If you have never left New Zealand, you will probably have never had to deal with the mocking our accent brings. For some reason people can't understand our 'E' and 'I'. We say 'deck' they think we say 'dick', 'check-in' sounds like 'chicken' and 'Emma' sounds like 'Amma'. The only way to get away from the teasing that follows the pronunciation of one of these or various other words is to say them in a Canadian accent. I learnt that pretty quickly as it got kind of awkward every time I introduced myself; everyone would either ask me to repeat my name and then be like 'Oh! You mean Emma!' or 'Amma, that's an unusual name!' and I'd have to correct them. So now I when I introduce myself I talk Kiwi until my name and then say it Canadianly. I get odd looks but at least I can say my own name right now.
So many odd things here are opposite to home. There are the obvious like driving on the other side of the road but the not so obvious was walking on the opposite side of the pavement. In Vancouver it was difficult to walk as you were dodging people with each step; until I realised where I was going wrong. Light switches are another thing that are different. Normally at home if the switch it flicked up it is off and if it is flicked down it is on. Here it's the other way and it took me a bit to get used to that in the hotel rooms. Also, as I work with a few Brits they call vacuums hoovers, power plugs power sockets and chips crisps. All these odd words are making it into my vocabulary so here's a heads-up; I'm going to sound a bit freakish when I come home. Speaking of home I Skyped there for Christmas and they picked up on a few of the things I saw differently already. As one of my mates here [Azarlia] is from down South in New Zealand she says her 'R' different and as I'm around her all day I now say my 'R' the same as her. Freaky sounding me is already under transformation.
I mentioned in one of my early posts in Vancouver that it was really hot inside everywhere. Good news is that we're now accustomed to the huge temperature variance between in and out. So much so we even feel the need to wear jumpers inside. [Shock and horror right?!] We've had a few chilly days this past month. Today is meant to get down to the early -20s but a few weeks ago it got to round -30 so they shut down the lifts and gondola as it was too cold for the machinery to operate. I had been told that you couldn't feel that much difference between -20 and -30 and it's true. You're ears and nose just hurt and each breath too. So now when we have days in the minus single digits and early teens it feels positively balmy and we wander around in just shirts.
This thermometer is meant to read -5 or 6 degrees lower then the actual temperature but this is what is read on the day the gondola and lifts shut:
On the 12th of December [the night of my operation] there was an event in Banff called Rail Jam. They set up a kicker and rail down a side street surrounded by snow and a pulley gives the boarders enough speed to get up and on. It was really cool watching all the guys and a few girls do it; one of the maintenance workers from the hotel entered and he did really well. No one had too hardcore a stack but there were enough to keep you expectantly on your toes. Totally inspiring too, I decided I'm going to do park one day.
With my injury I wasn't working many hours in the hotel as a housekeeper so I got offered a three hour shift on the 18th of December at front desk while the front desk team had their Christmas dinner in the hotel restaurant. I'd had absolutely no training on front desk previously but I accepted as they said that it would be a really quiet night. I turned up fifteen minutes early to have some time to learn a bit and low-and-behold, they were on the tail end of a rescue operation as two guests had gotten stranded up one of the mountains. That took up my 'training' time so in the end instructions were hastily thrown at me and I was left to it. Thankfully the supervisor had left me a walky-talky to call him on in case there was something I had no clue what to do and not even ten minutes after they had gone upstairs I had to call him down. I had to call someone down about three times that night but each time I was able to learn a bit more so the last five minutes of my shift I felt like I could handle it. Typical. But it was a really good experience to have and actually fun towards the end.
Because I wasn't doing much and the little I was doing was over using my hand I was sent down to Human Resources to help down there. That meant I had to catch the gondola every morning at 7:30 to get down to base for an 8 o'clock start. I didn't mind this daily commute too much as it was great alone time but those cars do get a bit chilly so that wasn't so pleasant. But it was really good working in HR as it helped my hand to heal up and I'm going to be back in the hotel tomorrow. I've really missed my team so it'll be great to be back.
Banff and the Bow Valley being in a National Park are renowned for the wildlife everywhere, but being up here we don't get much variation. There is the occasional bird but that's about it for daily creature spotting. I'd been told that the hotel has pine martins living in it but I hadn't seen any until the other day. It was really exciting to see something different and even though they aren't meant to be approached they are really cute. Azarlia saw a Pika right outside her window a few nights in a row [she's on the ground floor of her building and the snow constantly drifts up to the top of her window; and this Pika had dug a little tunnel right past her window] but the custodians have to clear the windows so the tunnel got dug up and Pika still hasn't returned. She was the only one to have seen him so for a little while the joke was that she had imagined him but as she had been rather attached to the fellow the jokes stopped when he stopped appearing.
I'd better go, but I'll leave you with this. Renee and I went to the Banff Library last week as she had study to do for our staff Fire Crew [I just had the day off] and we saw this little guy right outside the window we were sitting at:
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