Today was the last day.

The night before Arlene's mom had given me bags of barley and brown rice because they hardly eat it. She also gave me a jar of home-made miso and some prepackaged miso, bonito flakes, and a one-dollar Canadian coin with the olympic symbol on it. I took these home with me. That morning we had food waiting for us on the kitchen table because Arlene's mom was at work, so I put some in a lunch box to eat on the Greyhound later. It was potato salad, breaded chicken, breaded pig heart pieces, and rice wrapped in seaweed with a filling that I don't know the name of.

We went to Metro Town (the mall) and played the arcade game Pop'n Music (the link isn't the same version as the one I played, ours was newer and two-person instead of one) one last time, and went to TNT which is a mostly-Chinese food store. I bought a lychee green tea drink, youkan which is a Japanese snack, and dried fish. People tend to stare at me when I go into those stores because I'm white and out of place.

Then we went to the Greyhound station to drop off my luggage. We put it in the locker but the locker was broken and all our coins got stuck, so we had to run around the building trying to find someone who would help us with it. No one who worked there had accentless English. Eventually we got a refund and managed to get it put in a different locker.

Then we took a bus to Arlene's mom's workplace. We chatted with her for a few minutes and she gave us a bag with a juice box and some Girl Guide (Girl Scout) cookies in it that a coworker had given her that morning. She took a couple photos with us and then we had to go back to the Greyhound station because I needed to leave. Arlene waited in line with me until the bus started loading.

The border went okay. Going to Canada they asked tons of questions and even made me show my school ID to prove I was a student. They also looked up Arlene's address to make sure it was real. But they didn't check any of our bags. Going to the states, they only asked two or three questions but they scanned our bags. I brought food and meat along and you're not supposed to do that but they didn't even ask me if I was bringing any (they asked the people before me but skipped me somehow) and didn't say anything after my bag went through the x-ray machine.

Today we first went to the "regular" mall, meaning the non-Asian one. We went to the post office, I sent a package and bought some postcards while Arlene sent two letters. There was nothing to do or buy in the mall and we wanted to find pig hearts so we took a bus to the Chinese marketplace to see if they had them for sale. They didn't, so we took a bus to China Town and wandered around until we saw a meat shop.

We bought two hearts for $2.20 and went home. It had been raining off and on all day, but as we were down the street from Arlene's house we heard a loud thunderclap so we hurried home. We cooked the hearts according to the directions in the previous post, it tasted like stew meat only it didn't fall apart as easily as stew meat. We put it in the fridge and we'll make something that includes it tomorrow. I think it's the type of food that needs a sauce or something else to eat it with.

Then I tried natto and rice, it didn't taste good or bad.

Arlene's mom came home and she gave me some rice and materials for miso soup so I can make them when I get back to America. She showed me how she makes miso (letting soybeans sit in a giant bucket for a while, then mixing it with already-finished miso if it's not quite done) because it's a lot cheaper than buying it in the store. She gave me a package of pre-done miso and miso she's made and she showed me how she makes the soup. She also showed me how to read the package information of how much bonito (seasoning) flakes to put in the soup and how much miso and water to put in, et cetera.

Arlene's mom explained their family religion (Buddhism) to me and explained where she works. She works in a government-funded grocery store where the food prices are really low, and the idea is that drug addicts will buy food instead of drugs with their money. There are apartments for drug addicts who are quitting around the store and there is also a nurse's office and a needle exchange somewhere nearby too so they can use clean needles instead of reusing dirty ones and passing on diseases. Arlene said she thinks one of the previous managers of the store stepped on a dirty needle and contracted some form of HIV from it.

Yesterday we tried to go to a fabric store but they were closed on Sundays, so we went back to the mall. We looked for pig hearts but they were sold out and nowhere we asked knew where we could buy them. Even one of the stores that sold chicken hearts, when we asked "do you sell any hearts?" they said they didn't.

We went to an Asian food store and bought some food we hadn't had before. One thing was Vietnamese rolls with noodles, vegetables, and shrimp with dipping sauce. Another thing was rolls made in swirls as a mix of bread and red bean paste.

We also had shaved ice. The ice was lychee flavor and the flavoring on top was taro and red bean with sticky rice balls. We went to the arcade again and then we went home.

Arlene's relatives came over and so did a friend of her mom's, and we ate a large dinner together. We ate tempura, salmon, strawberry daifuku, rice, and pickled white radish.

Today we met up with both Arlene's friend from yesterday and two more of her friends. We went to a mall and played in the arcade, I played a game where you press buttons to a musical beat a few times. We got bubble tea and I bought dried fish from a Chinese store, and we wandered around. We took "secret passageways" though various parts of the mall, which were just hallways that the staff normally use. The staff at this mall patrol while wearing roller blades. There was rumours that the mall was going to shut off the lights at eight at night because it was Earth Day, but after waiting we asked some staff members and they said they hadn't heard of such an event.

There's an Asian shopping center across the street from the more regular mall. Although both have lots of Chinese everywhere the shopping center is like you're not even in Canada anymore once you get to the marketplace that's inside. They sell a lot of food I can get in Seattle but there's some things that I either can't find at home or don't know where to find or can't get simply because going home with them would take too long and they'd spoil, like meat.

Arlene's friend from the first day had to go to a birthday party and the mall was closing, so we decided to go back home. We wanted to get pig hearts at the shopping center because I hadn't been able to try them in Iceland, they were about $2 for two, but we didn't manage to get there in time before the center closed. So we went back to Arlene's house and ate dinner which was sticky rice and pasta with shrimp and ginger in it.

