Ok we're back! After almost 2 months at home, family visits in Brisbane, Adelaide & Shanghai, it's time to head back to our Canadian home, and of course our beloved TOBY! Our quick '2 week trip' back to Oz to meet Kempsey turned into an extended stay after I had an impromptu invitation back to work for a 6 week stint. It's been fantastic being back and catching up with everyone again - the great thing about good family and friends is that you pick up as if you only saw each other yesterday - love you guys. Heading back to work it almost felt like I'd never even left haha...

We pick up here in Shanghai, China. We booked our flights to Vancouver with China Eastern Air because A) they were cheap and B) we discovered that you could transit in China for up to 72hrs without having to apply for a visa. Since Ben's cousin Rachael & her family are living there, it seemed like the perfect excuse to have a stop over. Why not, right? We had an amazingly busy but really fun time filled with lots of yummy food, sightseeing & foot massages - we crammed a lot into what we dubbed our "66hrs in Shanghai".... So here's our first week back in BC:

Sunday 27.10.13:
Happy Birthday to Phil (SUP) & Uncle Greg :) xx
Ok this might be a weird entry because this is our 'flying/in-transit day' so we sort of either had 2 Sundays, or just one super long day - depending on how want you look at it haha... We woke up this morning feeling slightly worse for wear after a few pitchers of margaritas at the Mexican place last night. Ok so Ben was fine, it may have been just me!! Consequently it was a pretty slow morning and we just lounged with Rachael and Michael until it was time to re-pack our bags and head to the airport for our 1.30pm flight. We'd heard a few horror stories about China Eastern Air, but we found the cabin service was as good as any other airline and I'd have no worries flying with them again. It was just a bit strange because all of the cabin and safety announcements were in Chinese so we couldn't understand a thing - and then they'd throw on the English announcement a while later, almost as an afterthought. You know the safety announcement you usually get while the plane is sitting on the tarmac, well we got the English version about a half hour after takeoff ha. Lucky we know the gist of them, but could you imagine if this was your first flight - how bizarre.... There were only a handful of non-Chinese people on the flight anyway so I guess they didn't think it'd matter too much! At least we got our own TV/entertainment system to keep us occupied on this flight. On our Melbourne-Shanghai leg we were on an older plane which only had the multiple TV's dropped down from the ceiling every couple of rows. (We did have exit rows but the TV on the wall in front of us, of course, was not working.) Nevermind, on this leg it was much better being able to control what you watched and not being stuck with a Chinese movie that you couldn't even understand haha. The flight was pretty uneventful and we landed in Vancouver at 8.30am on Sunday morning (see what I mean about the day/s)... The only bad thing about the flight was that it never got dark and leaving Shanghai at lunchtime we weren't tired, so didn't sleep at all for the whole 10hrs. Which is ok for the flight, but it made getting through the rest of the day a bit hard... With virtually no line up, it was a super quick and painless trip through customs this time - yay. We caught a cab to Accent Inn at Richmond where we had already booked tonight's accommodation. We figured we would probably appreciate a ready made bed for our first night instead of picking up Toby and trying to get him all set up before we crash & burn. So we headed over to see if we could leave our bags at the hotel and find something to do till checkin this afternoon (it was only 10am by now). The girl on the checkin desk says "Hang on, I can see if we have your room available for you? Yep, it's good to go, so I can check you in now if you like". Awesome service & no extra charge - these guys are great!! We also stayed here last time on our way to the airport and they gave us a late checkout for no extra charge. If you need somewhere to stay, this is your place - their customer service is awesome!! So we dropped our bags in our room, quickly freshened up and then headed across to Maccas for some brekky and more importantly, coffee!! Needing a caffeine hit right now! Afterwards we came back for a much needed shower (I swear no shower has ever felt better than when you get off a long haul flight!) and then proceeded to relax in our room. Watching tv and relaxing turned out to be a bad idea as both of us gradually drifted off to sleep - not ideal if you want to avoid jet lag!!! I literally couldn't keep my eyes open, so I set an alarm to only sleep for half an hour - but when I woke up a couple of hours later I had no recollection at all of even switching it off. Whoops. Once we were fully awake we headed over to the attached IHOP restaurant and ordered takeout for dinner, then headed back to our room to eat. We both feel all refreshed from our afternoon nap so we stayed up watching tv and browsing the net trying to get tired again. Need to go to sleep, what have we done to ourselves....

