Vancouver Day Two!

The Telus World of Science!!

This place was like candy for me. I am such a junky and a nerd. :) It was amazing. There are exhibits all over. There are signs by each exhibit that tell you what to do, but then it is up to you to figure out what it does and how or why it does what it does. I could have spent a few days in there. On the first floor had tables that were full of different puzzles to sit down and do. It took so much time to do just 3 that I figured that if I did the puzzles then i wouldn't be able to see the rest of the place and I really, really wanted to.

The first thing we did though, for a half an hour was look at Optical Illusions. We had so much fun just trying to figure out why our eyes were seeing things the way they were. For example in the picture to the right, squares A and B are the same shade! We didn't believe it at first, but then Jerrod covered up the squares surrounding B and sure enough, the squares are the same shade. There was an illusion of Einstein that when you looked at it you couldn't tell if it was a depression in the wall or if it was poking out. Then if you moved his head turned to follow you! It was way creepy.





In this illusion to the left, the picture looks like a spiral, but if you look closely it isn't a spiral at all, but a bunch of circles nested inside each other!



Another fun illusion was of a wheel that spun on the wall. You looked at it for twenty seconds. It was a spirally kind, but the spiral changed directions a few times as it swirled toward the center. Anyways, after you look at it after twenty seconds you look away at the back of your hand or at someones face and your eyes perceive that the skin on your had is bulging in some parts and sucking back in others. Jerrod compared it to the effects of the fruit the guys ate in the movie The Rundown. It was hilarious to see everyone's reaction.



In the illusion to the right, the rings around the center looks like squares with rounded corners, but if you look closely and trace one with a finger, you will find that it is actually a circle! Crazy huh?!


After going through some of the optical illusions, we went and saw the omnimax movie that was showing:
It was all about how the body handles
risk and followed base jumpers and skydivers around. It was fun to see on the humongous screen. It was dome shape and the movie was projected on it and it literally surrounded you. It could make you dizzy if you weren't careful! It was thrilling to just see people jumping out of airplanes and off of cliffs and then see it from their point of view. I have decided that I need to figure out something that will give me an adrenaline rush so that I can have the blissful peace after it. :) That sounded wonderful to me. :)

After the movie we played around with the different activities. Joie and Brit had a blast on the shadow wall! Unfortunately hardly any of the pictures worked out, this was the only one. Anyway, how this works is you go and make a pose in front of the screen. There is a bright, flash of light and then you walk away from the screen and see your shadow produced on the screen! They had so much fun. I swore a giggle fest erupted in that room. ;) I am just glad other people enjoyed Science World as much as I did. It also felt good to let my inner child out and just let it run. :)

Science World in located in downtown Vancouver. This was the first I was able to see it during the day. It is amazing to see all the houses up on the hillsides. The hills are steep and instead of digging out some earth for a better foundation, these guys just use the earth around them and place beams under the house to make it even. I hope an earthquake never hits the Vancouver area because a TON of houses will be destroyed. As we were headed back to the house, we saw this view. I snapped the picture for: a- a reminder, and b- because I swear that the houses spell something. The neighborhoods are cut out of the trees so straight that it looks like there could be some letters. Lol. I think I spent too much time using my brain. Now it is trying to make something from scenarios that are absolutely just that way, not done for a reason for a trick or whatever. I think that would have been cool, but whatever.


While trying to find our way back to the house we drove by this restaurant Dae-Ji. It is a Korean resaurant that specializes in pork. In fact, "dae ji" means pork, I am told. I didn't care much about what I have written. Lol. I had Joie snap the pic because of the cute little pig. He is so cute and it reminded me of Aunt Cheryl, the pig-o-maniac, well the collector of pigs anyway. Lol.


When we got home, I snapped this pic. It is the view from the road before you decend down the mountain twenty feet to get into the house. Lol. It looked gorgeous, especially since it rained most of last night and this morning. It stoped while we were in Science World and ended up being a beautiful rest of the day. I wished that Jordan and Jon would have come with us. It would have been a wonderful opportunity to go and bike the seawall in Stanely Park. I just hope we get the chance to do that. I would love to get out and see the lighthouses, the beach, the ocean waves crashing on the beach. With weather the way it has been, which is mostly rainy, I'm praying that we will get another bright, sunny day.

This is the view off the balcony of the house. It was gorgeous tonight. All week we have had gray clouds at sunset and it was nice to see an actual sunset. Not the prettiest I have seen, but I love the picture. I love the ocean and hope that I have a chance to get in it a little.

When we got home, we fixed dinner and then played games. I had to stay busy today because cancer thoughts followed closely behind me. If I ever left my brain on idle, to soak in the sun's rays through a window for example, it was a spiralling downward hole which is hard to get out of. It is just hard sometimes to forget the reason for this trip. It is a family vacation. We are to spend time as a family, strengthening bonds, and making memories so that when the worst comes people can have something happy to remember. After a few people didn't go with us today, I have been nervous about the rest of the schedule. There are going to be even more things people won't think they are interested in and therefore skip to save money. It makes me sad the some people priorities are not how they should be. I just have to remember that it was their choice not to come and their choice had nothing to do with me. I need to let it go and not blame myself for their actions. Stop telling myself thing like, "If I had planned better things they would have come" or "if I had taken the time to tell them more about it they would have come," and not be bummed or sad about upcoming adventures. I used to be really excited to go to Victoria, which is what we are doing tomorrow, but now I don't even know why we came to Vancouver. People just wanna stay home and watch tv or play games anyway. We could have just had a pow wow in Huricane. It would have been much cheaper, I wouldn't have like it as much, but everyone else would have.

It is no fun when you have planned all these activities that you think people will really enjoy and that you are totally excited about and then with people's actions and comments all of that excitement is squashed, deflated and nervousness, frustration, and sadness all comes crashing down, which all of the frustration and sadness have spontaneously surfaced with no spawning thought from me lately. They are right under the surface of the umbrella which is over all of the feelings, thoughts, and sorrow that I have been trying to suppress for so long. I can't suppress things for very long anymore, I don't have the energy or whatever to keep that up for very much longer. Pretty soon I am going to crash. Just cry hard for no other reason than I cannot handle it that day and let it all out so that hopefully I will be able to shove it all back under that umbrella or attach it to an anchor and throw it overboard and pray someone hastn't attached a bouy. :(

Anyway, I am on vacation. I DO NOT need this right now. A vacation implies that you are going away, leaving problems behind, taking a respit. Not so in my case, but I am going to try my hardest to make it that way.