The Moped Diaries

Now that our travels are well and truly over we are getting thoroughly established in our new home here in Vancouver. This has meant acquiring grown-up things like furniture which has involved me becoming well aquainted with the returns section of Ikea where I am now known as “two left sides Smith” after some unfortunate flat-pack incidents. Here’s us in our apartment before we had any proper furniture…..

After the restrictions on car sizes that we endured in Bermuda I have now been able to acquire something a little larger and purchased a vehicle that resembles a second hand Starship Enterprise (Dulcie wears a Lieutenant Uhura outfit). On the same futuristic theme I bought a robot vacuum cleaner that we named Edgar Hoover. Unfortunately we got a clumsy one (it kept bumping into things) which also had an attitude problem and decided to break down under the bed. Needless to say it was returned and I am now back with the traditional upright version.

We have also now got full HD cable tv (a luxury after the two and a half channels we had in Bermuda) and one of those new fangled intelligent video recorders which we told we liked “Friends” and “CSI”. Unfortunately it is now recording these programmes at a rate far faster than we can watch them. It even stopped us watching something else last night just so that it could record yet another episode.

The start of this new life does, however, mark the end of an incredible adventure with highlights too numerous to mention (although anyone visiting us will get the full 5 hour slide show – each day). Our spare room is, as always, open for visitors and bookings have already been taken. Until the next adventure……………..

For the first time in over five years I have had to scrape the ice off my car (yet another rental car but we’ve upgraded from “Rent-a-Wreck” to “Budget”) and it is now snowing heavily. But we’d better get used to this because we’ve finally heard that our Canadian immigration application has been approved!! And our apartment should be ready before Christmas!! And we’ve got job interviews!! So forgive us if you don’t get a Christmas card this year as things are a little in turmoil for us at the moment.

For those curious about where we will be living, here’s a dodgy scanned image with a big arrow….

And a slightly better picture…

I guess this means our travels really are over now; unless I start working on a sequel!

Have a fabulous Christmas and may 2008 bring you everything you wish for.

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We delivered our first water filter yesterday to a school on the outskirts of the town we're staying in. It made all the washing of sand and stones seem worthwhile and gave us one of those warm fuzzy feelings ... [Continue reading this entry]

We started work today building the water filters for the local villages (for more info have a look at the link on the right). Our first job was sifting and washing sand to go in the filters. This ... [Continue reading this entry]