Monday 28.10.13:
Wow, what a terrible nights sleep last night. We both had such trouble falling asleep and finally drifted off around 2.30am so when the alarm went off at 8.30am, guess who didn't want to get out of bed.... Jet lag has hit us like a slap in the face this time around!!!! After a quick brekky, we packed up our room, checked out and caught a cab over to the storage yard to pick up Toby. Yeah, it's reunion day hehe! The lady in the office was excellent when we were checking Toby out, and even gave us a refund on the months rent (which they don't normally do) so that was really nice of her. Finally we headed around back and there he was waiting for us. He looked to be in pretty good shape too, not very dusty or dirty, which is good. We thought he might be a bit mouldy from the damp, but he's not too bad at all. We opened him up and he was perfect inside - no leaks or smells, nothing! Then it was time for the true test - had the battery gone flat, or would he start after being parked up for 2 months???? Uh yes he will - on the first go too!!!!! What a trooper. Love him! So off we go, driving across Vancouver in Tobes again - it feels fantastic to be back! Our first stop was to Lougheed Mall, as they have a (you guessed it) Walmart. After a quick browse around, we grabbed our groceries, then headed around the corner to Burnaby Cariboo RV Park which is the other RV park located within Vancouver. It's in the city of Burnaby (east of Vancouver) and still quite central to everything (for all intents and purposes, Burnaby is pretty much an 'outer suburb' of Vancouver - roughly 30mins from here to downtown). We checked in with no problems and began the process of settling in again. We had tossed up between staying here and at our old favourite Capilano (since they're both central to Vancouver) while we're looking for work and somewhere to settle down. Capilano's winter rate was $280 per week which I thought was pretty good, but then I looked here and it's only $190 per week. So here we are!! Plus it has an indoor heated pool, jacuzzi, games/reading lounge with TV, laundry, wifi, free hot showers, upstairs sun lounge, fitness room, basketball court, kids playground and the sites are surrounded by hedges so it's a lot more private. It's sooo nice. We set up like old pros haha then had a quick look around to suss everything out. It's usually way more expensive here which is why we've never stayed before, so I'm glad we found their winter special - there are way more facilities here than at Capilano. First things first, we put some laundry on so we had fresh shower towels, had dinner and showers then settled in for the night. At 7 degrees it was a bit cool to be sitting outside and there's no fires allowed here so inside it was. After last nights sleep dramas we're both pretty tired, so hopefully we should fall asleep quickly and easily tonight.

Tuesday 29.10.13:
BENNY'S 30TH BIRTHDAY!!!
