Thanksgiving Day & Status Update

Today was Canadian Thanksgiving Day.  Pretty much everything was closed, and we'd signed up to the hostel's Thanksgiving Dinner, which we were assured was traditional and awesome.  


It was BYO alcohol, but we discovered the night before that bottleshops were closed at 5pm Sunday evening and didn't reopen until Tuesday morning.  Jess did some quick googling, and we discovered one "beer shop" attached to a microbrewery in the suburbs somewhere that was open - so we decided to take the subway out there and grab some, so as not to turn up empty-handed to the party.  

The "beer shop" was just that - they sold beer in 2L jugs which you could return to get your $4 jug deposit back.  Stephen was pretty embarrassed carrying his jug o'beer back on the subway!  

The jug did come in handy for playing bottle tunes on later though.  (Note:  I didn't actually drink any of the beer, I was just demonstrating how it was done to the idiots who couldn't get a sound out of it.  I was forced to upload this photo by Jess and Stephen with threats of starting a rival blog and stealing all of my traffic.)  


Thanksgiving Dinner (which was at 3pm), which I neglected to take photos of, was a bit strange - I guess when you're cooking for 100 people in a hostel at $10 a head, you're not expecting awesomeness, but it was lacking some things that I was expecting.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, frozen veggies and some sort of bizarre concoction which was apparently supposed to be stuffing.  I was expecting cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, but maybe they don't do that here?  Anyway, unfortunately, they were serving outside and it was around 10 degrees, so the food was pretty cold by the time we got to eat it - not bad for $10 though I guess.

We headed back to Jess's place afterwards for board games (damn Stephen always wins), and finished off the day with another local delicacy - Pizza Pizza (the local pizza chain store).  Surprisingly tasty!


To update on our situation - we were rejected (very nicely) for that house we applied for.  Our plan tomorrow is to hit up a few of the more apartment-block-style apartments, which we think are owned by corporations rather than individuals - we don't think they're full, so they're much more likely to take a chance on some unemployed immigrants than an individual with one investment apartment to let.  Fingers crossed!  


We've also decided that we need to just suck it up and accept that the bank fees and the mobile phone fees here are much more expensive than Australia.  Tomorrow we're visiting the Royal Bank of Canada to sign up for our chequeing account ($11.95 a month for 25 transactions!), and we'll probably get a credit card included in their new migrants bundle.  I'm also looking at upgrading my phone - Telus has the HTC Desire on a 1 year contract at $50 a month including a bunch of incoming and outgoing calls and messages (yes you have to pay to receive calls and messages here as well), as well as data, so I'm looking at that (no one will allow you to bring your own phone and get data - in fact very few companies allow you to even bring your own phone).  Apparently at some point during the day we'll be heading back to the CN Tower too - hopefully the crowds have gone home!