Yesterday marked the anniversary of our arrival in Canada - 1 whole year! We've come a long way since stumbling off the plane in Toronto after 35 hours with no sleep and heading to the hostel, followed by kebabs for dinner because nothing else was open. Thinking about it, everything has gone better than we could have possibly hoped.
Here are the top 5 awesome things about living in Canada.
1. We have a totally awesome group of friends.
I thought that making friends would be the hardest thing for us to do in Canada. When I moved to Sydney, it was very difficult to find people to hang out with - I had my friends from university who had moved with me, and I met a couple of other people who had moved from interstate, but the vast majority of the "locals" didn't really seem interested in hanging out. Full social rosters, I guess, and it only got worse over time as my university friends moved back to Brisbane for various reasons. I was expecting a similar issue in Canada, but it hasn't happened that way. One of the things that I did when we moved was look on Meetup.com for some "people like us" who might be interested in hanging out. I found a meetup group of World of Warcraft players who ran a Toronto-based guild, and had regular meetups at pubs and the like to hang out, so I convinced Stephen and signed us up.
It was with a bit of trepidation that we went to our first meetup - it was a Rock Band night at someone's house, which was a little scary (going to someone's house you don't know is kind of weird). Our doubts were soon put to rest as everyone turned out to be totally awesome and great fun to hang around with, and I even got to show off my Rock Band skills. We moved our WoW main characters over, and many Rock Band nights, pub nights, random drinking nights, board gaming nights and raid nights later, plus the unforgettable week in Indiana and most recently, Pam and Luke's wedding day - the rest was history. Moving to Canada would have been a lot harder if it wasn't for the brilliant friends that we have made. (Including the ones who don't even live in Toronto!) We love you guys and we're very lucky to have found you :)
2. We adopted Jax, who is occasionally infuriating but mostly awesome.
The rental market in Australia is such that it's almost impossible to find a rental property if you have a dog. Here, though, we have Jax and we live in a nice apartment next to a giant park on the subway line, which is totally awesome. Adopting Jax was certainly an "experience" - I didn't realise before we adopted him how much work it would be having a dog (sometimes I feel like we adopted a kid, only one that you can't take into restaurants). On the whole it's been a positive experience though - it's pretty awesome coming home to Jax's wagging ears and tail and knowing that even if nothing else is going right, at least he is happy to see you. I feel pretty happy knowing that he has a good life with us that he might not otherwise have - and he loves the walks, boats, and the leftover steak that are the perks of living with us. Having Jax forces us to get out of the house to walk him twice a day, sun, rain, or -35 degrees and snowing, and I`m pretty sure that this stopped us going crazy through the winter. Jax is awesome :)
3. We both have jobs that pay us more than we earned in Australia, and the cost of living is lower.
I was a little worried about finding professional jobs on working holiday visas, but it hasn't been an issue at all. Stephen has had a full-time job for 6 months now, and I've had various offers and taken a couple of contracts - luckily, the market for my job is through the roof here, and my experience and portfolio impress despite no one knowing any of the company names I worked with. On top of this, we pay 75% of what we paid for rent in Sydney, and everything is cheaper, including food and clothes. The upshot of this is that we are living very comfortably here, and that gives us plenty of money to spend on........
4. We have been on a number of awesome holidays.
It`s fantastic living somewhere that is so close to so much of the world. Since we moved here, we`ve been to Montreal, New York, Costa Rica, San Diego (apparently I never wrote a blog post about this trip?!), Orlando and Indiana, and it`s been incredibly cheap. It`s also been really cool to be able to take a long weekend to go to these places, rather than needing two weeks minimum. I look forward to heading to a lot of exciting new destinations in the year to come!
5. Winter was pretty cool, and nowhere near as bad as people had led us to expect.
The Canadians seem to think that we`re crazy, but I really liked winter. It dragged on for a bit long, but it snowed, and the temperature wasn`t really that bad. It really helps that the houses here are built for winter - it`s warmer inside our Canadian apartment than it ever was in our Sydney apartment during winter. Going dog-sledding was a highlight of the year, despite how touristy it is. The other highlight was going into a pub for dinner, and coming out to find that the whole world was covered in a blanket of snow that wasn`t there when we went in - that was certainly an experience.
Bonus: 6: Homesickness? What homesickness?
I was expecting to be homesick, but it hasn't really happened. Thinking about it in retrospect, it isn't too surprising - after emigrating halfway across the world at 7, I don't really have those kind of strong bonds to a place-where-I-grew-up, and I already lived 1000km away from my family in Sydney. It is hard sometimes missing birthdays, weddings and occasional trips for one of Dad's fried egg butties, but it is all manageable. Mostly I wish I could just convince all of our Australian friends to come and live here. Or else invent a teleporter. Hmmm....
All in all, I am so happy that we decided to move to Canada - it's been all positives and no negatives so far, and I look forward to another awesome year! So what's to come in the next year? Hopefully more gainful employment, and more awesome holidays! In the next year we want to see more of Canada, and this winter we are definitely going skiing. I think we should add Washington DC to the list, as well as trips to Seattle and LA to see friends. I'm also hoping that we can make it to Cuba this year, being as it's so close and all. I imagine that if we asked Jax, he'd say he wants more boats and more steak, so we'll have to fit that in too. (I would say that I want a kitten too, but Stephen has already said no to that one.) We'll probably have to head back to Australia at some point as well - if only to have a couple of beers and some decent brie. And to introduce the Aussies to poutine! :)
Tonight, we are heading off on a top secret vacation to celebrate Stephen's 30th birthday - it's top secret because he has no idea where we're going. I think I will have to tell him at the airport. Hopefully all goes well, and we'll be back with awesome photos in a week!