It was sooooo cold last night. I went to bed in long tights, socks and a jumper thinking I'd be plenty warm enough. Well I slept pretty restlessly till I got up at 2am to go to the bathroom and my feet and legs were frozen so I popped on a pair of trackies and an extra pair of socks. Took me a while to warm up back in bed but when I did I was out like a light - finally. I woke up what felt like a few hours later just as Ben was also waking. He rolls over to me and asks if I have the time. I said no, my phone's downstairs, why? Ben: 'Oh it's weird, I just clicked my phone to check the time on the screen and it said 1pm, but that can't be right so I went to unlock it but then the battery just went flat. So I was just wondering what the time really was'. I opened the curtains to look outside and with the sun still low in the sky it looked to be about 9am to me. By now I'm curious, so up we hop and when I check the time on my phone, I have to blink twice - 1.06pm... I check the iPad and then my phone again - still 1.06pm. Holy cow, I can't even believe we slept half the day away. Jet lag has sure got us good this trip!!!! So after brekky (or is it lunch?), Benny's present time and showers we're ready to go for the day - only it's now 2.30pm haha. We scrapped our original plans for today as the day is almost over (I still can't believe the time!) and we're heading off to Metrotown, which is BC's largest shopping complex. It's about a 10-15min walk and a 20min ride on the sky train from here which is nice and easy for us. I have a job interview with Target on Thursday so I just want to have a 'dry run' and suss out where they are etc as they weren't here last time we were. Upon arrival we had a wander around and then a quick bite to eat (it was 4.30pm by now - so that's our lunchtime right). We did a bit of shopping and then decided to stop by the cinemas and see Captain Phillips (true story with Tom Hanks - great movie!!). We bought our tickets for the 6.50pm show and had an hour to kill before we could go in, so we headed off to find Target. Well it turned out that they're not actually open yet, so they have two mall entrances on levels one and two - both sealed with roller doors and no-one around.... So we ask ourselves, where would one go if you were going in for an interview? We checked out both entrances, no signs to direct interviewees anywhere... My confirmation email did not have any directions, just the outside street address of Target at the mall here. So we walked around, looking everywhere, google map couldn't even point us in the right direction. Then we did a lap around the outside of the Target building but those entrances were also not in use and in fact the entire area was still sealed off as a construction zone, so you definitely can't get in that way. In the end we decided to ask at Centre Information to see if they had any idea. As soon as I asked the guy he knew what I was talking about straight away, he laughed and said yep, I'll show you where to go because it's hard to explain. Turns out he'd had several people come in asking the same thing so lately he'd had to show quite a few people where to go. Turns out you actually have to enter the store from the walkway through the second level of the car park - who'd have thought huh. So I'm super pleased we decided to do a test run today - I would have been getting stressed out about being late on interview day! It's pretty **** that they don't give you any info on how to get inside in their email to you. I never realised that they weren't actually open yet so I thought it'd be a piece of cake - walk up to the Target service counter and ask for HR. Not so haha - it's always good to be prepared! Mission accomplished, we headed back to the cinema for our movie. It was really great, I highly recommend seeing it, very interesting movie! By the time we got out it was 9.15pm and all the shops were closed or closing so it was time to head for the train and home again. They're doing night maintenance to the lines so there was a bit of a delay, but we worked out we could catch one train, then hop off and change lines down the track to get us home a bit faster. We had time for a beer and a birthday donut for Benny haha then it was off to bed. It was 6 degrees inside Tobes when we got home at 10.30pm so we ran the heater for a while and it was lovely - just enough to take the chill out of the air before we snuggled into bed for the night.

Wednesday 30.10.13:
We got up this morning around 8.30am and spent the morning doing our loads of laundry and unpacking the mess inside Toby. We had kinda just popped our suitcases on the lounge and have been putting off unpacking properly - today's the day where everything finds it's home again!! It's driving me crazy having mess in here - there's not enough room for mess lol. Also, we worked out how we slept so late yesterday (apart from just being so tired) - the sun isn't coming up till around 8am so it's stays dark really late! We had finished up the laundry by lunchtime so we caught the skytrain into downtown Vancouver around 1.30pm. Since Benny only got half a birthday after we crazily slept so late yesterday, I told him that today we could do the birthday activities we missed yesterday. We'd tossed up with doing something touristy we hadn't already done, like a visit to Grouse Mountain, the Capilano Suspension Bridge or doing a tour at Granville Island Brewery - Ben's choice since it was his day! In the end he just wanted to go out for a nice lunch so we headed downtown and ended up at Steamworks Brewery on the waterfront. It was pretty cool out today, but you definitely noticed the temperature drop once you got downtown near the water. Brrrr. Lunch was delicious - a pulled pork sandwich for me and an angus burger for Benny - yum! Afterwards we just wandered around downtown for a while - I just love this city, it's so beautiful and walkable. It's awesome seeing all the leaves changing colour and dropping at the moment, so pretty. We ended up wandering for a while and caught the train back home around 4pm. Then it was time for me to do some research/prep for my Target interview tomorrow. That took up most of my evening while Benny cruised the net and helped role play interviews with me hehe. We were in bed nice and early so I'm hopefully refreshed for tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Thursday 31.10.13:
Happy Halloween!!!
