On my American cross-country road trip the first long stop I made was in Minneapolis with Emily and her husband Ben. I met Emily back in 2014 in a university small group when she was an exchange student. Having moved out to a nice neighborhood and gotten married she’s light Read more…
I’ve always wanted to board a West Coast Express train ever since I found out that Vancouver had a commuter railway. But only having five trains a day in each direction made it hard to catch, especially when I lived in Vancouver instead of out east. So one day, I Read more…
Although the VPL has dozens of branches all over the city, my favorite location is the central library in downtown Vancouver. You might have noticed that I have an affinity for libraries having visited the Peabody Library, the Grimm Zentrum, and the Library of Congress on several occasions The central Read more…
On my trip back to Vancouver from Nanaimo the captain kindly allowed be to fly with him in the cockpit. How often do you get to say “I’m flying shotgun”? I got to chat with the captain during the flight and got beautiful panoramic views of the Georgia Straight. Once Read more…
Marcus lives in Vancouver and doesn’t drive, so I said: “Let’s go to every single station on the SkyTrain network.” He said: “This sounds like a bad idea…but ok.” We started off in high spirits off Broadway-City Hall station, then we were tired by the time we got to King Read more…
I learned about Franz Boaz in my linguistic anthropology class and thought about his warnings on ethnocentrism when he researched linguistic anthropology in the US. I had many experiences of cross-cultural conflict in my lifetime having lived on three continents, yet I didn’t have a specific word to describe this Read more…
In the past decade, Vancouver has been increasingly transit friendly with the mayor promoting cycling combined with public transportation as an environmentally friendly alternative to driving. The West Coast Express (WCE) is a commuter rail link serving eight stations between Waterfront in downtown Vancouver all the way to Mission City Read more…
I don’t know about you, but every time I see a news story on some flood or hurricane in the eastern seaboard of the US, I’m frustrated by their inaction. Residents are aware of the risks of resettling in an area of high flood risk and hurricane zones but they Read more…
While most of my fellow classmates went out to Victoria to do touristy things, I drove all the way out to Abbotsford to attend a reconciliation event between the Cree Nation and the church. Canada has a long history of mistreating indigenous people and it is still a contentious issue Read more…
Legally known as the Musquem Indian Band, the Musqueam people are the indigenous people of Vancouver. They are located just south of the UBC campus and across the river from the Vancouver International Airport. Getting access to the cultural pavilion to learn more about their history proved to Read more…