Cottage time in the Okanagan

We flew to Kelowna for our final week where we stayed in a cottage with Joel's whole familly. We attended Marcel & April's wedding where Austen made his debut as a ring bearer and Joel was the best man. The boys balanced their wedding duties with dips in the lake and fun times with the family. Austen performed his dance moves in the evenings which now include the moonwalk, the twist and downward facing dog.

Victoria and Galiano

Our week in Victoria and Galiano was quite possibly the most difficult in recent memory. Joel and I were both working and with a toddler thrown in it was impossible to finish anything. I worked at lot at night trying to get my files to upload over slow island ADSL. My usual 5 minute uploads took upwards of 7 hours. Who knew? 

It was also a busy time for our family and the week went by faster than we could have anticipated. Apologies to everyone we couldn't connect with. Next time!

We ended the week at a wedding on Galiano Island. Congratulations to Emma & Matt! It was a beautiful celebration and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We stayed in a rustic log house, attended the local market and soaked in the laid back gulf island life for a few days. Joel's family actually used to have a 250 acre farm on Galiano in the 1950s and 60s. His mother grew up there and used to ride to school on a pony. 

A tourist in Vancouver

It's been seven years since our departure from Vancouver and here I am, standing in a hotel lobby with the concierge asking where the nearest playground is. I honestly have no idea and frankly, neither does she. We google, and try to recall from memory... there must be something. I'm vaguely aware of a park near the Roundhouse community centre down in Yaletown and she's sure there's a small waterpark in Coal Harbour. Neither are right near the hotel which is in the very heart of downtown but we're up for the walk. As I meandered through the streets I realized the downtown is very adult oriented. I saw many tourists with toddlers in strollers but no locals. We did finally find a park with slides where I'd remembered it. Austen played with kids from all over the world. Kids who, like us, were trying to find something to do in the downtown.

Later I searched for kid-friendly restaurants for lunch and Yelp was pretty vague. A big hole in the map version of the search was right over the downtown area. Hmmm, I crammed myself and the stroller into a lunch place while other patrons eyed us with some distain. To get to a truly kid-friendly place we needed to walk back downtown and take a few buses to get out to Kits or Mt Pleasant.

I searched online for indoor play gyms because I was sure that the maze of downtown malls must have them in every food court. THIS IS RAINCITY -- COME ON!!! But no. Not a single one.

The verdict: if you travel with wee ones it's a much better idea to just stay in the West End so Stanley Park is right outside the door or get a BnB in Kitsilano or near Main south of 25th.  Last night we went back to our old Mt Pleasant hood for fabulous family dining at Rocky Mountain Flatbreads which has a play area and a great menu AND serves beer and wine!

The awesome play kitchen at Rocky Mountain Flatbreads

 

4th of July 2014

Another suitcase in another hall

It's official, we are moving again. In September we'll be packing up our little place here and the other 5000lbs of stuff in storage and heading up to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Joel's work is once again the catalyst for this change but we knew that our time in LA was only going to be temporary. This timing is good for us. Austen is getting bigger and needs more than 500sq feet to live in and I need a proper office. We'll be searching for a house in Marin County close to where we were a few years ago during out last stint in The Bay area. On arrival we'll be in a serviced apartment -- that's Singapore speak for a furnished place -- and will probably be there for 2-3 months till we find something more permanent. Our goal is to be moved in to a real home before Christmas.

How do we feel? Well a little sad to be honest. Our life here in limbo has been so much fun. We were not expecting to enjoy our time in SoCal quite this much.

The move is coming up fast and we are consulting our bucket list of things to do before we leave...

LA Bucket List

The Getty Museums
LACMA
The Huntington Gardens
Griffith Observatory
Disneyland
Attending the Oscars
Concerts at the Santa Monica Pier
Seeing a concert at the Hollywood Bowl
Seeing a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Gamble House
Take a surfing lesson
The Rose Bowl
Cocktails at the Roosevelt Hotel

What else should we do? Leave a comment if you have an LA must-do suggestion.