I had a bit of a nervous sleep last night (interviews stress me out a bit ha) so when my alarm went off at 6am I was pretty sleepy & just wanted to stay huddled in bed. The fact that it was still pitch black outside did nothing to help my motivation to get up. My interview wasn't till 10am but I was dressed and ready to go by 8am as from here it's about a 10-15min walk to the station and then 20-25min on the skytrain to Metrotown which is the huge shopping complex where Target is. Plus I like to have extra time up my sleeve in case of delays.... Of all the days, of course it was raining this morning when I had actually done my hair and makeup (do you know what a big deal that is ha!) and don't want to look like a drowned rat. It pretty much started raining last night and hasn't really stopped yet so welcome back to the beautiful rainy BC weather haha. We walked part way there and then realised we'd left the furnace on in Toby so Ben turned around & raced back to switch it off, then we were off. We got on the train, sat down and came face to face with a dude wearing a freaky evil clown mask & costume - happy halloween! Ugh, it was horrible - even though I knew it was only a mask, it gave me the creeps and I couldn't look at him the whole way... Google "evil creepy clown mask" and you'll have an idea of what we were sitting opposite for our train ride! We arrived at Metrotown nice and early so had time for a coffee before the interview and then it was go time! When I got there the guy asked if I had any trouble finding the place - I said no, and he told me that a lot of people have actually been late because they can't find how to get in. Not me - all thanks to my practice run hehe!!! After waiting for a while, I was taken for my first interview with a team leader - I was pretty nervous, it's been a while since my last formal interview, but he was so lovely and easy to talk to. I had applied for the position of seasonal sales floor team member and the interview was pretty short and sweet, mostly behavioural questions like "Tell me about a time that you worked as a team and what the outcome was" where they wanted you to describe a SPECIFIC incident and how you resolved it. So that was interesting - I've never done an interview in this style before - luckily I'd done a bit of research and gotten a heads up that Target use this interview style, so I had a few different scenarios up my sleeve. Once we were done, he told me that I'd definitely scored high enough to get a second interview with his supervisor. So after waiting a few moments I was moved over to another office where I met an executive team leader and she conducted my second interview. A lot of the questions were similar and again she asked a lot of scenario-specific questions where they want to see how you would react to certain situations. As soon as she reviewed my resume she noted that I have a lot of admin experience and asked me a few questions about my computer skills and why I only applied for a seasonal sales floor job, which I thought was interesting at the time. Each interview only lasted about 15-20mins each and once we were done, she escorted me back to the front and asked me to wait while she spoke to her colleague to see if they had any questions for me. I only had to wait 5mins before she came back and said "Ok I'm going to offer you a job here. Not seasonal sales floor team member though, I'd rather have you on my team. I don't know where I'm going to put you yet, but I want you". So there's a nice ego boost huh! So a quick trip down to HR to complete some paperwork and I was off again - WITH A JOB! YEAH! The electricity went out while I was there so they couldn't scan my ID documents for the background check and asked me to come back in 2hrs when the power was expected to be back on. No worries, I met up with Benny, we had some lunch to celebrate and then wandered the mall - easy to do since it's so enormous. There were so many people walking around dressed up for Halloween. I'd seen a lot of stores had signs up saying "trick or treating available here" and I soon discovered why. People bring their kids to the mall dressed up to go trick or treating (no, Benny wouldn't let me go!). We also saw what looked like several pre-school classes of little kiddies all dressed up & trick or treating together - so cute!! When I went back to HR, the power was back on, but their printer/scanner was still down and having troubles because of the outage and IT were trying to fix it. So off I go again, with many apologies and the promise that they'll call as soon as it's back up and running. We went and had a coffee and it was only about half an hour later when HR called to say they were back online. Back I go for the third time where we finally had success - ID documents scanned, contract signed and I have a job title - Guest Services Attendant - fancy eh. Now that they have my scanned documents they can process my background check, which should be done by tomorrow so I should be good to start 'orientation' on Monday! Woohoo. Not a bad days work. We wandered around a little more then decided to head home, it was around 3pm now and still rainy and miserable outside. We were back home by 3.30pm and thankfully had no rain on our walk home. One job secured, we then spent the afternoon job searching for Benny and also apartment hunting - we need a home....

