The working week here at the Centre goes from Tuesday - Saturday with Sundays and Mondays off. On our first Monday we decided to explore Vancouver, taking in all the vistas on the lengthy bus and train ride (about an hour). Vancouver's a pretty nice city, filled with the hustle and bustle of Olympic fever. The definite highlight of this excursion was going ice skating downtown, on an open air ice skating rink...without falling over even once!
Downtown Vancouver
Ice, ice baby, not too cold.
The closest town we live to is White Rock, a large beach town of mostly retired people that boasts of its very own monstrous boulder, painted white of course. It's a 20 minute bike ride away. The people seem to be extra friendly and polite around there, often striking up a conversation with you as shop. We are in love with the op shops; the clothes are all super good quality and fancy brands.
On Saturday, the centre had its monthly Volunteer Day. Despite the drizzle, about 40 people of all ages turned up to chip in. We had people potting plants, digging ditches, weeding, and fixing wooden nest-boxes before finishing with a tour of the site and vege-burgers for everyone. Anna and I were in charge of a group who attacked the invasive weeds, removing rouge holly, Himalayan blackberry and lamium. Our group was excited to catch three frogs (two of them were the rare Northern Red-Legged Frogs that Anica studies), one long-toed salamander and to spot a tiny shrew doing its best to hide in the base of tree stump. The day was a good chance for people from the local community to see what the centre is all about and it was a great help to get a whole lot of jobs done around the site.
Pacific Tree Frog
Northern Red-Legged Frog
A tame shrew?
This past Monday we decided to borrow the van and go to Chilliwack (unfortunately not pronounced chilli-wack as I was led to believe), a country town about an hours drive from where we live, along with Marine (a volunteer from France). It was really nice to get right out of the big smoke and see some of rural Canada. For a large part of the journey we cruised along 0 Avenue where one side of the road was Canada and the other the USA. On the way we past a familiar sight, an (o)possum squashed on the side of the road. These possums look quite different to the ones in NZ and are nowhere near as destructive.
After visiting a wetland reserve, we stopped in at 'Lady Bugs Grille' for a taste of a rural North American diner and the characters there did not disappoint nor challenge our stereotypes of who might work or dine at such an establishment (think yokel). The staff looked very surprised that we had chosen to dine with them.
Cheam Lake Wetlands Regional Park
It speaks for itself
We are still working on a plan for exactly how we will spend our 6 months here, trying to decide what projects will be most worthwhile. At this stage Lynton has taken on the role of chief weed eradicator and aims to plant some natives in the place of blackberry and other weeds.
We love all the different wildlife that there is to see here. There are lots of birds we haven't seen before like chickadees, Steller's Jays, woodpeckers, occasional hummingbirds, bald eagles. Then there are squirrels, moles, beavers, shrews.... At night the sounds of coyotes, owls, and frogs can often be heard. We'll have to go further north to see bears roaming in search of honey.
A Bald(ing) Egle
A Steller's Jay feasting on some sunflower seeds outside our kitchen window
A squirrel doing likewise
Colin
It is fun living in community here. Allow me to introduce our on site companions. There is Colin, the crazy birder* from Britain. He understands our accent and terminology for things better than anyone else and he is the guru on all things related to birds.
*('birder' - someone who is madly in love with birds and spends much of their life seeing the world through binoculars)
Then there is Marine, a French girl who is half way through a 6 month stint here doing research on invertebrates in the Little Campbell river, which runs alongside our property. She came to Canada knowing nearly no English and it's very impressive how much she has learned already.
doing research on the rare Northern Red-Legged Frog species that can be found here. She loves all things reptilian and has a bearded dragon (the Aussie kind) and a gecko in her room. Rachael lives here part time and helps with the office work.
David and Shauna have 3 children and are the Centre Directors overseeing all that goes on at the centre. Matt and Roxy are the Centre Life Community Organisers and work alongside David and Shauna to keep the show on the road and make sure everything runs smoothly.
Then there are a whole host of other people that come here part time or work from home: Paul the gardener, Stan the species identifier extraordinaire, Stephanie the mapping girl, Ruth the school groups instructor, to name but a few. There is also another site called Brooksdale, 5 minutes down the road from here. It's a beautiful site, and is an estate that A Rocha may end up leasing and moving the complete centre onto. About 5 people already live on site there. It was a surprise to learn how many people are working for this A Rocha centre, full time and part time. Of all the international A Rocha centre, I think it is probably the biggest A Rocha centre in the world.
The Olympics is in full swing here, though out where we are, you would hardly know it's on. In the city it's all busy with loads of tourists and Olympic staff walking around to help people find there way. I don't think we'll be going to see any Olympic events but in some community parks they have large screens showing some live events so it would be fun to check them out.
Think that's all the news for this week. Let us know if you have any particular questions. We'll be using flickr to upload more of our photos so you can go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/lyntonandanna if you want to see them you can check out.
Enjoying the blog, team. Elke say howdy.
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