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Nova Scotia Bound
After an enormous breakfast (a vast improvement on a Lean Cuisine meal) courtesy of our Ukrainian B&B hosts it was time to pack up the car and take time to explore the Saint John’s River before we embarked on the second part of our journey to Halifax Nova Scotia. The view of the river was so beautiful it was almost painful to look at it, the contrast of the dazzling white of the frozen water and the vivid azure blue of an utterly cloudless sky brought tears to our eyes with its brilliance. The -6-degree temperatures crystalised everything around us giving all it touched an ethereal sparkle as though it…
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Fowl Play is Afoot
There will be an eggstraodinary amount of chicken references in this post I make no apologies for it so consider yourself warned! So, after consuming our Lean Cuisine microwave meals and before the left over Sweet & Sour sauce had a chance to congeal, we received an urgent call from our Lawyer in NZ. Our buyer was showing signs of chickening out and looked like he was contemplating flying the coop. With the settlement imminent the buyer’s lawyers had sent notification to our lawyer informing us of issues that needed ‘rectification’ before the settlement would go ahead. This was awful news and had us shaking our fists at the universe…
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Destiny Lies in New Horizons
Invigorated by our recent return from Bayfield our excitement to be heading off in an unexpected direction and exploring new horizons bubbled and fizzed away inside us. We had absolutely no idea what to expect in Nova Scotia, we were stepping away from all the ‘best laid plans’ that we had spent four years finalising, our future was uncharted, and we were eager to take the leap into the unknown. We had a day to tie up any loose ends and pack up ready for our departure, with our suitcases already packed (having never being unpacked) we cleaned and tidied the rental apartment, I mean it wasn’t messy or unclean,…
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Life Was Meant for Good Friends & Great Adventures
The day of our road trip to Bayfield came around quickly and we were excited and terrified in equal measures. The journey should take a little under seven hours give or take but with a coffee stop and multiple pee breaks (because I have the bladder capacity of a gnat) in-between and the no doubt over cautious driving the journey could be a lot longer. Road Trip Rule #1 – Never pass up an opportunity to pee! We packed a bag that morning which took all of five minutes as all we had to do was remove some of the clothes from the suitcases we had yet to unpack and…
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Open Hearts, Open Minds & Open Roads
In the couple of weeks that we had to wait before we picked up the new truck the weather changed dramatically. On our many walks we would stop and chat to the locals (did I mention how friendly Canadians are?), the topic of the weather always came up and as we were already nearing the end of March, we were curious about when spring would make an appearance. Every person we spoke to said that spring starts like someone switching on a light switch, we thought it was a joke. Surely the minus temperatures, icy winds that freeze your nasal hairs and knee-deep snow wouldn’t just disappear as quickly as…
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Persistence Pays Off
So, after the first epic fail to get our drivers licenses converted, we dusted ourselves off, girded our proverbial loins (well Martin might have girded his actual loins, it is hard to say with all the normal daily rearranging that goes on) and prepared to get back into the fray. The first thing we did was swap our Canadian SIM out of our phones and replace them with our NZ SIM, then call the New Zealand Transport Agency to make a request for the much coveted and all-important Certificate of Particulars. With our $11 fee paid, all we could do was wait for the certificate to arrive by email. Feeling…
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The Path of Least Resistance is For Amateurs
Now that the decision had been made to head off to a new province, we had a lot to do, never ones to make it easy on ourselves we had just thrown a whole bag of spanners, wrenches, and any other tool you we could get our hands on into the works. Priority number one was to open a bank account, this was always at the top of our to do list anyway I mean who does not need money right and we would need more money than our meagre pocket money for this move, so we set to work researching Canadian banks. In the end we opted to go…
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Don’t be Afraid to Take Whisks
Once we had a suitable amount of time to adjust and get over the jet lag it was time to get to business and start establishing ourselves as Canadian residents. Anyone who has immigrated will understand how much is involved and how hard it is to know where to start at times, the Canadian immigration guides are great but paper instructions are not always as easy in real life. Our goal was to identify the right area to live and then buy ‘THE’ house. Our forever home where we could run a successful business, have time to enjoy life and discover what Canada has to offer. A place to make…
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The Path to Acclimatisation
We knew that we had a lot to do once we got to Canada, I mean, we had an entire life to set up from scratch which was terrifying and electrifying now that we were finally here, but we always promised ourselves that when we arrived, we would take the first couple of weeks easy. We would use the time to relax, be tourists, soak it all in and adjust to our surroundings before throwing ourselves into the huge list of things to do when you immigrate to a new country. If you fall, I will be there. -The Floor It was an excellent job that we allowed ourselves this…
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Arriving Before You Leave
We arrived at Toronto Airport at 6am on Saturday morning, all the time zone changes were starting to cause havoc with our equilibrium and sanity by this point. Leaving NZ at 11pm on Friday the 18th of February to arrive in Vancouver at 3pm on Friday the 18th of February was trippy and screwed with our senses, we were literally time travellers! Technically we arrived in Canada before we left NZ …. Mind blown into a million pieces. To say that we were travel weary by the time we arrived would be an understatement indeed, we had been travelling physically on a plane for 19 hours by that point, add…