What to do on the weekend?

Now with the week passing by so fast, I want to give you some inspirations on what to do on the weekend, since Vancouver has plenty of things to see!

Starting off with two super cool Internex Events, the first one will be on Saturday where we get the chance to visit Joffre Lakes for a hike. Joffre Lakes is a beautiful area with three crystal clear blue ice cold lakes that mirror the surrounding mountains. The higher you hike up, the more beautiful the lakes will get ;). The difficulty of the trail is intermediate with lots of beautiful nature around you, so it’s definitely worth the sweat! You can also cool down in one of the lakes if you dare! The round trip is about 10 km in approximately 4 hours. The trail also got an elevation gain from about 350 metres, so I think anyone can do it! Be sure not to miss this nature experience! And bring lots of water and snacks with you!

Since on Monday the national Thanksgiving Day is celebrated all over Canada, we thought about making our own little INTERNeX Thanksgiving, or Friendsgiving on Sunday. 😉 We are going to meet up at a beautiful park close to the beach in Kitsilano to celebrate together. We will provide a traditional cooked turkey and ask everyone to bring one dish to the party. You can either make something at home, or buy something from the store. This idea is called ‘potluck’ and is very popular here in Canada. That way everyone can contribute and we can all share lots of amazing dishes! On top of that we prepared some super cool games like Kubb or a trivia. PS: We can also have some drinks in the park ;). Afterwards there’s always the option to go to a pub and celebrate throughout the night (remember Monday is a holiday). Be sure not to miss this event since Thanksgiving is only once a year! We are excited to share this special Northern American holiday with many of you and are stoked about lots of good food, drinks and games in the sun.

If you are into electronic music or Techno I can recommend you going to the Blue Print 25 anniversary Festival with artists like Armin Van Buuren, Kaskade, Fisher and many more. You can get a Festival Ticket or buy a ticket for a specific show. It takes place from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th of October and will be at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE)- Forum. I bought a ticket for Fisher and I’m so hyped for the performance and the atmosphere. There are some tickets left, so be go and get one! I’m sure it’ll be great!

For those people who don’t want to have their ears blown off by the sounds of the electronic music I have another great inspiration for you. Why not visit the Van Dusen Botanical Garden in South Granville? Not only do you the chance to go out of the ever busy city centre of Vancouver, but you’ll see so many flowers, plants, trees and green areas all over the garden. It is fringed by local and exotic flora. The garden is home to more than 250000 plants representing some of the worlds most distinct growing regions. I recommend you taking a self-guided tour sheet at the entrance and make your way through the garden with the Rhododendron Walk or the Laburnum walk. Be sure to check out the Elizabethan Maze to feel completely lost. =) It is a good place to slow down your heart to tranquility and relax after a busy week.

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Whatever you are going to do in Vancouver this weekend, I hope you have a great weekend and make some everlasting experiences! I’m so excited to hear from them at next weeks Pub Night.

Stay safe and enjoy your weekend!

Cheers,

Tino =)

PuB NiGHT Review: The Bottleneck

‘How many Oscars won the film The Shape of Water?’ No clue? Neither did we. With this and more difficult questions, we had to deal yesterday night during our pub night at The Bottleneck. So today, we are a bit smarter than yesterday.

The Bottleneck is a small bar in the middle of the entertainment street Granville. It is quite hidden, so you have to watch out to find the entrance. Suddenly, the pub was quickly filled with motivated players for the ‘Get Smarty Trivia’, which is hosted every Wednesday at the Bottleneck. Even though we tried to figure out the answers in teamwork, it was really hard! Many of them were American focused, but at least we could proudly name the neighbour countries of Luxembourg. All in all, the trivia was a fun mix of film, music, history and cultural questions.

After all the questions were asked, we handed our creative answers to our neighbours and we got to know the solutions. And we won a prize! For being the second last, but a prize is a prize, so we were happy about it. Until we tried our free winner drinks … We all had never seen a drink like this before. A Canadian speciality called ‘Bloody Caesar’ includes vodka, clamato juice, Worcestershire and Tabasco. And because this combination is not weird enough, you get pickled asparagus, celery, chirozo, prawn and beet on top! We had quite a hard time to finish those drinks. Respect, Canadians!

Oh and by the way, The Shape of Water won 4 Oscars 😉

See you on Sunday for a relaxed stroll on Granville Island!

– Kerstin

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com

Pub Night Review: Blarney Stone

Team wet pigs and team so good were ready to start the Trivia. While the waitress was serving us some food and drinks, we were thinking about the answers of all the questions appearing on the screen.

After every round was a bonus question where you could win a pitcher of beer. Unfortunately, we were not smart enough to win a pitcher of beer. We got the score back at the end of the game and we were not that bad. But some other people were a little smarter than us, so no prize for us. After the Blarney Stone with went (of course) to the Metropole to sing our songs. It was not that busy this time, so we could sing many songs.

