First day in Tofino

We got up at 5.30 this morning, and the mission of the day was getting to Tofino (on Vancouver island), which took about 6 hours.
We went grocery shopping as soon as we got here, and I was in the dinner group finding food for 34 people on a $250 budget...I really thought that would be mission impossible - it equals ca. 10 kroner per person per meal. However the prices here are more friendly than the Scandinavian prices, and also they have these really cheap deals if you buy huge items - like 5,5 kg chopped meat or 2 l ketchup. We payed $251,5 which I think was pretty good.

The landscape here is really beautiful! It reminds me a bit of Norway...it's kind of Norway XL. I'm attaching today's pictures so you can see for yourselves.

Hockey and family

Friday team 12 went to a hockey game to see Vancouver Giants lose to Everett silvertips. The score was 3-3 and they lost on shoot downs (or outs or ups...I'm no hockey person) in the end. The stadium was packed and it was quite an experience.


Also today I met with my cousin's son Thomas who studies business at the UBC here in Vancouver. We actually live on the same street! But he lives in the 30th floor in an apartment whereas I live in a small YWCA-room on the 2nd floor.

However that is soon going to change as we have gotten an apartment now:) We will move March 15th when our payment here at the Y is up. You can see the apartment here


Finally I want to encourage all of you to check out the greenmyapple and maybe send a mail that you want apple products to be the most environmentally friendly in the market. At least I've done that:)

Pictures from the homebase

OK, the plan was to wait with the pictures until we had made the entire homebase ready, but I realise that that might take some time, so I'll share with you what we have done so far. We have focused on the two common rooms which are the lecture room, the entrance lounge and the kitchen. I've put in some before pictures also, so you can remember what it used to look like.



Today I spoke with Jo for the first time since I got to Vancouver, and it was really nice to hear his voice again! We decided that we will choose Uganda (and possibly Kenya) as our honeymoon destinations. We've tried to find out stuff about our winner, dear Paraguay, but it seems like nobody goes there on holiday and there's not really a lot to see. And they don't have a coastal line, which of course also is a downside. Uganda however have lots of wild life to see, and a completely different environment than what we are used to. It is far away, cheap and we can combine both luxury and experiencing 'the real world'. Also we have found two different projects - one in Uganda and one in Kenya, that we might want to support with our wedding gift-money.

We met our customer (BCGEU) yesterday, and they are sooo nice. We basically have free hands to do whatever we want, and they want a creative result. They provide us with all the finances we need, all the people we need, and they have helped us out so much with the homebase. We've mentioned the things that we are lacking, and they say that they will get us a lot of it. Also they want to do something social with us, so they've proposed to go see a hockey game, and to go by boats on a lake where we can see both the city and the mountains - it sounds really beautiful! It's so great that we have support from the top - all the top executives are supporting our projects, which means that we might have a huge influence if we come up with something good. Which we will, of course:)

Sunday was the chinese new years, and we went a group to see the parade in Chinatown. It was a bit of the 17th of May feeling, which was really great for me, as this is my favourite day of the year. You can see pictures from the parade at my flickr if you want to:)

The homebase

Here's a short film that I took the first day we were at the homebase. We've been working on making it look good since Friday, and I'm amazed how much you can improve a place in a short while and with a small amount of money. We got 1000 Canadian dollars (1 dollar is 5,2 Norwegian kroner) to decorate and make it look good. I'll show you what it looks like when it's completely done - until then you will have to live with the before-version.

The homebase and my project

Yesterday we were introduced to our homebase - a wonderful, super cool place; big and dirty! I will post some pictures later - right now I just have too many of them, and I want to give you a before-after tour of the homebase. It is located in downtown eastside which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of North America. We are really facing the real world there - homeless people everywhere, alcoholics and drug addicts...and the most horrible thing is that many of them are our age. On the back of the building there was a little thing to sleep on and needles in the wall (see the pictures). It's a different place to be to work next to people shooting up and sleeping outside your main door. Vancouver is really facing some serious challenges when it comes to poverty and homeless people - and what so many people are angry about is that the government is spending billions on the olympics in 2010 when they feel that this is not helping the social problems one bit. Both the Vancouver government, the BC government and the federal government is right wing, and the poverty issues are (apparently) not their first priority. The federal government could fall any day, so we might be experiencing an election while we are here - there is a minority government in Canada right now.

