I'M BACK FROM CANADA!  Me and Mom got back around 6-ish (PM) yesterday, but I really wasn't up for getting on the computer right away.  I was a bit tired from what seemed like a two hour ferry ride back, plus the two or three hours of driving after that.


  I was also feeling kind of bummed out for a couple of reasons.  They're all basically lumped into one big reason, which is that feeling you get once you come back from a vacation and you realize, since you're not on vacation anymore, that you're back to the not-as-exciting reality you were living before going on vacation.  So, you come back from this amazing time you had in another place, where you could forget everything and just enjoy the present, and it all comes back to you: Oh yeah, I still have no idea what to do with my life, my social life is dreadful, I feel so alone, I have so many other stresses that my brain can't handle, and I'm stuck in this boring town with nothing to do... Ugh, that's kind of what I was feeling yesterday coming home.  The classic back-from-vacation mini depression of sorts.  That, and my coming up to my room to be reminded that it is FULL of my stuff I brought home from college and I have nowhere to put it all, really stressed me out :[  I felt way too overwhelmed and stressed and like my head was going to explode, and also a bit sad, that I knew I didn't want to write on here in a terrible mood.  Today's better, though.  I had a great first sleep back in my bed.  I woke up so comfortable and relished in being able to stretch and snuggle deeper into my covers.  I looked on my nightstand and decided to finished the last few pages of the book I was reading, about Esther Earl, This Star Won't Go Out.  Then I went downstairs, where my mom was already up, and the two of us ate our toast (her butter, mine jam) in the living room while watching Kelly and Michael on TV.  And just a little bit ago we got back from taking Jessie for a walk :)  It's not very nice today.  It's wet (although not raining) and grey out.  Me and Mom joked that it's probably gorgeous back in Canada because while we were on vacation my Mom had called my dad back home and he kept saying that it was miserable there while me and Mom were enjoying beautiful sunshine weather.  Haha, isn't that funny?  Oh well, back to drizzly grey Washington.  Today's probably going to be a lazy day, so I guess it's good weather for that.

Oh, so I'll write about our trip!  On Thursday me and Mom got up at around 6:30 and I think we left the house around 7..?  Our trip had a bit of a hectic start due to the traffic at the border and then being worried that we wouldn't be able to make the 12:00 ferry.  But once we made it past both, we were so relieved that our vacation had officially begun and we could just relax on the ferry for the rest of the way.  It was a pretty nice ferry.  We walked around for a bit to decide where to sit, but eventually we made our way outside and decided to sit down in the sun and the wind as we watched the water.  It was just really nice.  At that moment, I felt kind of free, feeling the wind whipping my hair back, temporarily relieved of any stress to enjoy an adventure of traveling to a new place.  Me and Mom talked about what it would be like if we could have no worries in the world and be those kind of people who could travel all the time.  That would be nice.  I wish I could that: go to different places and not have to worry about anything else.  I know that isn't typically how life works, unfortunately, but it's still fun to dream.

After we got off the ferry, we drove to our first destination, Victoria, and to our hotel.  OH my goodness, our hotel was so lovely!  The outside was brick and it had stairs going up it and flower baskets hanging outside and it just looked really cute.


 It was made in the early 1900s, so it's old, but it has so much character to it.  The inside especially was beautiful.  It had this old red carpeting, and even the stairs were carpeted.  There were old pictures hung on the wall, one of them of a soldier who looked remarkably like Jim Parsons (haha!).  My favorite part, though, was the old-style furniture like the red velvet sofas and the old yellow floral armchair in the corner by the window.
And they had a lemon water dispenser, which Mom loved and couldn't get enough of.  Haha, so funny.  And they always had some calm jazz music playing, so the lounge had a really nice atmosphere.  I couldn't get enough of it.  Our room wasn't that impressive.  It was just one big bed in the middle, with a small TV, a little bathroom, and a window that looked out to the other part of the building with all of its windows.  I really didn't care, though.  The lounge area made up for it.  I just love old buildings so much.

