Canada

One thing we were looking forward to when we'd decided to move to Canada was the possibility of exploring a whole new continent. However, now that we have been living here for six months, we found out that this is an immense huge country and that travelling in Canada only isn't that easy. Until so far we have seen the countryside of Toronto, the Niagara Falls and Timmins. Travel distances here are immense and travelling by train is very expensive as well.

Quite often European people tell us that they know someone living in Canada. They forget that Canada is the fourth largest country in the world and that someone living in Vancouver, means actually the same as the distance from Helsinki to Dubai. Not really our neighbor.

Actually, we never imagined these distances to be so huge either. Our plan is to start our discovery of Canada by first exploring the province of Ontario, which on it's own is already bigger than Finland.

Here are some places we definitely want to visit:

Ottawa
The capital of Canada and the second largest city in Ontario.

Montreal
The largest city in Quebec and primarily French speaking.

Winnipeg
The capital of Manitoba and the hometown of Juha's closest classmates.

Vancouver 
Seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia.

The Canadian Rockies (Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains)
Hiking tour through Banff and Jasper National Parks.

Eastern Canada (New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Novia Scotia and Prince Edward Island)
The maritime provinces with dunes, bays and fresh fish.

Family Day weekend

Yesterday it was Family Day, a new statutory holiday, occurring on the third Monday in February. This meant that we had an extra long weekend. Although, I didn't really feel it, because I had to work at the restaurant anyways. 

We did had some time to go for a long walk. It was again a beautiful day and we went to get some fresh bread and a danish pastry at a bakery nearby. Juha and our landlady laughed at my clothing, cause according to them, I was looking just like a Canadian. 

On Sunday evening, after we had played some pickup floorball, we met some acquaintances from Kurikka. They were here to see NHL hockey and had planned this trip for about 2,5 years. They had contacted Juha, who they knew from hockey in Kurikka, to meet up and have dinner together. We had made reservations at the Old Spaghetti Factory, where we had eaten once before and which demonstrated to be a good place. We had a fun night, thanks again guys!

Innocence

Last weekend we finally painted the brown walls in our living room. With some help of our friend Kevin, who does construction for a living, we now have nice looking walls and plenty of light.
We decided to put Innocence light blue on the walls and the color worked out really well.

Here some before and after pictures.

Last weekend

A week ago we had some friends over to celebrate my Birthday and the end of Juha's exams. Our friend group consists of Juha's classmates and their significant others and floorball team mates. I had made some finger food and we had an old-fashioned house party :)

The cheese cake was delicious, but didn't look like it...

On Sunday I made pancakes for breakfast. We used the Maple Leaf syrup we got as a gift from our friends.

In the afternoon we went to play some pick up floorball in a gym uptown and our team mate's girlfriend took some pictures.