We met with Kevin the day before yesterday - he is the leader of Check your head - our major partner here for the outpost. The pictures on the previous post are from his building which is a cooperative where you pay according to what you make. Beautiful view! I got "the corporation" - both the book and the documentary - for christmas, and I really enjoyed reading the book (still haven't seen the documentary). I asked Kevin if he knew Joel Bakan (the author) by any chance, and he did. He knows both Bakan and the guy that directed the documentary, and he says it would be easy to have them come talk to us. That would be so great!

I bet some of you wonder what it is that I'm actually doing here, so I will give a short explanation. The team is here to explore and experiment with sustainability, and the reason for going to Vancouver is that there is a will in the city to be more sustainable, there are some cool trends, yet at the same time the city is - as I already mentioned - facing some big challenges like homelessness, poverty and the highest AIDS-rate in North America. The team is separated into seven smaller groups that are working with different clients on sustainability issues within the following areas: culture, education, urban, ecological/environmental and business/economy. My project is called "Climate Change Action Plan" and is in cooperation with Check your head and The British Colombia Government Employee Union. The union wants to look at all their operations (daily life, meetings, travels etc) and figure out the impact they have on the environment, and then come up with more sustainable solutions. It is really exciting - if the project is succesful this might be spread all over Canada. It is a big task, and we will have to see how we can limit it to fit our seven weeks of project, but I'm sure we will learn a lot about new and sustainable solutions for businesses that will be valuable to businesses all over the world!

Pictures today - words tomorrow

Exploring Vancouver

Kamilla, Peter and I have been walking and walking to explore the city today. We had breakfast at Café Crêpe where we were introduced to the first cultural shock - the waitress actually talked to us other than just taking our orders. In summary her daughter feels she has too small breasts and want to fix them, and she has done a nose job and laser on her eyes. And she doesn't like breast implants, 'cause it's adding something to your body. After that we spent the first part of the day downtown just getting to know the streets and some stores, and then we took a bus down Main street and went to some really nice stores. I bought two t-shirts in Voltage, two t-shirts made of different recycled clothes put together, and a short, strange dress/top from one of the vintage stores. A man with a small dog inside his jacket fell on me on the bus back home...I guess that's a happening of the day.
Vancouver is called the rain city which we really got to experience today - it's been pooring down, and we were all soaking wet when we got home. Now we're just relaxing in our beds trying to get the warmth back and fighting the urge to go to sleep. We were all up at 8 this morning, which is kind of strange on a day off...when you're not jetlagged, that is.

Arrived in Vancouver

We arrived yesterday and today is dedicated to exploring Vancouver. It seems like a really nice city where they unfortunately are doing a lot of construction work everywhere - probably to be ready for the olympics 2010. We are living at the YWCA hotel where the rooms - I'm sorry to say - are smaller than they appear on the photos on the site. So the Kaostrinity is facing a challenge when it comes to living on top of each other for one month..at first. But that's a challenge we meet with open arms.
Pictures will come later today:)

Sustainability kick off

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Vancouver, and today I read this article on World Changing about how they are planning to make Los Angeles more sustainable. That's a good inspiration for us and our work in Vancouver!

New kids revival

I haven't thought about the new kids for such a long time. Then all of a sudden Gunnhild started talking about them, and we found ourselves searching the net for music, videos or anything about them. And we found it...their greates hits. I started crying like never before when we heard the songs...so many memories - my entire puberty is related to this one band. It's just too many emotions to deal with. But also there's all the videos - that we didn't see when we were young. So we didn't really know that Joe was about 13 years old...and that maybe we should have digged Donnie, 'cause he's kinda cool. Oh, well.of course I have to share it with you - if you cry, please let me know. It will feel better if I know that we are more than just one.

Go here to see them

Our honeymoon.

Jo and I were at Café Jorden one evening to figure out what we wanted out of the honeymoon, so that it would be easier to decide upon a place to go. It started with a list of things that were important to us when choosing a place, and ended up with a competition between the different countries. Enjoy!