Besides being in a cute old hotel, we were also in the middle of the cutest neighborhood!  All of the houses were those same kind of older-style models that you see in Seattle, with open decks and bay windows and how every house has something unique about it that makes it different from all the others.  I love that <3  It's not like the modern houses where all of them virtually look the same and they all come in the same boring colors and there's nothing special about them.  God, I was so in love walking through the neighborhood, looking at them all, dreaming that I could settle down here and have one of these houses be my own.  That would be amazing.  I kept going from house to house, saying, "Oh my god, I love that one!... Oh, that's SO CUTE!... Oh, this one is gorgeous."  *sigh*  If only, if only...  The neighborhood was also right in the middle of town, too, so we could come out of the neighborhood and walk around, looking at the different shops.  It was really nice.  It kind of reminded me of certain areas in Seattle.  I love small town-feeling places, where you can just walk out of your house and go out for breakfast at that cute teaplace or the coffeeshop that's also a bookstore - both of which me and Mom went to for each of our breakfasts in the two days we were in Victoria!  The first day we went to this sweet little teaplace we had seen the day before.  It was so nice and relaxing.  We sat down at our table which was right by the window, so while we were waiting we could watch the people go by and even a few of the horses that pulled people in carriages (some tourist thing), and we could feel the sun come through the window and just enjoy the morning.  There weren't very many people in there either.  Not in a "Wow, this place is lame" way, but in a "Oh, this is just lovely having only a few people in here."  I love these kinds of breakfast places more than ones where it's so bustling and noisy.  I love laid back and peaceful.  Mom ordered her tea, of course, as well as a scone, and I ordered hash browns, toast, and a cup of fruit, which were all delicious.  They gave me five pieces of toast, which was really nice, and the hash browns were like homemade chopped up pieces of baked potato that had some other spice in it which made them extra savory.  I expected the cup of fruit to have strawberries in it, but it ended up having apple slices, watermelon, green melon, and cantaloupe.  It was still so good, though.  I also rediscovered my love of jam on toast on this trip.  For some reason, I hadn't had it in awhile.  I used to eat it all the time as a kid, but then stopped and started eating peanut butter on toast more.  But oh my goodness, I so love jam on toast.  It is so good <3

On our second day we went to this little bookstore+coffee place we stumbled upon by accident the day before when we went down the wrong street.  Haha, oops!  But good!  It wasn't as plentiful as the breakfast at the tea place - I just had a hot chocolate with scrambled eggs and... jam toast again!  Haha.  Oh no wait, I think I might've actually gotten a blueberry scone with Mom.  Yeah, I think that's right.  It was still so good, though.  The hot chocolate had whipped cream and little chocolate shavings on it and it came in a big mug, which I love.  It's little things like that that make a place special to me.  We sat in the part of the coffee shop where it starts to become the bookstore part, at this little table by the window.  There were books on display on the window sill, so it was fun to eat breakfast surrounded by books.  Me and Mom talked about our little dream we share together, of opening up a teaplace /  bookstore.  Again, it's always nice to dream.  Oh, and we talked about the fact that the U.S. uses tall, grande, venti for coffee cup sizes while Canada is much more practical and just says small, medium, large.  Haha, when we first came in and told the lady our order and I said I'd have a tall hot chocolate (because that's what I'm used to saying at Starbucks), she gave me a funny look and was like, "Yeeah, I'm not fluent in that talk."  Hahaha.  She was funny.  But yeah, me and Mom talked about it and we do agree that it's weird to try to use ~fancy terms like grande and venti just for a freaking cup size.  And I remember when I first started going to Starbucks, how I was confused that I had to start saying "tall" for the smallest cup size when... it's not tall?  I much prefer Canada's system.  Yet another way Canada does things right.

