And now our big adventure is coming to an end.  So sad... we are happy to returning home, to our family, friends and a new puppy, but oh so depressed that our days of freedom and wonder are over!

 

We're spending a week here in Vancouver and the Queen Charlotte Islands visiting family.  

 

Arriving in Vancouver we experienced some culture shock and sensory overload, which is common when going to another country, but we never expected it of coming back home!  Some of you will remember my first description of Delhi...how the smells of humidity, marigolds, inscence, cattle and several million people all living together accost your senses and are so overpowering but wonderful and exotic at the same time... Well after that experience, Noah and I were more accutely aware of that particular sense in every country we visited.  Arriving in Vancouver we were amazed by the "smell of Canada".  Something none of us would ever have noticed before!  It's fresh and sweet and fresh and sweet again and just "so much air"!  It's hard to describe, but you can just take deep breath after deep breath and it's feels so nice, so clean so "filling"...   Sounds weird, I know... but it's air that holds promise, potential and good things...

 

We were also overwhelmed by voices... it was if our hearing had just been "turned up".  For so long we had learned to tune out the conversations around us, not understanding them anyway.  Suddenly we were on the Air Canada flight from Beijing to Vancouver and in the Ferry Terminal to Vancouver Island and we could hear, and comprehend every single conversation!  And rather than being a pleasent sensation, as expected, it was rather annoying.  Suddenly we had to listen to everyone else's story, be it bragging, complaining, nagging or just plain monotonous litany, whether we wanted to or not.  Our heads were spinning!

 

To be in our beautiful, clean and oh so green country is wonderful.  Cars quietly go up and down the streets and not a piece of litter can be seen.  But the shopping malls, the "big box" complexes, huge parking lots, shiny cars and houses full of "objects", attesting to the materialism of our society is overwhelming after living where we've lived the last ten months.  People in Asia and Africa would say to us, "oh you're so lucky to live in Canada, Canada is so rich".  And we'd reply, "well it is a very nice country, but we're not rich, we all struggle to make money and we are all so stressed that no one is really happy, like you are...."  But coming back we certainly can see how they get the impression...  just the shops, the homes, the stuff, the green space and small things we all take for granted and don't count in our definition of "rich", look mighty excessive and definately "rich" to us now... we struggle to make money for things we don't really need.  It'll be hard to remember this lesson and not fall back into the trap.

 

Anyway, we've enjoyed our time here in what is definately "God's Country" and we are so lucky to be able to call BC part of "our country".  We enjoyed a few nice days of sunshine in the Queen Charlotte's (on my Dad's sailboat), kayaking and fishing... and we even rescued a drowing Bald Eagle! Quite exciting!  Definately a nice way to re-enter and make the transition back to "real life"...