Let's go back to the coast, baby, westward to the ocean...

In true BC spirit, I had Said the Whale on my iPod as I ventured to the Ottawa airport yesterday morning. My destination: Vancouver, with a stopover at Olympic Glory (yes, capitalized).

The last few weeks have been busy but a lot of fun-- my feature article on MPs and social media was published (front page!) in the Ottawa Citizen's Saturday Observer (you can find the piece online here) and I've just finished a promotional video for the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa that was part of their 50th anniversary launch on Thursday. But now I'm back home-- well, a few hours from home-- in Vancouver to intern with a what-will-for-now-remain-unnamed Big Media Group. They're covering some sort of big sporting event going on in town, I think?

While I know I'll probably be out East for awhile (yes, Ontario counts as "out East", though to be fair Alberta is also East by BC standards), parts of my heart still belong to the coast. Vancouver is warm (9 degrees today! 9! While Ottawa was -11, warm by Ottawa standards...) and it's even cleaner and prettier than usual thanks to the Big Olympic Machine that has taken over the city. At the airport, there were more volunteers than travellers-- there were even two volunteers at the luggage carousel who organized the bags as they came off the conveyor belt-- not one, but two!

Today was a lazy settle-in day, and it's never too hard to get back into the BC pace: sleep in, read all of the Olympic news clippings and updates, all-you-can-eat sushi date with friend and roomie Scott (and the ensuing stomachache...) and wandering Granville Island with one of my Vancouver friends. Then a long walk home in the balmy air, enjoying the mountains and my favourite familiar spots in the city. And, of course, grabbing a copy of the Georgia Straight, which I will devour as soon as I've finished this entry.

The internship starts tomorrow, so I'm sure to have more interesting stories then... and, if not, my roomie is volunteering at the Athletes' Village, so I'll just steal all of his ridiculous stories and post them on the interwebs for your entertainment. Deal?