BC Day Long Weekend

Just one of many activities in Victoria this BC Day weekend. Symphony Splash at the Inner Harbour. The Victoria Symphony performs in front of thousands of spectators finishing with fireworks as the picture shows. Lots of other activities for BC150. We have a few things (painting etc) to do around the house before we leave for Europe on the 8th.

Mexico Trip Photos

Our home for a week - July 19 - 26, 2008

The U17 Gorge FC team

Seatbelts - not here!

Clayton's hand with the camera usually yields a good artistic result

The Mayan Palace. Nothing ever seems to be "finished" in Mexico. Almost everywhere buildings, houses, streets etc are under some stage of construction.

Back of the amphitheater, every night there is some type of show or contest

A little corner store?

Iguana tree in the background. We counted over 20 at one time sunning themselves on the branches. These are full grown iguana's.

Flea market in Puerto Vallarta

Flea market in PV.

At the Canopy tour - aka Zip Line.

Clayton getting unhooked after a successful zip down

At "The View" zip line which is 2000 ft long. Just after the 1800 foot zip line.

The Tequila house

It was a toss up which was more fun, the ATV's or the Zip Lines.

Nice evening sky at the beach

In Bucerias, a 20 minute walk from the resort.

New resort being built on the beach in Neuvo Vallarta. VERY impressive.

Mexican family fishing. Notice the sting ray and the blowfish.

Our adult only pool in the courtyard of Building 5

Mexico Trip

I will post a bunch of pictures here shortly with a brief synopsis of our trip. Needless to say it was a whole lot of fun! The temperatures were around 35 degrees during the day with very high humidity. At night, it cooled off only a few degree's. We had lightning every night and one very nice rainstorm on Friday afternoon for a couple of hours.

Click on the link to see some pictures of one of our soccer matches posted on www.vallartadeportes.com which is the website of the Puerto Vallarta soccer school who arranged the friendlies.

Soccer trip to Puerto Vallarta Mexico

Clayton's soccer team is taking a trip to Puerto Vallarta to play a couple of friendly games with local Mexican teams. The team leaves Vancouver on Saturday for a week at the Royal Decameron Puerto Vallarta (all inclusive resort). I imagine a lot of time will be spent on the beach.

No rain for a while now

The lawn and gardens are thirsty

Saturday morning home office

Working on a government funding proposal due next week. The weather is so nice that I couldn't work inside (Debra's great suggestion). Coffee is almost ready! Life is good.

Our daughter is home!!

Trista is home healthy and happy. She slept for most of the long flights but was still jet-lagged. A little story: as we left the parking lot, I made a comment of how the woman turning into our lane was going the wrong way. Trista laughed and told us that is NOTHING compared to traffic in Vietnam (See below) She really enjoyed the people and found them to be very friendly. The travel bug has hit, as she said on the ride home her next trip would be either a) Holland or b) Japan, to work and maybe go to school. This morning she added Australia as a possible destination. Who knows what the future will bring.
We have not seen photos yet as she needs to get the ones downloaded to one of her classmates laptop and then the show will begin. I can't wait.


"They certainly have destinations in mind. They'll just take ANY route to GET to those destinations. Basically, people in Vietnam have not grasped the fact that scooter does not equal person, and scooters cannot fit in the same tiny spaces that people can. But they attempt to do so anyways! And people will switch into the lane of oncoming traffic to get ahead of the person in front of them. And there's a total hierarchy in traffic in Vietnam. Semi truck/enormous bus is above small bus is above truck is above car is above scooter is above pedestrians/ants."

Trista arrives home early on Wednesday

Trista, along with a number of others in the field school has decided not to extend her trip as planned past Vietnam. She had been hoping to be able to go for a week into Thailand as opposed to the initial three weeks, but due to re-entry visa requirements, airline hassles and cost, she will be returning directly from Ho Chi Minh leaving Tuesday Jul 8 and arriving around 3 pm in Victoria on Jul 9. It is a bit disappointing for her, but as she is feeling somewhat homesick anyway, she is looking forward to seeing us and sharing her stories and pictures. We cannot wait, she has been missed!

Finishing off with a win - finally

Saturday's game v Kamloops Blaze was closer in the balance of play, but again had we finished the scoring chances created, we would have moved on. Two defensive blunders and a 3 - 1 loss.
Kamloops moved on to play in the Gold medal game (which they won). We played Nelson Selects in the 7/8 game Sunday at noon. It took until the final 20 minutes of play for Gorge to finally apply some finish. The match ended with a 4-1 win. It is a bitter pill to swallow to know that you were the strongest team at the event and end up in 7th.

No medals this year

Well, we will not be playing for medals on Sunday. Despite totally dominating the first two games in possession, corners, free kicks, shots etc, we dropped both. The game today against Kamloops Blaze will determine if we are playing for 5th or 7th. Very disappointing as we went into the tourney as the 2nd seed. In the first game, we had a minimum of 12 corners and 5 free kicks but could not finish the opportunities. Bulkley Valley had two opportunities (mistakes on our end) and scored both. We clawed one back, but could not get the tieing goal. The second game against PoCo Rage (we defeated them 3-2 in the Coastal Cup semi-final) we again created many scoring chances in the first half (playing much better than the previous day) but could not find the back of the net. They scored their first on a corner and put the second one in on a nice volley. Again, they created maybe 2 other chances all game, but came away winners 2-0.
Oh well, at least we will be on an earlier ferry back tomorrow.