Friday 01.11.13:
Wow November already, where has the year gone???
We had a sleep in this morning, then got up and off to the shops. Today I'm on the hunt for my work uniform (as we have to supply our own) - red top, khaki bottoms and closed in shoes! First stop though was to do a 'walk by' (coz we can't do a drive by without a car hehe) and check out an apartment that we've seen for rent online. We caught the skytrain to the nearest station, then it was only a 3-4 block walk to the apartment complex which is excellent. It was walking straight up quite a steep hill though so that was a hell of a workout. It looked alright from what we could see and the area is ok (a few strange ones wandering near the train station though), so we may schedule a viewing to see inside the unit and go from there. It's grey, gloomy & rainy again today so it's not much fun to be walking about in, but the weather is just so crisp & fresh, I love it!!! We caught the skytrain back to Lougheed Town Centre, which is only one stop away from where we are staying. I popped into our bank and grabbed the form that I need for payroll then we found some yummy Chinese food for lunch - orange chicken mmmmm. Afterwards it was off to Walmart for uniform shopping - I thought for sure they'd have what I needed but nothing fit quite right (it's a fine line with khaki pants - it's not the most flattering colour, they can so easily end up looking like old lady pants if you're not careful!). So Walmart was a bit of a letdown - I did grab work shoes and a travel coffee mug though so it's not all bad. There were quite a few other stores in the mall complex so we checked out a few of these but I still didn't find anything suitable. What I found weird though was that a lot of the smaller chain stores didn't have mirrors in the change rooms - they're basically just a small box that you get changed in (not even a bench/seat inside) then you come out into the store in front of everyone to view yourself the mirrors out there - big turn off for me. We had planned on heading to Metrotown as well afterwards but it was close to 4.30pm before we were done & we'd both had enough so we grabbed a coffee and headed home to keep apartment hunting online...

Saturday 02.11.13:
We were up quite late last night searching rentals online so we had another sleep in this morning - just can't seem to want to get out of bed lately. With it being cool, rainy and semi-dark it's so enticing to just stay snuggled up in bed all day enjoying the sound of the rain on the roof!! But we have things to do, so after multiple alarm snoozes we were both up by 9.30am, armed with coffee and checking out any new apartment rentals. Around midday we headed out to catch the train to Metrotown - I'm still on the hunt for a work uniform. It was raining quite heavily and even though its only a 10-15min walk from here we were both a wee bit wet by the time we arrived - squeezing 2 people under the one umbrella doesn't work so well haha. Looks like a raincoat is on my shopping list today as well. We arrived at Metrotown around 12.30pm and shopped in just about every store. I ended up with khaki jeans and a red cardigan so it was a bit of a success. I would've liked to have a spare set of clothes for alternate days but at least this will get me started. And I'll be working at the mall so I'm sure I'll have plenty of chances to shop hehe. By the time 5pm rolled around we had sore feet and were all shopped out so it was time to head home where we cranked the heat and settled in for the night.

Hope everyone is well back at home
Much love to you all,
Benny & Loz
xxxx