BNJMN

I'm at the airport in Ottawa, about to depart on the longest, farthest trip from home I have ever experienced! The exciting part is seeing a couple of small pockets of the Earth that promise to be very, very diffent from what I know. The downside... I won't have Internet at my fingertips the whole time. I may have access while in Japan, but in Nepal, I wouldn't expect anythin mgore than intermittent access, and certainly no access when I get out into the village side. to make quick, easy posts in one easy-to-find locale, I set up http://bnjmnwood.tumblr.com . Here, I'll post pictures and impressions when I can. I'll probably blog here as well, just not nearly as often, and maybe not until I get back. So yes, please keep an eye on Tumblr, which should also send tweets when I post to @bnjmnwood . Also, iPad should stop autocorrecting Tumblr as "tumble"!

More pictures here: Flickr Vancouver Set Ignore the fact for a moment that I went to Vancouver in November and it's now the following February. Time passes quickly, and everything you want to do always seems to get bypassed for all the things you have to do. That makes making the time for the important things in life that much more of a priority. It's for this reason that I'm finally sitting down to write about my trip. It's also for this reason that I was extremely excited that my friend Cat invited me all the way to the other end of the country for a week mostly to hang out and see and do a bunch of the things that I've only heard about. Granville Island, Stanley Park, Cypress Mountain, ferry, Mickey's cache, Skytrain. Before this trip, the farthest West I had travelled was a weekend camping trip to Banff, on a month-long french program in Saskatoon (interestingly, where I met Cat to begin with). Travelling to both Saskatoon and Banff was all done by bus. Slow...

On the first night, we checked out Downtown Disney, but only really went into a place to eat. Today, our first down day, we decided to take to the shops and, in a nutshell, spend a ridiculous amount of money. The stores here are crazy awesome! The World of Disney Store, the biggest character store in the world, is easily 20x the size of my store at home. If not more. And despite the heavy traffic, it was still very organized and neat looking. Imagine how many hours they get! And the stitch outside likes to spit on people. Not surprising... Also, our store has been starting to get products made of recycled materials, reusable bags, organic cotton shirts, and the like. The same lines of product are here too. With cooler designs! The candy store is amazing as well. I couldn't decide what to get because I wanted it all. Disney gummies are seriously the best ones I've had ever. If there are any pockets of space in my luggage (ha!), then I'm filling it with candy. Another amazing...

After a long day at Magic Kingdom, Cat and I took a trip to EPCOT. You know, the park with the big expo-style ball? By the time the park closed, we had only really done the first half of it, doing Futureworld and just barely visiting the Canada part of the world showcase. We're going to have to go again. Spaceship Earth was perhaps my favourite thing at Epcot. Inside the huge ball, there's an attraction that goes through the story of communication, from cave wall paintings to Matrix-style letters falling on the ceiling. And stars. And matrices of lights that look like they go on forever. We did it twice! My close-second fave attraction: Mission Space. Wow. Have you ever been to Mars? I went twice! Thanks, Gary Sinise! The simulated G-Forces were off the huzzle (bonus points if you just laughed there). Test Track was also amazing. It's accelerating in a car, round and round, dodging obstacles - basically human crash test dummies. It's a roller coaster that doesn't fe...

Magic Kingdom WOW. Magic Kingdom is huge! The whole thing started off walking down Main Street USA from which you get a fantastic view of the iconic Cinderella's Castle. And from there, it just kept getting better and better. We somehow managed to see a lot of it... not quite everything, but a whole lot. The park wasn't that busy, so, in combination with Fastpasses, we didn't have to do a whole lot of waiting. I wanted to see everything - soak up every detail and become part of it. This being my first real theme park experience makes it even moreso overwhlming. The little details are what makes Disney so spectacular, and Magic Kingdom is no exception to that rule. Adventureland If you're going clockwise, Adventureland is the first main area. The Jungle Cruise was neat - animatronics is a big part of this place, and this is my first glimpse at this dying style of storytelling. The Tiki Room was a bit confusing because I wasn't paying attention to the story as much as...