Hello from Vancouver!

Picture of Vancouver landscape with water in the forefront with dragon boats and mountains and buildings in the background
Annual Dragonboat festival 2024 in Vancouver (taken by False Creek)

Hello! I haven't posted in a long time. Blogging dropped down my priorities as I attended to other things in life, as things do. I'm excited to get blogging again as I've recently moved to Vancouver for a year-long sabbatical and I'm keen to reflect on my experience here.

Rather than recount my first 2 months here, I'll give myself a less daunting task and share some things over the next few days that have been on my mind lately to help settle into a rhythm of writing again.

First up: Crows

There are crows everywhere and I find this rather lovely. Crows were common in my Iranian childhood stories (I remember being told how much they like eating soap!) and they are also central to many Indigenous cultures and identities over here. From what I've read, local indigenous knowledge views them as 'tricksters' here - not in a malicious way but cunning, central figure in morality tales that is to be respected. They are mesmerising to watch as they are very clever and display interesting behaviours from time to time.

My 2 favourite things about crows in Vancouver so far:

  • They all seem to travel East around sunset (this is common Vancouverite knowledge). The common joke here is that none of them can afford to live in central Vancouver to which I've often protested "I want to know the real reason!"
  • They like to pluck off mussels and clams from the rocky shorelines and then fly to gain altitude before dropping them on hard concrete to split them so they can eat their flesh. They are careful in how they do it so there isn't really a risk of mussels raining on you but you will know there is a crow nearby when you hear that familiar 'click' of the dropping shells on your run.

That's all for now! Catch you tomorrow!