Return to the planet of the mooses...

(Written quite a while before i posted! See, Dad, I *was* writing all that time i said i was, just not posting - Canada Day was July 1st - month and a bit ago!)

Hello swarthy followers of all things maple-y!

We're living in exciting times. Not only does the internet appear to have started working again, but I also saw 5 whole, real-life, properly-uniformed mounties today! :D Happy Canada Day! 145^th Anniversary of confederation.

Soooo, what have I been up to lately?

Well, I'm back in Canada, obviously, following my most hasty exit from the country to date. Having waited and waited and waited for my visa it eventually turned up, somewhat overdue, at 1am on the 10th May. I was sooooooooooooooo relieved, not in the least because my ready-made summer job – tree planting in BC, started on the 1^st May...

Having received that all-important email, I set about attempting to sleep, but mostly spent all night on the net getting exciting. By 11am all my flights, insurance, buses etc were booked and I was flying out at 9am the next morning! Weird...

No rest for the wicked, I got up at 7am to tell dad the excellent news and say goodbye for the year, and then pack. By 3 I was on the bus to london (longest drive to london ever as we sat on a car park known as the M4. However, Tom and Lucy and Ben were kind enough to wait for me and we all caught up with a cheeky pint or two before chatting into the small hours of the morning about nothing in particular. I miss doing that. :)

Bright and early (well, dark and early, actually) I headed out to a surprisingly busy bus stop and made my way to london gatwick, which, I quickly discovered, is not in london at all. Obviously...

Having checked my (definitely overweight) bags I did the waiting thing and then got on the plane, ready for 10 hours of pure discomfort (my flight was £189, all in ?!!?), only to find that the plane did not fall out the sky and the dinner tasted much like any other airline dinner. Good deal if you ask me.

And so much for the build up. Next post: Vancouver, eh?