Settling in....

(Lisa's post....while Chris is interviewing at the employment agency!)

Oh dear.  Last published post was on 8 October....

Bye bye volcanoes

Oooh...nearly asked if we could get off here!

Florida = one big swamp

We arrived in Canada on 24 October.  Dad picked us up at the airport at midnight - easy to spot as always, with his cowboy hat! - and took us on a late-night drive through some of the neighbourhoods between there and home.  We squeezed in a stop at Tim Hortons (of course) at about 2:30am - quite amazing how many people were there at that hour!





Since then we've been settling into Uxbridge...well, at least as settled as we can get while wedged into Mom & Dad's spare room!  We've attended a host of local events including a pie auction (bought 3 pies hee hee); a winter coat sale (two coats apiece, plus hats & scarves & gloves - total spend $20, perfect for unemployed ex-backpackers!); and a Remembrance Day dinner (beef, argh, but otherwise delicious).  We've also been doing lots of paperwork which actually seems to be more straightforward for Chris than it is for me.  Canadian friends & followers, did you know that our SIN numbers become "dormant" if unused for more than 5 years?  And that you must present your original birth certificate in order to re-activate the darned thing?  Whereas Chris just had to show his passport and immigration documents, and he was issued with a new SIN that he could use immediately.  We sure feel sorry for anyone without a car though, because we had to go to several different towns to get everything sorted.

We've also had some fairly amusing issues with Mom & Dad's address, which is a post office box.  Many government departments won't accept this as our address, so we've "invented" an address which is a hybrid of the street address with the post office postal code.  This will probably result in some kind of mail limbo for all our most important paperwork.  It also prevented us from getting a great deal on a mobile (cell) phone because the address check failed in their system (who knows what it was checking the address against...no combination of our street & P.O. box addresses would work!).  However, we did manage to get a phone directly from Virgin by paying a $100 security deposit, which will be refunded if we manage to resist doing a runner over the next 6 months.

It took us a long time to decide what phone company to use because cell phone costs are really different here.  Unlike the UK, there are no special "mobile" phone numbers; instead, you get a number which corresponds to your local area, and call charges are based on whether the caller is local or long distance when they call you.  So if you take your Toronto phone to Ottawa, and your friend calls you from Toronto, they pay long distance charges without even realising it.  Also, BOTH parties pay for the call (or the minutes are deducted from your account, if you still have some available for that month).  At least, we think that's how it works....nice, eh?  Voicemail is almost always an add-on "extra", as are sending & receiving text messages.  In the end we went with Virgin because they only charge $5 for voicemail (with a limit of 10 messages argh), have free unlimited (international!) texts in the $25 contract, and don't have any long distance charges within Canada.

Bank accounts are similarly bizarre, with monthly fees as well as "per transaction" fees.  We were thinking of just keeping our money in an old sock until we found out that Chris could get a special "new immigrant" bank account which is fee-free for a year.  I did manage to "wake up" my old account but we've decided to keep it as a (not very active) savings account to avoid any fees for now.

Lake Simcoe

But before you start thinking "why would anyone move to such a crazy place", I have to say that the unlimited fresh air and wide open skies are just as I remember them.  It's soooo nice to travel around the local countryside and lakes, just admiring the rolling farmland in the late autumn sunshine!  And we're having a great time reuniting with old friends & lots of family.  It's going to be amazing to spend Christmas with everyone - even Susan and Larry (sister & brother-in-law) are coming up from California!  We'll miss the Streets & Solway gangs of course, but they'll be sunning themselves in Oman so I'm sure they'll be fine without us  ;-)

We've been chatting to lots of people on Skype which is great, but there are always lots of people we haven't spoken to in far too long.  We haven't forgotten any of you and we hope you will stay in touch!  You can reach us on chris.lisa_streets on Skype, or email us on we.are.the.streets*at*gmail.com.

<sales pitch alert> Local folks, you've probably noticed from my Facebook page that I've started a custom-made shamballa bracelet business in Uxbridge....please come & visit me at the Farmer's Market (inside at the Arena) on Sunday 25th November between 10am and 2pm.  In case you needed any further enticement, it's my birthday  ;-)  Also please spread the word to friends, family & colleagues!  The bracelets make great, highly personal Christmas gifts.  I can mail them anywhere in Canada for $5. <sales pitch over> It's been a lot of fun going to the small craft markets over the past 2 weekends, brings back memories of the My Secret Kitchen days....

See more shamballas on www.tinyurl.com/LisaBracelets

And for everyone - don't worry, we will add in the missing blog entries over the next few weeks.  It's our goal to have them all published by the end of the year!  So you will still have plenty of adventures to read about, plus a special post where we rate our gear (to help all of you who are planning similar adventures  ;-)  ).

Gotta run...need to track down the organiser of this Saturday's Santa Claus Parade in Uxbridge so I can volunteer!   Big hugs to everyone!!!