Far from home

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly three months since I left the UK, but it is. On July 20th I left Manchester, where yet again it was raining (which will surprise precisely nobody, at all, ever) on a 9 hour flight to Vancouver and then a short hop onwards to Victoria. Starting from scratch has been a bit weird – to put it mildly – and it’s rounded off an even weirder 12 months.

It’s hard to say what the biggest difference between here and the UK is – being a (mostly) English-speaking country tends to lull you into a false sense of things. I’ve so far managed to get used to driving on the right without any major trauma other than spending the first week punching the door with my left hand looking for a gear stick that isn’t there, although turning right on a red still makes me feel like I’m being naughty.

One of the more wonderfully amusing things though is the use of different words and phrases for things. I’ve had quizzical looks using the words ‘hoover’, ‘junction’, ‘car park’, ‘settee’, ‘skip’ and the phrase ‘knocked up’ which I should have seen coming a mile off.

The things that still blow my mind though are a) the scenery and b) just how big the country is. I could drive the equivalent of the the length of the UK and still be in BC, and for someone who comes from a country that you can drive across in a few hours, that’s insane.