Day 1: Welcome to the Good Life...Hopefully

Day 1, August 21, 2008, started off early. I slept 10:30 PM the previous night, woke up 2:00 AM, arrived in LAX at 3:15 AM, my flight, Alaska Airlines 709, took off from Gate 31B at 6:45 AM. My flight was pleasant enough. A 3 hour flight to Vancouver is nothing comparable to a 30 hour trip from LA to Indonesia (which I experienced last month). So, we (me, my brother, and my dad) arrive on a cloudy and wet Vancouver morning, around 9:45 and we were out of the airport by 10:15 AM with baggage in hand. 

So, I'm not officially moving in to UBC until next Thursday, so we decided to rent a Mazda 3, which cost $400 for the week (!!!), and rent an apartment in a suburb of Vancouver, Richmond, which by the way, consists of a 60% minority population, AKA Asians. It was really weird walking through downtown Richmond and seeing Chinese people all around. Oh well, what are you going to do? 

So for the first day, we just relaxed in the apartment and drove through Richmond. Not a very exciting day for the most part. But before I close on this chapter, there are many little things that I have found bad about Vancouver (to be nicknamed "Van" from now on) so far.

1. Gas price. $3.99 a gallon in Moreno Valley when I left. Over here, gas is $1.34 a liter. Now kick your conversion knowledge into gear and you should realize that we paid $5.36 CAD, or $5.12 USD.

2. Alright, to shorten this list, I'll just say that almost everything is more expensive here. I stopped by a supermarket and there were few things that were actually cheaper here (Milk, thank God).

Well, there's a light at the end of the tunnel for me. The US dollar has seemed to be getting stronger the past week. Now $1 USD is $1.05 CAD. Hopefully, it'll get better so that when I exchange money the next time, I'll get more Canadian dollars.

So hopefully the economies of the US and Canada can help a poor college student like me get through the next 4 months easily.