Here are the top 5 awesome things about living in Canada.
1. We have a totally awesome group of friends.
I thought that making friends would be the hardest thing for us to do in Canada. When I moved to Sydney, it was very difficult to find people to hang out with - I had my friends from university who had moved with me, and I met a couple of other people who had moved from interstate, but the vast majority of the "locals" didn't really seem interested in hanging out. Full social rosters, I guess, and it only got worse over time as my university friends moved back to Brisbane for various reasons. I was expecting a similar issue in Canada, but it hasn't happened that way. One of the things that I did when we moved was look on Meetup.com for some "people like us" who might be interested in hanging out. I found a meetup group of World of Warcraft players who ran a Toronto-based guild, and had regular meetups at pubs and the like to hang out, so I convinced Stephen and signed us up.
It was with a bit of trepidation that we went to our first meetup - it was a Rock Band night at someone's house, which was a little scary (going to someone's house you don't know is kind of weird). Our doubts were soon put to rest as everyone turned out to be totally awesome and great fun to hang around with, and I even got to show off my Rock Band skills. We moved our WoW main characters over, and many Rock Band nights, pub nights, random drinking nights, board gaming nights and raid nights later, plus the unforgettable week in Indiana and most recently, Pam and Luke's wedding day - the rest was history. Moving to Canada would have been a lot harder if it wasn't for the brilliant friends that we have made. (Including the ones who don't even live in Toronto!) We love you guys and we're very lucky to have found you :)
2. We adopted Jax, who is occasionally infuriating but mostly awesome.
The rental market in Australia is such that it's almost impossible to find a rental property if you have a dog. Here, though, we have Jax and we live in a nice apartment next to a giant park on the subway line, which is totally awesome. Adopting Jax was certainly an "experience" - I didn't realise before we adopted him how much work it would be having a dog (sometimes I feel like we adopted a kid, only one that you can't take into restaurants). On the whole it's been a positive experience though - it's pretty awesome coming home to Jax's wagging ears and tail and knowing that even if nothing else is going right, at least he is happy to see you. I feel pretty happy knowing that he has a good life with us that he might not otherwise have - and he loves the walks, boats, and the leftover steak that are the perks of living with us. Having Jax forces us to get out of the house to walk him twice a day, sun, rain, or -35 degrees and snowing, and I`m pretty sure that this stopped us going crazy through the winter. Jax is awesome :)
3. We both have jobs that pay us more than we earned in Australia, and the cost of living is lower.
I was a little worried about finding professional jobs on working holiday visas, but it hasn't been an issue at all. Stephen has had a full-time job for 6 months now, and I've had various offers and taken a couple of contracts - luckily, the market for my job is through the roof here, and my experience and portfolio impress despite no one knowing any of the company names I worked with. On top of this, we pay 75% of what we paid for rent in Sydney, and everything is cheaper, including food and clothes. The upshot of this is that we are living very comfortably here, and that gives us plenty of money to spend on........
4. We have been on a number of awesome holidays.
It`s fantastic living somewhere that is so close to so much of the world. Since we moved here, we`ve been to Montreal, New York, Costa Rica, San Diego (apparently I never wrote a blog post about this trip?!), Orlando and Indiana, and it`s been incredibly cheap. It`s also been really cool to be able to take a long weekend to go to these places, rather than needing two weeks minimum. I look forward to heading to a lot of exciting new destinations in the year to come!
5. Winter was pretty cool, and nowhere near as bad as people had led us to expect.
The Canadians seem to think that we`re crazy, but I really liked winter. It dragged on for a bit long, but it snowed, and the temperature wasn`t really that bad. It really helps that the houses here are built for winter - it`s warmer inside our Canadian apartment than it ever was in our Sydney apartment during winter. Going dog-sledding was a highlight of the year, despite how touristy it is. The other highlight was going into a pub for dinner, and coming out to find that the whole world was covered in a blanket of snow that wasn`t there when we went in - that was certainly an experience.
Bonus: 6: Homesickness? What homesickness?
I was expecting to be homesick, but it hasn't really happened. Thinking about it in retrospect, it isn't too surprising - after emigrating halfway across the world at 7, I don't really have those kind of strong bonds to a place-where-I-grew-up, and I already lived 1000km away from my family in Sydney. It is hard sometimes missing birthdays, weddings and occasional trips for one of Dad's fried egg butties, but it is all manageable. Mostly I wish I could just convince all of our Australian friends to come and live here. Or else invent a teleporter. Hmmm....
All in all, I am so happy that we decided to move to Canada - it's been all positives and no negatives so far, and I look forward to another awesome year! So what's to come in the next year? Hopefully more gainful employment, and more awesome holidays! In the next year we want to see more of Canada, and this winter we are definitely going skiing. I think we should add Washington DC to the list, as well as trips to Seattle and LA to see friends. I'm also hoping that we can make it to Cuba this year, being as it's so close and all. I imagine that if we asked Jax, he'd say he wants more boats and more steak, so we'll have to fit that in too. (I would say that I want a kitten too, but Stephen has already said no to that one.) We'll probably have to head back to Australia at some point as well - if only to have a couple of beers and some decent brie. And to introduce the Aussies to poutine! :)
Tonight, we are heading off on a top secret vacation to celebrate Stephen's 30th birthday - it's top secret because he has no idea where we're going. I think I will have to tell him at the airport. Hopefully all goes well, and we'll be back with awesome photos in a week!
What a nice post :)
ReplyDeleteWe're glad to have you here.
Yep, I'm really glad you checked out meetup and now we have more boardgaming buddies! It's amazing what one action can lead to isn't it? :)
ReplyDelete