O Canada!

Well, I have been very busy NOT blogging, as you can see. We've now been here for 2.5 weeks, and since the mountains of comments after recent blog entries seem to imply that countless readers are eagerly awaiting the latest update, I won't leave you in suspense any longer. :)

We arrived in Canada on Monday 5th January, having travelled up by train from Seattle. Vancouver had seen a great deal of snow just before this - more than they've had at any one time in the last 40 years, apparently - so for our first week or so here, it was very very white!

Anyway, I'll group our updates into the following categories, so you can skip straight to the interesting ones if you like: Living Arrangements, Job Hunting, Dramas and Socialising...

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS:

For the first 6 nights, we stayed in the guest room in our friend Myla's house. (Ben had hung out with Myla when he lived in Vancouver for a few months in 2003.) After a week, we moved downstairs into her basement suite, which we'll be renting from her while we are here. It's a very nice little spot, and I hope to be able to give you a "tour" of it in an upcoming blog entry! Although it is in a basement, the top metre or so is above ground so we do have high windows and a respectable amount of natural light.


Our new home is in the city of Burnaby, which is east of Vancouver, but it really all merges into one huge city. We are on the south west side of Burnaby, less than a block from the edge of Vancouver, and only about 10kms from downtown Vancouver. Burnaby has a population of 216000, Vancouver has 612000, and both of them are included in the 2.25 million population of Greater Vancouver.

Our flat is fully self contained, and already had a fridge, washing machine and dryer, but was otherwise unfurnished. So, after using an air mattress as a bed, table, couch and desk for the first week, our Aussie money transfer came through and we set about getting some real furniture.

There's a great website over here called craigslist, through which we acquired all of our secondhand furniture either cheap or free. We are also using the same site in our ongoing job- and car-hunting. A week ago, we hired a 10 foot U-Haul truck for 24 hours, and went around the city collecting a queen mattress and boxspring, a dining table with 6 chairs, a desk, and a matching set of a 3-seater couch, 2-seater couch, and rocking chair (totally free and very 70s!). We also acquired a tan 3-seater couch and a maroon armchair from Myla. Luckily our loungeroom is quite long, as if you do the calculations, that's 16 seats...

We are also still in the process of gradually collecting the variety of other things that are needed when you start from scratch... everything from crockery and cutlery to bakeware and electrical appliances, and of course groceries! We have no car yet, so have been getting our weights training in by carrying it all home on the bus. :)

In a final living arrangments update, who should be living upstairs but Lisa B, as seen in our New York blog entries!! She'll be boarding with Myla until she continues her travels in March. So Myla's house is now overrun by Aussies and she saw her household increase fourfold in just over a week!

JOB HUNTING:

No news on this front yet, and not for want of trying. We've both been applying for plenty of jobs online, I signed up with two admin temping agencies, and Ben put his resume in at a few shops with "now hiring" signs at the local mall. We also have a couple of other leads due to kind friends being willing to talk to people they know. Ben has had interviews at two shops this week, and I've been put forward for a couple of jobs by one agency, so time will tell. It's not the best time to be looking for work here, but there are still jobs around so we are keeping our fingers crossed!

DRAMAS:

Three significant ones so far - The Great Wait, The Great Scare, and The Great Flood - and here they are:

1) "The Great Wait" - this is a very long story (1.5 weeks long to be precise), so I will try to keep it as brief as possible...

As we arrived by train, we went through Customs at the Vancouver Train Station rather than at the border. It seems they are not frequently called upon to issue work permits at the train station to Australians presenting a "letter of introduction" (a document stating that our working holiday application was approved and that we were to be given a work permit upon entering Canada). Instead of the usual computer-printed work permits, we were given handwritten A4 carbon copy work permits...

After travelling to Services Canada by skytrain (with all of our luggage in tow), we discovered that there were separate errors on both of our work permits, and as a result Services Canada was unable to issue us with social insurance numbers, which are needed to work here. On Ben's work permit, the handwritten expiry date didn't match the date in the computer. On mine, the document number didn't exist at all! We would need to go to the Citizenship and Immigration office downtown the following day, and get correct permits printed out.