Mm, I don't really feel like describing every detail of what happened in our two days in Victoria chronologically, so I'll just throw out things that I remember in whatever order they come to me.  The first night we had dinner in the restaurant that's inside our hotel.  We soon found out, though, that both me and Mom were the two youngest people in the restaurant.  Hahaha, that should tell you something.  Everyone else was, like, 65 or older, and me and Mom were the only ones who still had (natural) color in our hair.  So, that was kind of funny.  I was thinking it as soon as we sat down at our table and I started looking around, but it made it even funnier when Mom leaned in and whispered, "We're the youngest people here!"  It was okay, though, and the meal was really good.  I had a burger, but a good burger that was nicely grilled and juicy.  I had a salad that was really good, too.  Mom had.. I think fish and chips.  I had some of her fries when she was too full to eat them all; they were the kind that were so thick and still had some of the potato skin on it.  MMM.  The second night we yet again had dinner at the hotel, but at the bar this time.  It was okay.  The bartender kind of looked at me funny.  He asked me my age and I said 22, but he didn't look like he believed me.  Since it was a bar, it was also much noisier than the night before when we had dinner with all those nice quiet elderly people.  Heh.  Me and Mom both had salads, since we didn't feel like eating as much as we did the night before, and we also had garlic bread, which was good.  The highlight of the evening, though, was when the 50-something year old sitting next to me hit on me.  Yes, in front of my mom.  Well, I kept noticing out of the corner of my eye as I ate that he just kept looking at me.  Finally, at one point he tapped me on the shoulder and said "New York."  I was really confused, plus I naturally get shy when strangers talk to me, so I turned away to Mom, and she asked what the guy said, and he leaned over and said, "New York.  I want New York to win," and pointed to the game playing on the TV above our heads.  So then we nodded, and my mom smiled and made short friendly conversation and then we went back to eating.  Well then the guy says, "If they win, I'll buy ya a drink!"  and that's when we (me and Mom) both felt the creepy vibes.  I was already uncomfortable to begin with, but now I was really uncomfortable and I didn't know what to do other than just sit there, tensed up, giving Mom "help me!" glances.  To make things worse, the guy tapped me on the arm one last time, held up his hands in surrender and said, "sorry."  It's like, do you not realize you are only further making this awkward?  Just stop!  It was a good thing we were done with eating and were paying our bill by then so we could make a quick escape.  According to Mom, after we got up to leave, the guy totally checked out my ass.  Eeeeew!  Mom thought it was pretty funny, but, you know, in a "I can't believe that happened," way.  Haha.  It's definitely something I won't forget =_='

The rest of our time in Victoria was mostly spent in the main downtown touristy area.  The walk there from our hotel was really quick, but enjoyable, and it seemed like there was always something you could do downtown.  It was right by the water, too, so even if you didn't have anything to do, you could just look out at it, at the boats, and at the sunset if you stayed downtown long enough.  We befriended the horses who pull the carriages while we were here.  On the first day walking to downtown we came upon them and we especially grew attached to a black horse named Sam.  He was so sweet and calm.  He would just look at us and we would stroke him, Mom more so than me.  I love horses, but a part of me also gets nervous when I'm around them.  Mom was so good with Sam, though.  She got right up close to him, talked gently, and held his nose (snout?) as she stroked it.  She looked like she could've grown up on a farm and been a horse trainer or something :)  While we got to know Sam, we felt bad for him at the same time, having to pull this carriage day after day, going on the same route.  I'm sure they don't abuse the horses and that they take good care of them, but it's still sad to me.  I'm sure they get tired of having to pull people around all day for their (the peoples') entertainment.  It reminded me of the whales at Seaworld and the documentary that I want to watch, Blackfish.  It's the same thing, animals being forced to do things for humans' entertainment.  And the same with the horses, Seaworld may not intentionally abuse the whales in any way.  I'm sure they take decent care of them.  But it's still the principle of the matter.  Orca whales are used to staying with their families throughout their life and traveling long distances together in the ocean, not being cooped up in a tank and having to swim around in circles.  Anyway, I'm going on a whole other tangent.  Me and Mom tried to go back and visit the horses often so they wouldn't feel so lonely and they would have some form of pleasure that didn't involve pulling tourists around.  I think we saw Sam one other time, but didn't see him again since then.  We got ourselves acquainted with other horses, though, like a white and grey speckled one named Michael, and a brown one named Bud.  They were so sweet.  It makes me wish sometimes that I had a horse.  I wouldn't make him/her pull a carriage around, of course.  Me and Mom jokingly talked about breaking the horses free when nobody was looking, but then again, we thought where would they go?  Oh well, we'll always remember our horse friends - and we have pictures of them with Mom to remember them by :)

