Hello from Canada

Well here goes, our first step into the world of blogging - certainly not a step I would have seen myself taking a year ago! Anyway, our aim is to keep you all informed, and hopefully slightly jealous, of our Canadian exploits. We'll also keep posting photos on Facebook - while they will mostly be snaps of Leo pole-dancing, hopefully I'll get in a few of the beautiful Canadian scenery, and some more detailed shots of our house to give you a better idea of our living arrangements...

So, I'll start at the beginning. After a typically tearful farewell from Mum at the airport, Leo, Coote and I set sail for Vancouver, jobless, accommodationless and (in my case) Visa-less. The first hurdle was overcome, although not without worrying moments - having got past the first set of passport control with a few white lies, we were then confronted by 'Customs Inspector Wicharuk', who quite quickly saw through our 'two of us are working for the season and one is just skiing' story. After some pretty irate words from Monsieur Wicharuk, we did manage to smooth things over - it turned out my visa had been authorised and I was free to go, work permit in hand.

After a night at a hostel in Vancouver, we then quickly headed for the mountains. We certainly hope to see more of Vancouver as it seemed like a cool city, but we pretty much only had time to go to bed and get up before getting the bus up to Whistler. The bus up took two and a half hours and, amazingly, me and Leo managed to stay awake the whole way up to take in the pretty amazing scenery - Coote said Ian would have been particularly impressed. We then headed for our hostel in Whistler, which had been used for athletes accommodation at the Olympics, so was suitably plush... We were sharing a room with an elusive character named Brian, whose bags and clothing were in the room throughout our stay. However, after two nights and three days in the hostel, Brian was yet to show his face - we can only assume he was eaten by a bear.

Our first task was finding somewhere to lay our heads for the forseeable future, and this turned out to be surprisingly simple. We logged onto craigslist which has a lot of accommodation listings, and immediately found a guy looking for 3 blokes to fill the last room in a house of 10. We arranged a viewing and were certain we wanted it within about 30 seconds. This was further cemented when our rather serious landlord took us out to show us the hot tub - we could hardly believe our luck and struggled to keep a straight face, whilst ensuring him we were quiet individuals who had not come to Whistler to party.... We're living with two English girls (Emily and Kara), two Australian girls (Katie and  KK), a Scottish couple (Laura and Andy) and a Canadian girl (Jenna) - so far everyone's getting on really well and we're all job hunting together in the days. We also had our first house meal and night out on Saturday which inevitably descended into drunken chaos (see photos... Granny, look away!).

We've also managed to sort out Canadian phones, bank accounts etc which was all fairly tedious, and the final step is finding a job. Coote and I have managed to line up work at a Casino Royale event on Friday, but coming by something a bit more permanent is looking tricky. We've had a particularly tedious day today, and have spent a cumulative total of 5 hours queueing at two job fairs, with a fairly short and informal interview the only prize at the end of each. However, everybody assures us that as soon as the snow comes, the tourists soon follow and then all the restaurants and bars have a big recruitment drive - so we're hoping to be sorted by the end of November at the latest. In the meantime, we're enjoying being unemployed - drinking and whiling away the hours in the hot-tub is certainly a good fall-back.

In other news, which only some of you will understand, Coote received a particularly unusual email from Sam McManus today, with the first line reading, "I guess a few of you are quite angry about what you've heard about the way I treated my now ex-girlfriend, Silja...." - he went on to give us the happy news of the birth of his first child - strange, but true...

So I hope you are all suitably updated, and we will endeavour to keep posting on this - don't hold your breath between posts, as you know what we're like, and we may even get jobs at some point! Anyway, we are missing you all, although thankfully we are having enough fun to keep our minds of it. Hope you're all well, much love, Josh, Leo and Sam xxx