The start of the week saw the last days of classes fly past in a bit of a blur as I tried to split my time between university, tour guiding and revising. I suppose it goes without saying that the last of those has fallen by the wayside for now. I think my family are enjoying getting to know where I’ve been living this year, spotting a few of the places they’ve seen on postcards and photographs and meeting some of the people I’ve been talking about. 
On Friday a couple of my friends and I took my sister to the Vancouver aquarium and thoroughly enjoyed watching the baby beluga whale trying to eat a seagull (unsuccessfully) and one of the sea otters indulging in rather an extended period of grooming (successfully). That evening three of my friends were having birthday celebrations conveniently in the same club. Once we managed to find it - I think there were at least 3 different groups of people, who, having got off the bus, headed in 3 completely different directions – it was a really fun evening singing and dancing along to the likes of James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell for the first half of the night and MGMT and Hot Chip for the second. 
Saturday morning was a rather painful, early start as I had to meet my parents at 8am to catch the ferry to Victoria for the first leg of our five day trip to Vancouver Island. Sailing out of the rain and in to the sun provided some rather lovely scenery and once we got to downtown we were able to walk around in shorts and flip flops for most of the afternoon. Victoria is labelled as the residence for the “newly wed, nearly dead and overfed” personally; I think it’d be a rather great place to live although it is rather small in comparison to Vancouver. 
As predicted, our visit to the Butchart gardens was rather popular with my Mum - they really are quite stunning even a non flower fan would be impressed! Dinner with the Capsticks this week has been rather quieter as my sister has returned to the UK to get on with her work before she starts back at University next week. However, we’ve still managed to eat copious amounts of good food, Willie’s Bakery, for anyone heading towards Victoria in the near future, is definitely worth a visit!
As I write I’m sat on a train travelling between Victoria and Nanaimo - the view out of the window is rather worth my attention so I think it’s a good time to finish the blog writing for now!