Let's see, what else did we do?  We took a 45 minute boat ride across the water and saw a bunch of really cool boathouses (or "floathouses").  We saw and pet so many cute dogs!  I definitely think Canada - or at least every place we've been to so far - is a dog-friendly country.  They also love their pastries, which we had plenty of on this trip.  And bookstores.  Oh my goodness.  I did most of my quality book shopping after our stay in Victoria, in this town called Sidney.  There's this part of town lovingly called "Booktown," because they have five or six bookstores.  While we were in our Victoria hotel room looking up things to do, we spotted Booktown and decided to stop there before heading to Nanaimo for the remainder of our trip.  I think the first bookstore we went into was my favorite.  It was called The Haunted Bookshop, and as soon as you step in, you're just overwhelmed by all of the books that you see filling every inch on the dozens of shelves and even on top of the shelves and some stacked in a pile on the floor.  *sigh* I love bookstores so much.  There are always so many interesting treasures you can find.  This one especially had an abundance of old books.  I love old books.  I think my favorite area of this bookstore, though, was the children's section.  They had this really neat Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Cookbook propped up on the top shelf.  I didn't get a chance to look inside, but I just thought it was interesting.  I wonder what kind of recipes would be inside?  Then on the floor, I saw them.  So many different editions of Harry Potter books.  They had a special edition of The Deathly Hallows that I thought was cool.  The dustjacket was black, and on the front was a picture of the locket horcrux.  Then they also had a whole bunch of the England versions of the books, which have different covers than the U.S. versions.  I was so torn which books to buy, but after leaving to explore the rest of the bookstores and then coming back to The Haunted Bookshop to make my final decision, I finally settled on the first three England-edition Harry Potter books for a little over $30.  Mom didn't seem to understand why I would buy them if I already have these three Harry Potter books, but I understand because they're special!  They have different covers, and the first book has its original title, Harry Potter and the PHILOSOPHER'S Stone (not the Sorcerer's Stone!), and... they're just special! 

I felt really bad after Mom bought them though, because I just generally feel guilty when my mom pays for things for me.  She said she'd buy me one gift for myself on this trip, and the Harry Potter books were my gift.  I don't know.  I just felt bad afterwards because then I started to think, What if I end up regretting getting these, and then I just wasted Mom's money?!  I don't want to feel like she's spending her entire money on me!  I have the largest conscience/money-spending conscience out of anyone I know.  I don't know, I just so often feel crappy for being someone's offspring and having them spend money on me all the time :[  In terms of the Harry Potter books though, Mom understands that I'm starting to become a book collector... which I am :)  I love building up my book collection, hopefully to have a home library in the future where I can put them all.  When we got to Nanaimo, there was an even better bookstore whose name I can't remember right now, but they had so many good books and I think I remember the bookstore from me and Mom's last visit to Nanaimo a couple years ago.  I saw Orange Is The New Black, which I immediately snatched off the shelf because I am addicted to the TV show and I'd been meaning to read the actual book that the show is kind of sort of based off of.  I think my favorite book I've found on this trip however is a small green leatherbound book that looked pretty old, and it's Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales!  Oh, I found a picture of it online!