I forgot to bring my camera so there's no photos for today, but tomorrow I'm going to a fabric store and I'm going to buy those pig hearts so I'll take photos then. Snorri gave me a recipe for how to cook them:

Clean the meat of fat, sinuses, veins etc.
Cut into bites (not too small).
Roll them in flour with salt and pepper mixed in. A clear plastic bag is a good option.

Brown the meat (don't burn it) on a big pan with cooking oil or margarine and olive oil.
Add water to the pan so it's just floating above the meat.
Add a bouillon cube.
Wait for the water to boil.

Lower the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes with a lid on.
Stir every few minutes and add water if you think it's needed.
Have a taste too, you add spices as suits your tastes.

The image gallery for this trip is here. I'll edit images into this post soon.

Yesterday I went to the greyhound station. The website said you had to be there an hour early to check in but I found out that if you're going to Canada you actually don't. The bus itself was pretty full and stopped in a total of five places, the last two with which we got about ten minutes for break. I think one of the stops the greyhound made was in Mount Vernon, and another was at the duty-free for Canada. But the duty-free didn't have anything good in it and the prices were just as expensive as if you bought things outside of it. The greyhound bus took about four and a half hours, apparently we finished a little late.

I met Arlene and one of her friends, and we took the Sky Train - a train that runs to different cities on tracks that are above the ground - to the town near where Arlene is, then we took a bus to her actual house. I met her mom and dad we talked and I was shown around the house. They stuffed me with food (Miso soup, tofu, ham, pineapple, and salad) and we met up with Arlene's friend from earlier to walk around outside a little bit. By then it was around eight-thirty and already dark so we couldn't do much.

We decided to stay the night at her friend's place and that's where I'm at now. We're going to leave for Arlene's house to have breakfast soon.

Bus Information, General Info

Ticket Info: (I'm taking the Greyhound from Seattle to Vancouver)

Departing SEATTLE, WA - 26 Mar 2010 at 01:35PM
Arriving in VANCOUVER, BC - 26 Mar 2010 at 05:35PM
Carrier: GLI
Schedule: 6516

Return Trip
Departing VANCOUVER, BC - 30 Mar 2010 at 02:15PM
Arriving in SEATTLE, WA - 30 Mar 2010 at 06:30PM
Carrier: GLI
Schedule: 6579

I'll be staying at Arlene's place with her family. Again, I don't know how often I'll update the blog while I'm there.

Things I noticed or liked about Iceland:

There are automatic doors everywhere! They look more like giant windows than doors, and aren't painfully obvious that they're automatic like ours are in the US. You also have to stand closer to them for them to open than ours.

The cashiers usually only said a few things. "Good day", the cost of whatever you were buying, and "Thanks". If I bought soda in a glass bottle, they asked me if I wanted it opened. If I bought postcards they asked me if I wanted stamps. It was nice, because in the US the cashiers will ask you how you are, if you found everything alright, and all sorts of random questions.

You bagged your own groceries, instead of the cashier doing it for you.

I didn't notice a single person, even wandering around the mall, that had heavy perfume. Stores didn't have heavy perfume (except once, I think) either. I didn't notice music playing in the stores, but it's possible I just forgot about it. All the packaging was a lot simpler and it was really easy to tell what you were buying, usually, even if you couldn't read the language.

The commercials on television were shorter than ours in the US, and the overall commercial breaks were fewer and shorter too. The commercials themselves were more to the point.

Sometimes there were stores that just had blank shopping bags, instead of having a brand name on them.

The tourists from the US were some of the most annoying ones. A few of them didn't know anything about Iceland, and one couple took a long time chatting with a waitress and asking her all sorts of questions, and once some took pictures of some waitresses at the café during a super busy time, things like that. Americans went everywhere without knowing how to pronounce any Icelandic at all, so if Icelanders didn't know English then they would have been completely helpless. The tourists from the other Nordic countries were generally better, in my opinion.

The food seemed healthier, even the pizza from a pizza delivery place, and french fries, and hamburgers. Some things had different flavours or were called different names - "paprika" was a common flavour for chips, and while it tasted similar to some flavour I've had before, I don't eat chips often at all so I have no idea what it was like. Upon researching it, it seems we don't sell paprika flavoured chips here.

The ice cream tasted a lot better than what we have in the US. Hot dog meat was also better than ours, and the hot dogs were a little thinner and longer than what we get. You could actually tell that it was meat instead of whatever our hot dogs are made of.

I saw a package of ham slices that had designs on the back of them. They also sold things like sheep's head, blood and liver sausage, et cetera in the regular grocery store. They had a lot of licorice or licorice-flavoured things.

If you want to buy clothes or books, going to the flea market on weekends or something like the Red Cross second-hand store is a far better way to do it.

One sign said "Take away" instead of "To go" or "Take out" when talking about drinks.

They seem to eat lamb meat as much as a lot of people eat beef in the US.

There were a lot of those things where you take a number and then the employees call out the number when it's your turn. I saw them in the bank, in the post office I believe, in a phone store I think, at a bakery...

Having coins the rough equivalent of a dollar, instead of having bills that much, was really handy. I wish we used dollar coins more in the US.

The bottoms of door frames were higher than what I'm used to, so for the first week or so I was constantly tripping over them whenever I walked in or out of a door.

All the restaurants had menus outside their door, so you could see the meals and prices before you went inside.

Even if you were standing right next to the street, it didn't smell like tons of exhaust. People didn't yell things from cars at people walking on the street. There was almost no trash laying on the ground or sides of the roads compared to here. Stores closed earlier than here in general.