Greetings from Victoria Part 2

Hi Everyone

It has been a wonderful experience to meet and stay with my relatives. My trip has been organized so that I can spend a morning or afternoon with my Aunt & Uncle, Cousins Ann, Chris and Nadine.
Yesterday I went with my Uncle to a beautiful sea side area called Sidney. It had a boat marina and a pier that we could walk down. I took lots of photos. In the afternoon I went with my cousin Chris and we went to see this special parade celebrating the province British Columbia. There were these planes called the Snow Birds doing these amazing aerobatic tricks in the sky. The planes were doing loops and cross like patterns in the sky. There were about nine planes taking part.

After this Chris took me to his place of work. Chris works for the Navy and he very kindly organized for me to go in a Navy submarine which was in dock. This was a huge priviledge and honour for me as members of the public are not allowed on the site. I had to show the security my photo ID and then it was fine. I learnt so much about life inside a submarine. It was such a confined space where you had to climb ladders at every level and they were very narrow. The sleeping head quarters were very confined and there was not much room between bunk beds and you would have to be very careful not bang your head when you got out of bed. Also there would't be enough room for tossing or turning in bed. I certainly wouldn't survive. On this submarine it held 46 people. The emergency escape exit was interesting. It was some sort of tank that they fire you out of. I tended to picture a canon ball firing out into the water. There was a very special uniform that the Navy Officers wore to do this which would provide inflattable life jackets and individual life rafts. After this we went to pick up Nadine and we went to this department called Costco which is a larger version of the Warehouse which sold everything such as diamond rings, Calvin Klein jeans and food. I bought another techology toy a 320GB external hard drive for backups on the computer. It is so small that it the size of a wallet. After this we met my cousin Ann at this Italian Pizza and Pasta Restaurant. At the restaurant the staff would sing "Happy Birthday" in opera if it was your birthday. It was quite a novelty. Well that's all of the news from me.

Take care and best wishes,

Love from,

Miss Paton