We got accepted!! Vancouver here we come!

Around this time last year, we were packing up our house and preparing to say goodbye to Turks and Caicos.  It was sad times for us, we had an amazing time living on such a paradisiacal island! Byron got to scuba dive for the first time, I got to snorkel for the first time, we tried and fell in love with lots of new foods like conch and jerk chicken,  we had some of the best meals we have ever experienced at Coco Bistro and Coyaba, we had a sea view and were a stones throw from this amazing beach with super turquoise water, we made some friends for life and we saved the life of the cutest little puppy Sunny who became a part of our family...

you'd be sad too if you had to move from there to North Wales...

It's safe to say I've found the transition quite hard! and have been less than enthusiastic about our time spent here but I will always be grateful to Bangor for one thing and that is for their study abroad programme.  Because of it, we just found out this week that Byron has been accepted to study in Vancouver for a year!

We are BEYOND excited!! We have known for the past 2 years or so that study abroad was going to be an option on Byron's degree course.  We also knew there were two options - Vancouver or Finland.  When we attended the University open day a few years ago we were told that only the top 2 students get sent to Vancouver, Byron turned to me upon hearing this and said I guess we'll be going to Finland then! We thought either would be cool places to live but we thought Vancouver would be way more awesome, especially with my love of all things American - many of which you find in Canada too! but we had sort of given up hope on Vancouver thinking Finland would be cheaper and easier to get to etc.. and easier to get accepted to.  Luckily for us though, Byron has shown his true colours as the brainiac he is and has been getting amazing grades and got accepted to Vancouver! 

So for the last year or so I have been storing up bookmarks of all the cool places we would like to visit if we got the chance to go to Vancouver, just in case! but I didn't want to get our hopes up! We have known unofficially for the last 3 weeks now that we will be moving there so I knew I could really start some serious planning now! so I did what any 'normal' person to do and turned to google street view to acquaint myself with my future Vancouver lifestyle - I thought I'd share with you what I found because it's MORE than a little exciting!!

This will be my local Wal-Mart! Imagine! I will have Mint Oreos, Graham Crackers, Lucky Charms, Root Beer, Corn Dogs & a whole host of baking supplies right at my fingertips! I LOVE Wal-Mart! 

This will be our local i-hop, oh yeah!

This will be our local A&W restaurant, hello!

This is our local Taco Bell, yum! 

and of course, I had to find out how close our nearest cupcakery will be - only 10 minutes! Sweet!

and I also found out that this will be our local church, so exciting!

So along with all the exciting shops and restaurants we will be gaining access to, there is also going to be amazing scenery in every direction! You know we'll be roadtrippin' it to...

Lake Louise - that is a must!

Whistler - let the snowboarding/skiing begin!

Oh yeah and you know how we're on the border with America...well a roadtrip to California will only take 18 hours - that is totally doable!!!

So I just thought I'd share our exciting news with you all! and we hope to see lots of you out there, as we love having visitors! For now...I have some serious motivation to see me through these last few months in Bangor - let the countdown begin!