Working Holiday!

My working part finally has started. After a long 24 hours journey on the plane and bus, I arrived in the beautiful place called Lake Louise, it was actually the next morning that I saw the astonishing view I have outside my window, because I arrived in the middle of the night.


So now I’m living at the lodge where I work on the boarder between Alberta and British Columbia, in the middle of the Rockie Mountains, 15 minutes away from the town Lake Louise. It’s a bit more isolated then I first expected, but at least I don’t have to pay much for my accommodation. It’s a really expensive area and if you just want to travel around here you need to win the lotto. A night in the hostel is already 40 dollars and I checked for the prices in the winter, to ski for one day it’s about 70 dollars, so without friends or a job it’s not payable for a poor Belgium girl :-)
I haven’t seen much from the area yet, I started working the first day I arrived until this Thursday, 9 to 5.30pm shifts in team housekeeping. Our team actually consists out of 2 people, an Australian girl and me, woehoe. Two people for the whole hotel, which has about 30 rooms, is not really enough. It’s pretty exhausting and after one week I’m already an expert in making up beds and cleaning up bathrooms. I haven’t cleaned this much in my own place and I probably never will either, definitely after this work.
It’s nice though it keeps me busy and in the evenings we just hang around, playing silly games, watch television or if we’re allowed to go out (that means if someone wants to drive us to the town) everybody goes crazy. Most of the crew is from Australia or New Zealand, some Canadians and then there’s me, but everybody’s really nice and we’re having fun.
The managers are really doing their best to keep us happy, because apparently a lot of people left before I came here, which is also a bit understandable. The pay is lousy, without a car you’re stuck, we go for groceries once a week (which is still expensive if I compare to the east coast of Canada), no high speed internet connection, just dial up over the phone line which is really slow and only can be used after 11pm, no sell phone connection (or a small signal just enough to send a message), … but I’m not complaining, at least not anymore. The pay is everywhere the same, you don’t have to come here to earn a lot of money, we’re lucky with the accommodation prices and our team is great. On my days off I will cruise around a bit and hope to see more of the Canadian Rockies and it’s wildlife. Up till now I’ve seen a black bear walking aside the road and heaps of ground squirrels just outside my door (with small babies, cute but noisy, they squeak whole day long). When you go out for a hike, you’ve to take bear spray with you and you’re actually not allowed to walk alone. Black bears didn’t scare me that much but grizzly’s do.
Anyway tomorrow I'll have my first day off and up for a hike in the mountains, I'll try to keep this updated but pictures have to wait till I get to a high speed internet location because here it takes hours.