Vancouver: Drinking gypsytears under my bright pink panther umbrella.

While I'm whistling my way back down the streets to my hostel for my last night in a noisey bunkbed through lightly drizzling rain, I realize I have missed the smell of unfamiliar cosmopolitan city. While I'm passing the community gardens at Davie street, I recall the feeling I had when I would roam the streets of Bangkok, which after a total of 3 months off and on had started to feel like home a little bit. I have only been here a week - and granted, the two local brews that I just drank from a jar in a hipster gaybar, made me a bit tipsy - but I think this city suits me.

My hostel lies in the biggest gaybourhood I've ever seen, with rainbows for streetcrossings and pink busstops, But in all honesty, this city feels like one big gaybourhood. Everything seems to be mixed, and the bar that had just served me some gypsy tears in a jar and vegetarian wraps, was as much a daycare as it was a lesbian meetup. Funky hairdoes and extrovert fashion are mainstream here, even facial tatoos are more common than you would want. Whoever recalls my checkered phase sense of dress style, might also be able to imagine my expression of delight when I discovered a vintage shop where stuff that in Holland can only be found in the dusty costume room of the theatre academy, are sold like they are H&M's new designer line. First, just for fun, I dressed up as the biggest butch in town (lots of flannel and boots), after which I kept eyeballing a bright green vintage medicinal cape. In the end I had my usual shoppers brain meltdown and left the shop emptyhanded. Only to walk out of the next store with a pile of secondhand books on my topic oil, tarsands and water. Completely in my element I somehow ended up walking around with a bright pink, panther print patterned umbrella and a spring in my step. I think I need to earn my stripes (and my phd position) however, before I start tattooing tears on my face.

Regarding the Phd, I actually already received some great feedback about a project that will start in 2016 in the Arctic Basin, the North of Canada. Having fluffed up my cv as far as it allowed me to and adding a professionally photographed headshot to it has apparently caught the attention of my first choice professor, According to Pegah a geography hotshot in the academic scene. Although I am over the moon with her first encouraging response, this will only be the start, because -as luck would have it- she's in California at the moment. Part of me just wants to drive down and secure the position in person, another part of me is eyeballing the boreal lights in Alaska and the golden rivers of the Yukon territories before they snow over halfway of november. Sigh... choices...

But... without a car I won't see any polar lights, nor Californian beaches. Tomorrow's the big day, bringing my second van to the mechanic. This one is a lot more toned down, as in smaller and no pimpy electric bed/couch. But that also means less weight, less gas and less space to heat up at night. So maybe it's a good start for this Canadian trialrun.

I've also had my first Canadian thanksgiving dinner. Invited by Pegah, my former classmate in the IDS master, I spent a wonderful evening with her family attempting to eat a 5 pound turkey, which might have also been 5 kg, in either case, I was huge, but delicious. and as Pegah proudly kept stressing 'Not Persian'. Pegah and her family, originally from Iran, have lived in Holland for 8 years and all speak perfect Dutch, which made for quite a surreal evening. Although Pegah and I have always spoken in English back in the Dam, here we switched to a mix of English, Dutch and Persian (well, I stuck mostly to the former two). But mostly Dutch! Marco Borsato and Jantje Smith were covered, the zwarte pieten discussion was mentioned and even Lijst Pim Fortuin recalled.  It was wonderfully weird and supplied me with 2 days of thanksgiving turkey, which I keep trying to show off at my fellow hostel inmates, by doing extra laps in their dining room, spreading the smell of homemade gravy.