Penticton, BC has been unusually cold, it was -18 when we arrived, but is now up to a more reasonable -5 during the day. Super light fluffy snow has fallen pretty constantly for the last two days, if you look carefully you can actually see those perfect little hexagonal crystal shapes, piling up on the car windows. No doubt there will be another team driveway clearing exercise this morning. Which may even be followed by a bit of a stroll down to the lake front which must only be a km away.

Our days here have been pretty relaxed, its a day of cooking meals, reading, cable TV, and expeditions to keep the over-sized stove from emptying the over-sized fridge of over-sized food. I think the only thing that is the same size over here is the beer, you can get double decker 24 packs of eggs, 1.5l bottles of (what appears to be) decent wine, and 1 litre tubs of whipped cream. It may all stem from the size of the oven you need to cook a turkey twice a year. A 'normal' sized fridge might look strange sitting next to it.

Getting here was probably just as you'd expect. The 13 hour flight to Vancouver was gruelling, followed by the longest immigration queue you'd ever seen. It actually bought out a hint of sympathy in me for the parentals having to hold their kids while shuffling slowly forward for an hour. Trying to transfer to our internal flight also proved challenging as problems with the electronic ticketing system meant it took half an hour for the (polite and friendly) transfer lady to generate us a boarding pass to Kelowna. But this time we managed to avoid the snow storms on our way in and arrived at Kelowna airport at dusk with family waiting for us. Unfortunately Jacquie's bag didn't quite make the plane, but the (polite and friendly) lost baggage lady assured us it was reasonably normal in winter, and proved it by pointing out the 20 or so bags awaiting distribution to people who arrived yesterday. And far from the stories of woe I have heard from other airlines, a semi-scruffy (but polite and friendly) young man drove an hour through the snow to deliver Jacquie's ancient red backpack to its enthusiastic recipient. I do hope he wears a santa suit next week.

My Dad's new house is a 3 bedroom job in a 'senior's estate' (freehold homes off a right of way with a covenant limiting the minimum age of the occupiers) a short walk from one of the two lakes Penticton is nestled between. It's more than big enough for Pa, my step-mom and their enormous ginger tom 'Lion', but we're going to be stretched to the limit as one sister preceded us here, and two brothers plus a girlfriend are due in over the next couple of days. Its pretty sweet to be the longest travelling guests and score the second bedroom.

I find coming to a country like Canada can be more disorienting than more exotic destinations. Everything is sort of the same here but here when you see an over sized 4 by 4 cruising through the snow, it just looks appropriately safe. When we were out with the snow falling yesterday I swear only 20% of the vehicles on the road were car shaped, and you felt a little sorry for them. We visited a mall yesterday (had a Flight Centre, Body Shop, and a Michael Hill) it was much of a muchness except that every department store in Canada (and there are a lot) seemed to start off as something really specialized. London Drugs and the Bay (which started as The Hudson's Bay Company controlling the North American fur trade) seem to be pretty standard Warehouse analogues, while you can go to Canadian Tire for anything you might find at Mitre 10, Repco or indeed Beaurepaires back in NZ. And the one thing so far that does set off my obsessive compulsive annoy-o-meter is that they still have all those silly little coins here, but rather than ignore them, they force them on everyone by adding exactly 17.4% tax to the sticker price of every item.

Last time I was here I'm not sure I saw a single wild animal, but so far I have seen ducks, and swans both swimming in water that is valiantly trying to stay unfrozen, some quail running in the snow, and a small herd of California big horn sheep. I don't know if I'll luck out and see a wild moose or even a deer but here's hoping.