Ups it’s already 7 days 2010 and here I am writing about it. But better too late than never! 2009 was an amazing year. Well that’s not strange after a trip of 10 months. But let’s not talk about that, let’s talk about my last month of 2009. I spend most of the time in San Francisco - a wonderful and beautiful city I felt in love with.

I met wonderful people here, I did all the touristic attractions, did great hikes around the city and I had lots of tea in lots of cafés.

So on this point I want to say a big thank you to Veronica - who hosted me several nights at her place in San Mateo and took me to some incredible hikes in the area - to Eileen - a friend of Veronica who took me to Bodoga Bay - and an even bigger thank you to Jigna - who hosted me the most part of the month. I was her guest and therefore she took me to some dinner parties with her friends, an big gala of her work in the City Hall, we did some hikes, we drove to viewpoints in the city, and we went dancing at some nightclubs. I can’t express how much I appreciate all the hospitality you guys gave me! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

But after a month it was time to move on because I had Christmas plans! Kelsey from Canada invited me over to spend Christmas with her and her family in Edmonton. So on the 20th of December I took a flight from San Francisco - via Las Vegas - to Edmonton. Those were two short flights with a long break in Las Vegas. And I almost missed my first flight!

Jigna brought me to the airport where I started my ’self check in’. But somehow my passport wouldn’t scan so I had to join the long waiting line for the manual check in. It took me about 1,5 hours before I was able to check - and at this point I was 25 minutes away from take off and I still had to pass the security check point where about 200 people were lined up. But after I explained that time was running out the guy from the desk walked me to the security check point all the way to the front. The whole security stuff took about 10 minutes and by the time I arrived at the gate I was the last one entering the plane.

It took an hour to get to Las Vegas where I had to wait 5 hours for the next 3 hour flight to Edmonton. The last flight with Air Canada was empty and to my surprise everyone had their own little screen providing movies, music and games. AWESOME!

I landed in Edmonton at 2 AM and after some strange immigration questions - “how much money do you have?”, “how much money do you have at your bank?”, “who do you know here in Canada?” - I passed the customs and outside in the waiting lobby David and Kelsey where already waiting for me! Finally I met my two friends from South America again.

I unpacked my new winter jacked because outside the temperature was -20 C! Yes I reached another highlight on time trip. Temperatures far below zero at a normal altitude. The last time I felt -20 was on the top of Huayna Potosi in Bolivia at 6088 meters above sea level.

We loaded the bags into Kelsey’s car and she drove us to her nice apartment in the center of Edmonton. We opened some bottles of local beer and chatted about what we have been up to the last months and what the plans were for the upcoming days. It was nice seeing them and again and be able to talk to them after such a long time.

The next morning none of us woke up early. Around noon all of us got up, took a shower and had some breakfast. Outside it was cold but sunny, so we went for our first true Canadian experience: tobogganing. We went down the hill so fast and trying to avoid other small children - man it was a blast!

Christmas!

Since I am thousands of miles away from home, I was invited by Kelsey’s parents Linda and Larry to spend the Christmas days with them and their whole family. Kelsey and her family had some great things planned for us and took us everywhere. Linda, Kelsey’s mom, made an incredible breakfast every morning, a wonderful dinner in the evenings, we went to the cinema to see Avatar in 3D, we went bowling with the hole family, we went again tobogganing, we drank a lot of beers and we played a game called ‘Things‘.

I also joined the family for church! Yes never thought that I would end up in a Canadian church for Christmas. But since this is what they do, I just wanted to join them. After we came home and had your Christmas dinner, we all gathered around in the living room and picked one by one a present from Santa from under the Christmas tree. And to my surprise, Santa knew that I was at Kelsey’s parents place with Christmas, because he (or she) left something for me. THANKS SANTA(S)!

Coming up: Skiing in the Rocky Mountains (Jasper)