As soon as I saw it, I thought it was so neat and special.  I had to have it <3  I love the picture on the cover and I love how the whole book feels and I love how small and easy to carry it is.  It was only $5, too!  So I bought Orange Is The New Black and the little Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tales book.  I'm sure I could've found more to buy, but I figured I had acquired enough books on this trip, and quite honestly, between all the bookstores I'd visited on this trip, I felt completely booked out. O__O

It didn't seem like there was as much to do in Nanimo as there was in Victoria.  It basically took one day to do everything we felt we wanted to do.  We walked downtown and looked at all the shops, which didn't take long at all.  We tried to find this cute little sandwich shop we went to on our last trip to Nanaimo, but it wasn't quite the same.  The friendly man we talked to last time wasn't there, and it didn't seem to have that same laid back atmosphere.  It was really crowded, so we decided to find a Serious Coffee to go into.  We'd been seeing them everywhere and we figured we had to stop at one before going back home, just to see what it's like.  It was pretty good.  The hot chocolate was delicious and yet again came in a big mug.  I also had this really good bread.  I don't remember exactly what they called it, but at first I thought it looked like banana bread, and then while I was eating it I thought it had a bit of pumpkin bread taste in it, too.  So we did that.  We walked along the walkway by the ocean... harbor... whatever body of water it was called.  Haha.  We spent a lot of time just walking and feeling the wind and looking out at the water.  Even though there wasn't as much to do here as in Victoria, it was still nice to be by the water and feel at peace.  It made us not want to go back home.  We imagined what it would be like to retire here (we saw a lot of old people, ha).  It seems like the kind of place I wouldn't mind at all retiring to.  Being by the water, being among friendly people, watching the boats go by.  I think that's what made it especially hard coming home and experiencing that sinking feeling that I'm not on vacation anymore.  I wanted so badly to go back to the places by the water where it was calm and peaceful, where you could just walk and gaze out.  It's not the same, being back in this small dead town with grey skies and drizzly skies.

Let's see, other things we did on vacation that I might have forgotten!:

• We got the most delicious doughnuts in the same area as Booktown.  I got one chocolate and one regular-glazed doughnut.  Oh my god, so good <3
• We ate at this restaurant in Nanimo for dinner.  Mom wasn't sure about it because we were, like, the only people there and Mom claims the salad wasn't very good.  I thought it was neat, though.  I had toast and scrambled eggs (and potatoes?  I can't remember).  The scrambled eggs were "eh", but the toast was really good.  And the guy who served us was really friendly and pretty cute ;)  He had a nice accent, too.  Speaking of which, it seems like some people in Canada have English-sounding accents, or sometimes even Australian-sounding accents.  That's interesting.
•  We met a cute little Jack Russel mix dog named Dobby!  Yes, named after the house elf in Harry Potter :)
• Lots of street musicians, and even some bagpipers, which made my Scottish mom very happy!
• So many more walks by the water <3

I'm sure there were so many other little moments in our vacation, but I can't be bothered trying to remember them all and recreate these moments as vividly as they happened to us.  Sometimes words just aren't enough.  But hopefully I supplied a good enough retelling of our time across the border.  I'd been thinking while on our trip, too, that I would very much like to invest in a good compact camera that I could carry around with me wherever I go and capture all of these little moments, whether on vacations or just in my everyday life.  I do love my Nikon DSLR and it's still considered my baby, but it's not very easy to carry around with my all the time.  I wish I could've taken so many more pictures on this trip than I did.  I feel like I barely used my camera at all on this trip, just because I either forgot or I didn't want to bother carrying the heavy camera in my bag or around my neck while me and Mom walked long distances.  And, let's be honest, with that camera I often feel either like a "photographer" who draws too much attention to herself, or a pesky tourist who would be snapping at everything she sees.  Haha.  I think it's time I invest in something much more compact, convenient, and inconspicuous.  I'm looking at the Canon S110 for now, but we'll see what else I stumble upon.

