Lady Van and her chick

After finishing up our projects, playing doge ball, ice hockey, going on another field trip (can't believe that I went for that again), having the final event and saying goodbye to our team it's just me and Lady Van left here in Vancouver. This is pretty much describing what has happened the last month.

Lady van and me has moved to a new apartment, and are now sharing a small crib, with torques wallpaper and mint green comfy chairs. Pretty girlish for us butches.

I've started a new job, or three new jobs the be more precise. Two days a week I'm working in a cafe', serving lattes to junkies. When I'm not there I'm spending my time hunting down furniture for a building. The building is being renovated, so low income, drug users and homeless people can move in. It's my job to find the bed they sleep in. If you thought decorating homebase was hard work, try to find 44 twin beds in three weeks, also try to track down I giant neon sign for free...it's all about begging... During nights I have phone interviews with people in Scandinavia regarding community care for persons with development disabilities. I'm a busy little bee. Hyper tasking.

Look what a pair of cool sunglasses I found at a party the otherday, they were so nice that I forgave the owner naming her cat Pussy Phuket (or Pussy Poo if you feel like it).

Sideways

We left purgatory and entered paradise. Paradise is Napa Valley. Have you seen the movie Sideways? Well it is all true, Napa was fantastic. It was exactly as in the movie, except that we didn’t have any money, so we could only afford to go to one winery, but we hade fun looking at the wine! (f@*k no!).


After Napa we went to San Francisco. Traffic was pure hell, and we cursed the day we rented the car. After nearly gotten towed away (JR was quick to stop them, and they
left us with a ticket instead) we found a little hostel in an alley. We went for pasta in Little Italy, I can say that the combination American Italian, will break all sound records ever. We got nearly deaf after a visit to an Italian restaurant. Kasper, our old team manager was also in San Fran, so we meet him, for drinks at a bar, overlooking the whole city.



We stayed for two days, and then we kept going to Salinas, to settle the culture part of our trip, the author John Steinbeck lived in that city and most of his books is written in that environment. JR is a big fan of him!

Between Salinas and LA we had a conversation about why Americans own lamas. They are everywhere, it seems like the all American owns a lama. Why? What do they use them for? To they milk them? Or are they just using them as pets? My experience tells me that lamas are grumpy animals that will spit in your face if you don’t watch out. Maybe Americans like to be spitted in the face? I don’t know.

We stopped to see the famous Madonna Inn, were not one room look like the other, With it’s 109 unique rooms decorated after I-don’t-know-what-taste, this place had a high kitsch factor.


LA was not a beautiful city. It looked like suburbia and don’t understand why its so fancy to live there? Santa Monica was better, with it’s never ending beaches. After LA it was time to head back to Seattle. We just had 200 miles to drive. In Seattle we stayed at a very cool stylish hotel, called The Ace and went out to a Tiki bar, in other words, a Hawaiian restaurant.

Then it was time to go back to back, and we were once again in VC!

Strange things I have seen during my trip:

A guy dressed as Elvis
Winona Ryder
21 pair of shoes on the roads (without it’s owner)
A girl with a kangaroo in a restaurant
Jonas Åkerlund
100 fat hillbillies eating at McDonalds on a Saturday
Several dead possums
4-5 ginger kids

Highway 101

We took the coastline today. Damn, is stunning! High mountains, green valleys and waves braking against giant cliffs. I think we past more or less every hillbilly city at the west coast, we have seen millions of trailers, bigger then my apartment in VC and we have past thousands of antique boutiques that contain strange enough nothing antique at all.



We have seen to many fat Americans and eaten to much fat food, even the salads are served with nothing else then plain grease. We have past a village called Denmark and a restaurant called the crazy Norwegians fish and chips. We are pretty proud to say that we manage to drive through the sate of Oregon, and are now located in the state of California. We’re in Cresecent City, were the hell is that you wonder? Well we don’t know either sucker! More reporting from San Francisco, we just have an eight-hour drive ahead of us.

Route 5

Took the bus to Seattle, Washington yesterday, rented a car at Thrifty’s and after being served by a waitress high on speed, we drove for Portland, Oregon. Quite city it was, but JR and me are both felling the urge to keep on going, we long for Californian and the beaches of Santa Cruz. We crashed at a Motel a long the road, it was fairly nice considering the price we paid for it. Today we are early birds, and all ready, we are up and running, well at least running for pancakes for breakfast.

A Ray Of Sunlight

Finally, one day without rain. When I woke up this morning, I knew something was different and I ran to the window and when I glazed out, I could see a clear blue sky.

So what do you do on Sunday’s when it’s sunny and you have a boyfriend? You go on a Sunday strolls in Stanley Park. So we did, and so did one million other couples that day. The park was crowded, people kissing everywhere. I almost felt that I needed to outtake them I kissing style, but I came to my senses, I don’t have to prove anything to those Vancouverites.



Stanley Park is beautiful, we walked around the Lost Lagoon and found our way to VC beaches. Overlooking the pacific sea, you could se the skyline of Vancouver.

