On Friday night Lou and I began our weekend together by heading into the city for some drinks with a few of our friends. We headed to The Kingston which is located close to the Vancouver Public Library and not far away from Granville Station. We had a bite to eat and plenty of drinks and it was a really good night, however after being awake since 5:30am I was done by midnight and could last no longer than 1am. I had to put an end to the partying (at least for me and Lou) and make my way home whilst I could still keep my eyes open. As soon as we got home I was then feeling wide awake, I think the cold evening air that hit me after leaving the pub made me wake me up. For the novelty I thought it would be cool to ring my parents at that time (knowing that it would be late morning in the UK) so I did but then didn't end up going to sleep until 3am!

On Saturday we had intended to go out for the day but the weather put an end to our planned outdoor activity so we decided to relax and recuperate from a busy week (but mainly the night before!). In the evening we headed out to a local shop in Burnaby to buy a new camera case for the Nikon D5000 we got a Christmas. We then just stayed in and watched a film in the evening. On Sunday we headed into Downtown Vancouver to do a bit of shopping. The city is really starting to get ready for the Olympics now and the place seems much busier than usual already. There are many advertisements on some of the large buildings which were not there a week ago, many people on the streets pushing Olympic related things and many artwork installations have suddenly appeared around the city too. 

I think the homeless people have also ramped up there numbers because there seem to be even more around the city now (there's at least one or two on every street). I got approached by 5 beggars in the space of 10 minutes whilst on my lunch break last Thursday, needless to say I didn't give them a dime. So much for the governments plan on trying to sweep them up off the streets and out of the sight of the tourists! I'm pleased about this in a way though because people will see the true poverty that exists in the Downtown area. Hopefully the government will be shamed into addressing the issue properly if the eyes of the word also notice our huge problem here - because whatever they're currently doing it's blatantly not enough. We plan on heading in to the city again this week (after work) to take some photos, we need to do it now because (apart from when I head there for work) I'm planning on avoiding the area as it will be chaos when the games begin! 

My back has been really hurting me since late last week so I've not wanted to spend too long sitting down hence the short post today. I'm not sure what has caused it but I may have done whilst playing football during the week (If I did do it then I didn't actually notice at the time). I'm starting to think I should probably register with a doctor at some point!