OH, another thing I wanted to talk about in this post, which is the second part of this post's title, is how I'm become inspired to write more, and my effort to continue to write more and document my life through this blog, and to just try to be happier in general.  This all came from reading Esther Earl's book, This Star Won't Go Out, which I mentioned at the very beginning of this post.  I checked it out at the library (after being on the waitlist for so long!) the day before leaving for the trip, and I got to read it at night or on the days when we didn't do as much.  I don't know, reading it just made me remember the days when I was a teenager (or even younger than that) and I used to keep a journal and write about everything that happened to me.  I would write in such a carefree, silly way like Esther did a lot in her book.  But I would also write about what I felt and what I thought and get everything off my chest.  I would come up with story ideas all the time and write them out, even if they didn't end up being completed stories.  I used to save instant messenger conversations between friends and at one point I had a blog I would regularly write in.  I've tried a couple of times this year to get back into writing journal entries regularly.  I wrote a few in my word processor program, but it didn't feel the same to me and I eventually stopped.  I really want to get back into writing, though.  It's important to me.  And especially after reading Esther's book, it makes me realize that writing is a way to more or less leave a trace of yourself and for people to read about your life long after you're gone.  I want something like that.  So hopefully this blog will be a good place for me to write.  I think I see promise in it.  Like I said in the post before, I really like Blogger much better than other sites I've used.  Esther said some really important things about getting your thoughts out through writing and reminding yourself to keep writing no matter what.  I think that sort of struck something in me that made me remember, Yeah, I need to do that.  I need to keep writing.  I feel like this past year I've lost sight of a few things, and reading Esther's book snapped me out of it a bit and made me realize important things, like what I used to be like and how I need to get back to the person I used to be.  She also reminded me what it's like to feel an inner light in yourself, to feel young and joyous.  This past year I feel like I've been weighted down by a combination of things and I haven't been as happy.  I'm sure the light that Esther reignited in me will dim again when I go back to school and face my familiar troubles and am not as close to my family as I'd like to be, but hopefully getting to know who Esther was will encourage me to work towards being happier, to not give up so easily.  I don't know.  I feel like there are so many other things I want to express that reading Esther's book and getting to know her made me realize, but they're such enormous things and I already feel like this post is WAY too long!  I feel like I've been writing forever.  I've taken more breaks near the end, but still.  I'm sure there's still so much I could talk about, like the fact that I feel guilty that I didn't do much for my dad on Father's Day but I wrote my mom like a three or four page letter from school when it was Mother's Day.  I could write about how I'm nervous about sending Liz a message over Facebook to try to reconnect with her (whether she'll want to reconnect with me...).  I could continue on with this writing topic and talk about how, the day after I came home from college, I went up to my room and found my long diary I wrote in in my teen years and various writing assignments in high school that made me feel nostalgic.  I could write about how I haven't been falling in love with writing in college the same way I used to love writing when I was younger, how this passion of mine is sort of withering even though I'm supposed to be a Creative Writing major.  But maybe looking back on my old diary and writing assignments from high school, and reading Esther Earl's book, will rekindle that passion.  Hopefully.  And maybe moving to a different dorm next year, from Fairhaven to Buchanan Towers, will make a difference on my mental health and happiness, because that small Fairhaven dorm, was quite literally, depressing, and I definitely do not think it helped me feel inspired or happy at all in my first year at college.  Ugh.  Hopefully next year will be different.  But until then, I plan on getting back into writing more and tackling the list of books I want to read this summer!

I'm sure I won't write nearly as much, if anything, tomorrow.  This post was a little less than a week's worth of events and thoughts built up.  Whew!  I think it's time I get off.  I should update on another site and let internet friends know I'm back.  I also really need to get around to opening a package from a penpal, thanking them profusely, and sending them something back!  I feel so bad that I didn't buy them anything from my trip!  I really should have, but it didn't even don on me.  I mean, I know it wouldn't have been anything great - just some figurine from a gift shop or something - but it would've been something!  Oh well.  I need to end this post before it becomes a novel.

Bye!