Last Sunday was my flight from Bozeman to Vancouver, and it was an interesting one. It was another late flight, with a layover. Of course with my luck, the longer flight to Vancouver, I was stuck next to some loud…men…so I had about half a seat to myself (still was up against me haha >:[ ) and every now and again, there would be cheering all around me…because a late flight is the best time to watch a hockey game. My bad luck didn’t end there as I quickly realized upon landing that my phone didn’t work at all! Yay! So I used the airport internet to screenshot the info I’d need to get to my airbnb and then tried to call an uber…but the uber was taking ages to connect so I ended up taking a taxi for the first time in my life. Which was terrifying. I was all alone, in a technical different country, I had no working phone, and no way of knowing if this taxi driver was actually taking me where I needed to go. It was a stressful half hour drive to my airbnb, but I made it safely (even through the taxis speeding an insane amount) with the help of the taxi driver and made it into my airbnb.
The next day was my audition, great timing. But it was thankfully late in the day, so I spent the morning figuring out my phone’s roaming to connect to Canada and then went to figure out that the public transportation doesn’t take discover cards, which is all I had. So I was able to use google pay and my mom’s card (thx mom TT) for the sky train and my card worked for basically everything else. The sky train was surprisingly very very easy for me, which I wasn’t expecting. I had a rough time in NYC subways, so I figured this would be similar, but it was not. It may be because I was really just on one main big line, but I was able to navigate the city very easily.
I arrived to the audition site very early, which was always a good sign for me. I had time to kill and headed to a crepe place for some breakfast. Then I spotted an H-Mart across the street from the audition site. I’ve wanted to go to this store for a while, and didn’t even realize there was one so close, so I went and did some shopping. The woman at the register was so kind, and we were chatting a bit and before I left the store she stopped me, telling me she wanted to give me something. She pulls out this little light blue sparkly pin with Korean on it, and explains that it says “cutie” in Korean 🙂 . So that was a huge positive turn in my day. I had been super stressed earlier finding out my card didn’t work at the sky train stations and phone half working, so this really put me in a much better mood. With my shopping spree in hand, I headed across the street for my audition.
I checked in a bit early, but nothing new with that lol. For this audition, they put everyone in their own warm up rooms, which was really nice. There was no mass warm up room, but again I think at this audition the people were friendlier than I expected. So I eventually got into my warm up room and did my thing. It was a bit weird that I wasn’t really that nervous for this audition, I’m not sure what the difference was between this one and the one in Bozeman. Maybe it was just purely because Bozeman was my first audition. Anyways, they then came and got me and I auditioned. I thought my flute excerpts in particular were really great! I was definitely very, very happy with those. Piccolo was….okay. They had us play 2 Semiramide excerpts, the first of which went well, the second right at the very end was rough. And as expected, that was my downfall haha. So no second round once again, but looking back I’m almost thankful for that because I got to spend an extra day in Vancouver.
The rest of my day wasn’t super exciting as I was still a bit jet lagged. But I got some boba (it was SO CHEAP in Vancouver and I took full advantage of this), walked around the city, grabbed some food and headed back to my airbnb. I must also mention that the bath in my airbnb was impeccable, and I took advantage of that as well.
The next day, my full day in Vancouver, was when I really started to fall in love with the city. I began my day in a different part, near Burnaby. I got breakfast at a cafe, which was actually the best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever tasted, then I did a whole lot of walking. The mentionable spots were two different parks. The first was smaller, but still beautiful. Upon walking into the park, I could hear what I believe was Chinese music, and then I spotted a bunch of older asian women dancing along to the music as a workout. For some reason, this was so beautiful to me. Just seeing them all gathered together in a small park, smiling together as they danced. The dance wasn’t elaborate, but it was still beautiful. As I sat on a bench and watched (kinda creepy I know), there was an older woman next to me who got up and began to follow the dancers. So beautiful. Then I headed to the central park there, which was breathtaking. I could not believe it was just in the middle of the city. Once again, the park was filled with older men and women (prob because it was a school day) walking around with each other and exercising. I spent a long time in this park, taking it all in. The trees were huge, flowers were bright, just overall pretty nature. There was also a pond in the middle, which I’m glad I decided to stop at. As I grew closer to the pond, I heard a harmonica playing. I discovered an older gentlemen, sitting on a bench, and playing his harmonica. This was the other thing that just really touched me for some reason. It’s not like he was some world class professional harmonica player, but I sat there, looking at the pond and surrounding nature, listening to the harmonica and wanted to cry honestly. I’m not sure why it was so touchingly beautiful to me, but it really was.
I eventually made my way from that park to a boba shop, no surprise, and went to a few nearby malls. The first ended up being basically an asian mall, which I didn’t know, but it was still kinda cool to see. I didn’t know what half the shops were even selling, but it was cool to look at lol. The second was a mall that had 2 stores I wanted to go to, a Daiso, and the other I just knew sold K-pop albums. I walked around and shopped for a long time at this mall, as it was 3 stories high. I got a few things at Daiso, and spent too much money at the other. They just and so much cute stuff!! And they had the last Stray Kids album I need for my collection, so obviously I got that. After the mall, I tried going to another park further out from the city. It was a bit disappointing and I and walked 20 minutes to it, so I ubered to a Walmart in the city, bought a portable charger and headed to find some food. I ended up getting some Korean fried chicken, brought it to my airbnb and ate it with a grape soda….it hit HARD.
The next way was interesting. I had to be out of my airbnb by 11am, but my flight wasn’t until 11pm. So I found a service in the city to basically watch my bags, which is where I went first this day. Afterwards I went to the Dr Sun Yat-Sen gardens, which was also really cool to see. It was a bit smaller than I expected, but still pretty. I of course got a few souvenirs from it as well. It was after this garden that I started to get really tired really fast. I ended up at a walking path near the sea, and just sat around there for quite some time. I eventually felt good enough to walk around a bit more, getting some food and ice cream before heading back to get my luggage. So I headed to the airport pretty early, but that was okay with me. And now, after a full night of travel and a say of some recovery, I am home.
Overall, this was definitely one of the best places I’ve been. I really liked Vancouver, which was a tad surprising. I never thought I’d like a city as much as I liked Vancouver. I hope I didn’t leave anything out, but this is at least all the important stuff 🙂 . Now for way too many pictures in no order:
by juniparker
