last 3 weeks for me. Work is still going fine. Glen and Jamie are still away but will def be back within 2 weeks. I'm surprised they haven't ran outta cash by now. Think i'll prob head to Whistler with Kelly in 2 weeks so gotta cut down on the spending as it's very expensive there. I'll report back in a few weeks.

I'll upload clips of the tubing on my pictures site here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/boriordan/Vancouver

A lovely green pint on Paddy's Day

1 too many green Long Island Ice Teas? Who am I to say..... but yes.Me, pretty happy with my desert.

Paddy's day parade, which strangely was quite Scottish...

...except for this fella

Our day on Granville island, we had a little boat trip.

Choobin time. These were the slopes we went down.

Here's my tube.

There was no need to walk to the top of the hill as they just clip you onto a rope which drags you up, as displayed here. Perfect time for a snow ball fight too.

Here's our gang deciding how we can all go down the hill at once.

And here's the result. Carnage ensued.

A great day of chooobin had by all.

Here's the best part of tubing. Trying to get out of the tube without falling over due to the dizziness suffered from a good spin. Also note Kelly's AWESOME teenage mutant ninja turtles t-shirt purchased in Toronto.