Then we went to Hamburger Mary’s, to enjoy its homemade blueberry milkshakes. Eating out is very common here, and cheaper then buying and cook the food yourself. It’s mostly Japanese food, since 30% of inhabitants of Vancouver are Asian, and I have learned to love their food, is so much more then sushi. JR and me have favourite place, it’ s just a hole in the wall, but the restaurant serves the best Ramen soup in town, and it’s always a long queue outside to get in. On Sundays we also often go to the bakery Cupcakes, were they have about 30 different cupcakes and toppings to choose from, Sweet Sixteen, is my favourite. My god a I am going to get fat while I am here.

Fun in the woods

What have I been up to lately? We went on a fieldtrip to Tofino, on Vancouver Island. If it’s something I hate even more then death penalty and war, it’s fieldtrips, camping or going on “hyttetur”. I like the city, big houses, fumes and junk food. Seriously I rather die then go on such a trip, but now I was forced by higher powers and there I was six a clock in the morning with backpack and rubber boots. I wanted to kill myself, to make everything a little bit worse I decided to concentrate on hating the situation the hole seven hour trip to our destination.

While there is actually wasn’t that bad, I was even surprised! Mother Nature is beautiful. Long beaches, high mountains and wild animals. We were warned emdiatly when we arrived to never bend over, i.e. to tie your shoelaces, then it’s a grate chance that you will get attacked by a mountain lion or worse, a black bear. We had a loose schedule, had one lecture and a teambuilding day out in the woods. I looked for mountain lions everyday, but to my grate lose I didn’t see one before we went home.


Friday’s we had a grand welcoming party at our homebase, were we had invited everyone in the neighbourhood and our customers. But before we could party a native lady (to say indian to natives is as bad as saying nigger to a black man) came to us and blessed the building. 150 people came to the party, and it was a blast.

What else? It seems like it have stopped raining, finally some sun. I yearn for Easter vacation, two weeks left. Espen and me are going on a road trip to California. Visiting Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA and of course we will do some spontaneous pit stops.

By the way, here you can see what our school the Kaospilots is all about.

Vancouver Giants

The homebase is ready. Well as ready as it can be so to speak. We have managed to make it pretty nice! We have painted, done a lot of carpentry and begging for furniture’s.


I am settling in, I like the city. It feels like a big city, even tough it is pretty small. I love all the second hand shops, the little bars and those American diners, especially Slickity Jim’s. I do miss cafés a la Swedish style (die Starbucks!) and European old houses. Everything is so new here, Vancouver is a fairly young city, just a hundred years. I don’t have to miss my beloved Swedish clothing lines, they have Acne, Whyred and Filippa K here. So I can breath out.


A couple of days ago we had a real life experience. In the middle of a lecture, a crack head came running in to our homebase, he was just on his way of colliding with a few of us poor students, when two cops jump on him and said nothing else then, you are arrested, and carried him away. So I am vary proud to present my first viewing of a person getting arrest. A charming and sketchy neighbourhood we hang out in, isn’t it?

Sue Ellen is also very proud to present her first hockey game ever. You probably know that in Canada you play hockey, a lot of hockey and it is a lot of Swedes playing in Canadian teams. Vancouver’s pride and joy is The Chanucks, which in fact have a Swedish captain. However, me not being in to hockey went to see the underdogs Giants game yesterday, I felt very American doing so, and I was very careful with buying both popcorn and hot dogs. If you are doing it you might as well do it properly, right? So how was sit? It was cold, a lot of fighting, pucks flying everywhere and it said welcome Kaospilots on the score board. So you can imagine that everything was perfect…


We have had a lot of interesting people coming in to our homebase, teaching and inspiring us. If you look at the links you can see what organizations and people we meet. If you want to see more pictures, go to the links under Some More Pictures.

Stanley Hotel

Stanley hotel is the name of the building our homebase (office) is located in. It is in Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood that is a little bit different from all other neighbourhoods I have been to before. It is the poorest area in North America. It also has the highest infection of HIV in the western world. I have never seen so many homeless people before, never in my hole life, not even in the poorest countries in Asia, have I seen what I am seeing now.

This feels rather strange since Vancouver has a rumour of being the best city in the world and in addition to that has a lot of money. You can see construction work everywhere. The city is being repaired for the Olympics 2010. Millions of dollars are invested in this happening, the government do nothing for the people living on the streets. It is mostly non-governmental organizations that have taken upon this task, one of them, which has given us the homebase from free.

Vancouver has more then 2000 homeless people, which most of them is located in this neighbourhood. Our homebase is in the middle of it. We have one guy sleeping in front of the door, another lady smoking crack in our balcony and a set of heroine syringes pined to the building wall. And our backyard is called blood alley by the people living there. So why has the Kaospilots decided to stay here? One of the things we are working with here is social sustainability, one of the school’s values is social innovation and responsibility. So why not be right in it? For me is quite cool and interesting place to be in.

When our team moved in to our new office space yesterday we knew that it was going to be a lot of work of fixing it up. It was just a dirty and empty space. But we had a small budget from school and an owner allowing us to do what we wanted with the premises. Abracadabra, and we all turned in to interior designers. Everything should be ready for Tuesday, when we have our first lecturer coming in. I’ll keep you updated..