Upon arriving in South Vancouver, British Columbia, I was elated and thrilled to have had a lovely drive singing and praying my way up Interstate 5. Like my Dad, I love a little "white line therapy"-- hitting the open road in pursuit of open ended adventure, Come to think of it, my mom enjoys a tour down the road, too. Hitting the road with a destination in mind but adventure unknown runs in our North American influenced blood.
A short two and a half hour drive north from Seattle, I cruised into border customs. I answered all the officer's questions, and proceeded the short 15 minute drive to the Vancouver Home Hostel where I would be staying.
That's when things would get a little...interesting... before they got good. That's when poverty mindset and bias---my own--- would come into play.
Upon arriving at the hostel, the location which Google maps directed me to looked exactly like the venue that had been advertised online, but the address was a little off. Instead of 1661, the address read 7881. Humph, I thought, and pulled another loop around the block. Minutes later, I found my way back to the address and decided to chance it. Tentatively, I strode up the flight of steps toward the front door of the hostel.
As I stepped into the foyer, I was taken aback by several mattresses which were perched next to the stairwell, The space didn't look particularly clean or kept. The first thought which shot through my mind was "bed bugs." You can tell where my trauma lay.
"Um, hi. I'm Heather and I'm checking into my Air BNB," I said to the friendly, 20 something girl before me. Two older women were just behind her, rushing down the stairs.
"Yeah, sure, um, which room are you in?"
I looked down at my phone, adjusting the heavy tote and purse but not sure I wanted to put them down. "I didn't know there was more than one room. Let me pull it up on my phone."
Anyone who knows me knows that "just pulling it up" in a situation where there is potential to be bed bugs and I am repeatedly asked (in either Mandarin or Cantonese) which room I am in, and the internet is not working, is not an easy situation in which my limited tech-savvy shines its brightest.
There was some struggling to connect to the wifi, and of course the internet connection was unbearably slow as I balanced the bags and tried to negotiate whether or not I was in the right place,
A door stood open to my right. I recalled that the email I had received had said that my bedroom was the first room off the ground floor, to the right.
I relayed as much to the twenty something and she said, "Oh, okay, Give them about ten minutes and they'll get the room cleaned up for you. And he must not have included in the instructions that the entrance is around the back. Ill show you," she added.
Oo-kay. If checkout was at 11 am and check in was at 3 pm, as the instructions on the Air BNB had indicated, then why wasn't the room cleaned? Why hadn't the person who emailed me the check-in instructions indicated that I would need to enter and leave the premises around the back? Why were the ladies talking so very animatedly, in Mandarin or Cantonese?
Following the girl around to the back entrance of the building, my own biases, traumas and past racial experiences came up. What was going on with this place? Did they have bed bugs? Why wasn't the room ready? If they did this all the time, why were they talking so animatedly to one another upon my arrival? Was this racism, leading me around the back? How much of this was my own preconceived notions, my own bias?
Having been informed of where was permissible to enter (around the back), I strode back to my car to gather the rest of my luggage. I have no where else to go, so I guess I am staying, I thought.
Though the check in was tricky, it would get weirder before it got better. The room was ready in ten minutes, but the key to the room had apparently gone missing with the previous tenant. So although I was able to move things in, I was not able to lock the room which would contain my laptop, passport, and personal belongings. This would have been fine had it been a private residence, but I soon came to find out that while the second floor was a family home, the first, basement, and back house were rented out as a hostel.
Thus, the first 24 hours, there was some serious settling in to be done. As I reached for the blinds to bay window off of my rented room, the shades came crashing down. We set up a time to have the handy man fix them, and not an hour after he had, they had crashed down again. A second handyman had to be called, I had taken to bringing my laptop with me because the handyman secured to change the locks on the doors wouldn't be able to come until a day and a half into my trip. The dishes in the shared kitchen were piled up in the sink. Were these people oblivious? Who rents out a room with no functioning lock or blinds? What adult refuses to do their dishes?
Where the breaking point came was when I saw the lock and key waiting on the windowsill outside of my door and decided to change it myself. It took some work with a screwdriver, but very soon, I had installed the lock and key on my own door. As the handyman and the landlord arrived, I was able to show them, with a smile, "See? I fixed it." That is where the ice began to melt. The landlord was not racist. She was not trying to get over on me. As soon as she saw me being resourceful, we began friends. Despite our cultural (language and ethnic) boundaries, we began to be able to work together.
I did the few smelly dishes in the sink of the shared kitchen (left behind by previous residents, likely the ones who had stolen the key to my room). The next day, the landlord came and brought paper towels, offered to me with a smile. We had found common ground.
Yes, it was a rough start, but in the five days I have been here, I have enjoyed every moment I've spent in this space. The room I'm renting is large and spacious, modernly decorated and well lit by a large bay window. The desk I'm writing at now is sufficient. The private bathroom is clean. I duck out for adventures during the day, and come home to a place that feels safe and homey with the thrill of knowing that there is a European family backpacking through and a Czech girl here on a visa and a musician touting his guitar and a young Korean couple sharing the rooms throughout this house.
On this vacation from the United States, I feel grateful that there are Canadians with big enough mindsets that they are willing to open their homes (and yes, their pocketbooks) to the starving artists, the traveling tourists, and the Master's alums in need of refreshment, in every nationality and ethnic origin that they come. I feel grateful for free parking and easy proximity to the city and shared smiles across differing experiences.
I feel grateful that I can look at my own bias, and see that the bed bug trauma is not theirs, its mine; that our misunderstandings were in fact, not racial, but resource-based; and that doing a few dishes and woman-handling a screw driver can go a long way. If we all just adjust our expectations, and reach a hand out to one another, we will be amazed how far we can go. The first lesson this American has learned from Canadians thus far.