Saturday, September 30, 2006

day 2




we had a hearty breakfast at whitespot. breakfast was absolutely wonderful - scrambled eggs, melted cheddar, bacon, omelette, jalepeno, hashbrown etc - all in very large servings - and to top it off with a wonderful cup of coffee. the response was what a good start to the day!

joseph's friend very kindly invited us over to her church. one thing that struck me about the church was that it provides alot alot alot support to the university students there. for example, there's free breakfast on weds, free lunch on sats and free dinner on tues for uni students every week! the turn out is usu quite good too - up to 400+ in attendance once! there's also an incredible lot of activities and support programs for the students as well. this is really good as students (especially those from overseas) can get very lonely sometimes..

it's really amazing how God provides:) we met herb, this really kind church elder. he lived in singapore for about 8.5 years (a very long time ago) before moving back to victoria. so we had alot in common to talk about:) haha. but whatever herb could remember about singapore, do seem pretty ancient to all of us. heh. but he was really friendly and made us feel very welcome:) we had a nice bbq lunch in church - the usual burgers+soda+icecream:) after lunch, herb went the extra mile for us by offering to drive us around the compound of university of victoria. he also brought us to mount tolmie - where one can enjoy the bird's eye view of the whole of victoria and parts of the US as well..

notice that the buildings in victoria are all low-rise - that's the luxury when you have so much land! but herb told us that the property prices in victoria are escalating coz of the influx of rich americans who are willing to pay more for the property here. a hint that the trend (of having low-rise buildings) maybe reversed in the near future - can be seen from that (literally) outstanding building on the far left - it's one of the newer residential buildings in victoria! oh that's mount olympia in washington in the background btw - vancouver island is just a strait away from the US!

there's washington's mount st helen on the background!

herb kindly drove us to our next destination! thank God for his help - otherwise we probably would not have the time to cover this attraction! next stop- the craigdarroch castle. it was such an awe-inspiring sight!

the builder/owner of this castle - Robert Dunsmir, a very very very rich businessman

what luxuriously furnishings - victorian-styled!!

this is what i call living in opulent comfort. wow what pretty rooms! heh.