The next day, Citizenship and Immigration told us that we would need to fill out applications for replacement paperwork, including photocopies of our passports, incorrect work permits, and entry stamps, and that this would take "2 weeks or less" to process. We submitted our applications the same day, but then settled in for a long wait, unable to jobhunt as we had planned to do straight away.

A week and a half later, we dropped in to find out how our applications were going, and after lots of phone calls the desk clerk said that our applications were next in the pile so if we would come back in half an hour, they would be ready! So we did, and they were, and we went and got our social insurance numbers that same day. Finally, we were at the stage we would have been at 11 days earlier, had we only arrived by plane...

2) "The Great Scare" - a comparatively brief but alarming drama...

A few days after organising the transfer of our Australian savings to our new Canadian bank account, wondering why the money had not yet arrived, we discovered that the account number given to our foreign exchange company was incorrect by one digit...

Yes, imagine our alarm at the prospect of a random Canadian at that very moment spending their unexpected and extremely generous anonymous gift...

Thankfully, after a couple of phone calls to the bank to correct the details, the reassurance that transfers take 5-7 days and thus wouldn't have arrived yet, and a few more days of waiting, the money arrived safely and we could then set about furnishing our new home, paying rent, and looking for a car. Phew!!

3) "The Great Flood" - subtitled "How To Impress Your New Landlord" - oh dear...

On our very first night in our new flat, the Sunday before last, we were happily sitting in our furnitureless loungeroom, washing churning away at the other end of the house, enjoying the peace and tranquility of having our own place for the first time in 6 months. This peace and tranquility was abruptly shattered when Ben walked out and discovered that the Great Flood of 2009 was underway in our flat.

For some inexplicable reason, despite having already done one successful load, our washing machine was spewing copious amount of water on the floor. It had already spread a few metres out from the machine in all possible directions, around the corner into our bedroom, halfway to the far wall, and even into our closet. I feel that this is an appropriate moment to mention that both rooms are carpeted...

The carpet squelched under our feet and there were puddles on the floor. The water was lapping at the foot of our air mattress with its brand new, as-yet-unslept-in bedding. My suitcase was on soggy carpet. You get the picture! We stopped the flood, but the only two towels we own were in the current load of washing. There was no other option but to go upstairs and wake up Myla. :S And THIS is the appropriate moment to mention that it was just after midnight (hey, we're unemployed!)...

Myla brought down lots of towels and also spent quite a while mopping out her own flooded laundry, the only part of her living quarters on the basement level.

So that's how it eventuated that on our first night in our new flat, the three of us spent an hour and a quarter stomping up and down on wet towels in our pyjamas, after midnight, wringing dirty water into the bathtub over and over and over. A real landlord-tenant bonding experience!!

The next day, Myla brought down a wet-dry vacuum cleaner, a dehumidifier, and three fans belonging to her parents. Ben extracted lots more water with the vac that day, and we kept the dehumidifier and fans on for an entire week, while we slept in the loungeroom. The carpet and underlay are now completely dry and look as if nothing ever happened.

And that was The Great Flood!



SOCIALISING:

I've just realised how long this blog entry is, and without many photos due to my camera's recent malfunctioning (Ben got me a new one today!) there are probably only two people committed enough to still be reading by now (hi Mum and Dad!). So I'll make this a very brief summary...

On our first Saturday here, we went to a musical parody called "The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!", which was very funny and strange. We went with Susie, Lisa, Shonna (one of Susie's two housemates), and Angharad...

On our first Sunday here, we had lunch at Ethopian restaurant (you eat with your hands, scooping up food from a communal plate using spongey pancakey-type things), with Myla, Andrew F, and Tyson and Nicole...

We went out for coffee with a bunch of young folk after the gospel meeting one night...

We went to an "Indian party" hosted by Darwin L, David and Ted, which was great! They cooked up heaps of awesome Indian food and there were probably about 30 people there - crowded but heaps of fun!

We ate muffins and drank tea at Kelly and Janae's place, with Myla, Lisa, and Andrew F, after the gospel meeting last Sunday...

And we had Lisa down for a Sunday lunch, and the local sister workers (Lanna and Sandra) over for dinner two nights ago.

Hopefully I'll quickly get into the habit of taking photos again (it's actually been a nice break) so that future blog entries will be more interesting for you! :)

Anyway, that's what we've been up to! Please keep in touch; we'd love to hear from you! Goodnight!