June Gloom?

I just wanted to document our suffering here...

LA's famous "June Gloom"... sigh, it's just so...

Obviously my pictures speak for themselves. We're truly on the verge of buying UV lamps to sit under or something. [sigh]

June has been eventful for us. I'm now working! I got really busy with freelance jobs so all of a sudden I had to reorganize my life. A nanny and a house-keeper were hired on to the pick up the slack. Austen loves his new nanny and is happy to play with her and still have mommy cuddles throughout the day. It's truly the best of both worlds for me. Kopi-o has also requested a masseuse be on staff but for the time being his request is on hold.

Expativersary: our first year in Santa Monica

A year ago we were dragging four heaping luggage carts, a cat carrier and an 8 week old baby through customs at LAX. We marveled at the cold breeze that caught us off guard when the glass doors rolled open and we spilled out out of the arrival doors.

There were many moments in the following weeks that left our mouths agape and eyes wide. So many little details of American life that we'd simply forgotten about. We were still expats. This is not our home country but we'd lived in California before. It was almost a feeling of repatriation but without that same level of let-down we'd have felt if we were shunted back to Vancouver. This was our first destination outside Canada and we felt our time here was cut too short the first time and we'd never lived more than a few months at a time in LA before. Southern California was largely a new place to us.

This re-entry to the US had another new feature. We were on an L1A visa with all the countesy this "premium" visa affords. There has been a sudden lack of hostility at the border. Being on a TN1 or an H1B visa was tumultuous in the past. We've been through many humiliating and terrifying encounters with border guards who were merely underpaid and working under the assumption that all immigrants are inherently evil.

We were able to rush through our Green Card paperwork and these cards should be arriving any day now. Our old drivers licences just needed renewal and my Social Security card was a simple as a 10 minute visit to the Social Security Office where it appears I was ushered to the front of the queue and processed with impossible precision and courtesy. My card arrived a couple of days later. Our lawyers filed for a work permit for me just after we arrived and that too tumbled out of an envelope in the mail in a very short amount of time. It would seem that which visa you get does matter. A lot.

We're looking for a house to buy once the Green Cards do show up. It will be our first home even though over the past 13 years we've looked at buying homes many times. The market has always been too unstable or our jobs too impermanent. It feels funny to be planning more than a year or two ahead and not seeing a new country again on the horizon.

To sum of this year I have to say it's been easy. Making friends and getting oriented in our seaside home has been fun. I have never tired of watching the sun set over the beach every night nor have I ever taken the fresh breeze for granted. I am in love with farm-to-table slow food restaurants we've visited and am so happy to be able to serve up local organic food again for my family.

Of the things we miss, it's our friends back in Singapore and the side trips we used to take we miss the most. We also miss the late night walks in the Botanic Gardens and spicy Peranakan cuisine. I'd love to go back soon for a visit and would welcome another stint of time in SE Asia though right at the moment this is exactly where I'd like to be. Cheers!

Grapevines in Santa Barbara

Wine tasting room in Santa Barbara

Picking Strawberries

Santa Monica Farmers Market

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Thinking of all our friends in Singapore in gridlock traffic and long taxi queues today. Eat some mandarin oranges for us.

Looking back at 2013

I've been reading other expat blogs and have realized that our crazy 2013 is "normal" in our peer group. It feels familiar to be in limbo and constantly on the go. What feels strange is looking forward to 2014 and seeing a more settled life. We don't have any more exotic international trips planned other than to Canada and we might even buy a house and unpack our things from storage. We could have [gasp] a fixed address. I am simultaneously allured and alarmed by this. I have part of me that yearns for a home. I was once a little girl whose heart was broken every time my family moved. But now I'm a woman who needs a lot of travel to feel alive. A happy medium could be having a home but still traveling a lot and perhaps taking on shorter overseas assignments (1 year seems like a very doable length). I want our son to experience other cultures and be aware of the world he lives in but I also want him to belong as I never really did. How this will play out will keep us guessing for years to come.

Now back to my highlights of 2013