Looking Ahead...

Folks!

So day 2 is upon us, and here is a little recap for all of you who have been following what we have been doing, and WELCOME to those of you who have just joined us.

We woke up around 7:30 am local time, after getting to bed quite late the night before, when Rachel crawled Jesse’s bed, and in her usual fashion was ready for the adventures that the day had to offer. We got up; got ready and headed off to the grocery store down the street to grab some breakfast food. The hostel staff pointed us to this little market about 5 blocks away, and we picked up some tea, some eggs, toast, peanut butter and some strawberries to start our day. We got back to the hostel, cooked up a storm in the Kitchen, and then had some downtime, Jesse went off to be inspired and read The Book of Negroes, and Rachel went and had some much needed naptime.

From here we got our cameras, and went down to the harbour in the daylight to get some pictures, and some video footage of the beautiful capital. Walking down the boardwalk we saw many signs for whale watching tours, as well as some seaplanes taking off, and landing in the water.

While we were walking with David to the grocery store to pick up a few munchies for tonight’s pot luck, we came across two street friends, John and Larry, they asked us for some spare change, but none of us had any and so we were friendly but just about to continue on with our trek, when John, noticed my (Rachel’s) wonderful looking poncho, and he commented on how much he liked it, so we started small talk he literally “invited us to sit and chat for a while” and so we shared where we were from, what we were doing, among other small talk. When about to say goodbye we mentioned we were off to the grocery store, and could pick something up for them, John got VERY excited about the thought of a “Turkey sandwich and a ginger ale”. So we doubled that order, and picked up one of each for both of our new friends. On our way back to them we noticed they were with two others and so delivered the food and apologized for not having enough, when Larry spoke up saying “ don’t worry we always share”. A reminder of something we often forget to do ourselves. We then handed off a package of pitas we had bought for ourselves. They were very thankful and stowed away their food for later on. When getting ready to leave John asked us to join him in a prayer of thanks. We all joined hands and he spoke of how he was thankful that we managed to take the time out of our “Olympics stuff” to go to the store for him. Larry also joined in saying a little something, but announced that he didn’t have to say much “God already knew what he was thinking”. At the end of the prayer we had a “team Canada chant” where we spent a moment praying for the athletes.

A little while after we met up with the group, and went to this cute little activist lounge café called Solstice. Here we had some time to check in, see how people were doing, and there was a general sense of fatigue in the group. Fatigue from lack of sleep or jet lag, on our end, and more deep frustration around treatment of protesters in general by the Vancouver police and the RCMP.

From there, we went to diner, a potluck at an activist bookstore, and looked at pictures, and videos of the protests in Vancouver from those who had already been here. These were some of the topics of conversation:

- Emotional toll of being in this atmosphere and headspace and how constantly talking about and being challenged by the Olympics is taking its toll on us.

- Talked a lot about people who have been critical of what we are trying to do here and general frustration about people who we have informed not taking seriously what we had told them.

- Local Vancouver woman shared pain of seeing the “battle” come to her hometown, and reflected on the cost of this for the city of Vancouver, the Province of BC.

- People coming to Vancouver forget that Vancouver is a city with a history that was, and will still be here after the Olympics, and that the Olympics have been used to give Vancouver a new face, and new image with all of the international attention. This got us thinking about how moving to new school when we were younger was an opportunity to redefine who we are, and what we stand for. In the same way Vancouver, under the guise of the Olympics is able to redefine itself as a city, and make the rules along with the International Olympic Committee of who can come along, or represent Vancouver on the forefront.

- Employees have been shipped in from across the country- white, middle class people while unemployment rates are HUGE in Vancouver, and completely ignoring those who are clearly looking for jobs, and homeless or at risk-of being homeless. (Ignoring the people who are standing in the lines vs. the statistics….)

Knowing that we are heading to Vancouver tomorrow, and the intensity of the dialogue today escalating significantly has made this experience all the more real, and the knowledge of what is at stake a lot more apparent. We are looking forward to being in the thick of things, and unlike our comrades we have been able to be submersed gradually in this environment, which has been most definitely helpful.

Until tomorrow,

Team Awesome (Jesse and Rachel) Signing off.