Blarney Stone is a really fun pub in the weekend if you like Irish music. Every weekend there is a live band playing and people dancing all around. During the week they have nice events organized and you can often find a organized party here as well.

It was a lot of fun playing trivia with you guys. I hope everybody is rested enough for the ice-skating tomorrow. Let’s get hurt ourselves on the ice! Or not if you are familiar with ice. However, I hope to see you at Robson tomorrow!

– Bart

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com

How was your weekend?

Weekend? What weekend? Still a little tired from all those days. I already hear some people think: What did he do? At the end of this blog post you will know exactly what was going on this weekend. So sit back and enjoy all my adventures I have been through this weekend.

It all started on Friday. At 14:50 a plane landed at the airport of Vancouver. Not just a normal plane, but a plane with 7 German students on board who are going to study here in Canada for a semester or even longer. Because they didn’t know that much about Canada yet, it was our job to welcome them and show them Vancouver. After they landed, they had to get to the immigration to get their visa. Mandy and I already went to the hostel they are going to stay, so we can already check in and welcome them when they are arriving at the hostel.

So we got the keys and waited for their arrival. So we waited and waited and waited. Because the immigration was so busy, it took 5 hours to get them their visas. After a long wait they finally arrived at the hostel. We gave them some domino’s pizza, because they were starving. When they finished their pizza, they were so tired they took their luggage and went to bed. So now it was time for us to go to the Bourbon to say goodbye to Iris. After a night dancing in the cage, it was time for us to go, because we had a long day to go on Saturday.

The alarm went off at 7 am, which means it was time to get ready for a busy day. We bought some bus tickets and drove to the hostel. We took the students to the bus and drove to the office. It was the first beautiful thing they were going to see today. At the office we prepared an orientation with a lot of facts about Canada and about the high schools here. During this orientation, they had a very Canadian breakfast from Tim Hortons, so they know how delicious Canadian food can be. After the orientation, we went to Stanley Park. We rented some bikes and did a bike ride to let them see how beautiful Stanley Park is. Of course we went to the totem poles, saw the beaches and the Lion Gate Bridge. After two hours cycling, we starting to get hungry again. We went to the Mongolian BBQ restaurant near the bike rental. What a delicious food they have there!

When we finished our bowls with meat and noodles, we went to the bus to go to Grandville Island. We did the scavenger hunt game, so they get to see the whole island in a funny way. The weather was nice, so our job was to get an ice cream and wait for them to come back. Because they did such a good job, we got really Canadian prizes for them: Maple syrup on a key cord. We went back to the beach next to the hostel. There was a volleyball net where we played a volleyball game. I don’t have to tell you how amazing my volleyball skills were. After our game we decided to have a BBQ on the beach with the master grill talent Tim. We ate out burgers and sausages during the sunset. To close the day, we had prepared a trivia game, to see if they paid attention today. After the trivia game it was time for us to say goodbye and get some sleep.

Rise and shine, it was a new day. This day we went to the hostel again to have a breakfast at the cafe next to the hostel. After the check out, we went to downtown to do the Canada fly over. It is a simulation where you sit in a chair and fly above all kinds of landscapes you can find in Canada. It was really fun to do. After our flight, we went back to the hostel and so the students could be picked up to bring them to their home stay families. So we had a little bit weekend left.

After these active days, I decided to do some more relaxing thing. So I went to the Lynn Canyon to dive of a cliff. What a beautiful place here in Vancouver! Totally worth it to go there some day. Afterwards we ate some sushi and I finally went back to the hostel. It was a busy but very fun weekend. Hope your weekend was fun as well and you can tell me all about that the next PuBNiGHT. See you there!

– Bart

Review: PuB NiGHT at Blarney Stone

Yesterday’s PuB NiGHT was at Blarney Stone. It was great to see so many people showing up for PuB NiGHT. Thank you all for joining us!

Blarney Stone is an Irish pub in Gastown. On Fridays and Saturdays there is a live music band that is playing Irish songs. As it is an Irish pub they also have a big variety of Irish whiskeys. Besides that they also have a pretty big variety of beers and ciders too.

On Wednesday the pub has Trivia night, so we also tried it out with a pretty big group. After a while we noticed that the questions were way harder than expected, so after the first round we were so happy with just the 12 points that we got. There were more and more people arriving during our trivia and it became harder to actually concentrate on the questions, so we decided to quit with trivia. After the trivia I had time to talk to everybody and catch up with all of you guys. As it was Marie’s, Merle’s and Alex’s last PuB NiGHT, we decided to go to the Met for some karaoke. Here we started off singing Dancing Queen with each other and we ended the night well with our INTERNeX song.

I hope you all had a great night, because I certainly did! See you on Saturday at the Stanley Park bike ride!

– Iris

INTERNeX International Exchange
International Village,
Suite 2077, 2079 – 88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, Canada -V6B 6N9-
Web: http://www.internexcanada.com
Email: pr@internexcanada.com