Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Countdown to Canada
Okay, a little intro to start with. First of all to me: My name's Suzie, and three years ago I met a Canadian. Almost one year ago I married him. And now he's working in Toronto while I'm here in London tying up the loose ends of my life before I go and join him on Friday.
Now to the blog: this is an account of someone moving overseas and getting to grips with a new culture (same language does not mean new culture, as anyone who has been to America will tell you!). So hopefully this will help hapless migratory types like me.
I finished my journalism exams last Friday, and since then have been saying goodbye to various loved ones. It's been fairly up and down: seeing people I love is great, saying goodbye to them is not. My Dad lives in France and we parted ways yesterday - I spent a lot of my teenage years not speaking to him and we've only just started getting close again, so saying goodbye and not knowing when I was going to see him again left me feeling empty and sad.
I also haven't been sleeping that well lately, I guess because moving to Canada is taking up a lot of my subconscious thought. I haven't actively been thinking about it that much because I don't really know what to expect. Let's do a Donald Rumsfeld and explore the known unknowns:
-Where to live
-What to do for a job
-When I'll get a car (essential in North America!)
-How to cope with -10/-20 temperatures
and there's others but they're not bothering me as much. Heck, the only one that's really bothering me is where to live - hubby is looking for a furnished flat and we've just discovered Canadians don't really do those (even though hubby is Canadian, he hasn't lived there for 15 years!).
So that's the situation at the moment, and it will probably all change when I get out there. In the meantime, I still have my brother, my sister, my best friend, aunt, uncle and various others to say goodbye to. Here goes, eh?
Now to the blog: this is an account of someone moving overseas and getting to grips with a new culture (same language does not mean new culture, as anyone who has been to America will tell you!). So hopefully this will help hapless migratory types like me.
I finished my journalism exams last Friday, and since then have been saying goodbye to various loved ones. It's been fairly up and down: seeing people I love is great, saying goodbye to them is not. My Dad lives in France and we parted ways yesterday - I spent a lot of my teenage years not speaking to him and we've only just started getting close again, so saying goodbye and not knowing when I was going to see him again left me feeling empty and sad.
I also haven't been sleeping that well lately, I guess because moving to Canada is taking up a lot of my subconscious thought. I haven't actively been thinking about it that much because I don't really know what to expect. Let's do a Donald Rumsfeld and explore the known unknowns:
-Where to live
-What to do for a job
-When I'll get a car (essential in North America!)
-How to cope with -10/-20 temperatures
and there's others but they're not bothering me as much. Heck, the only one that's really bothering me is where to live - hubby is looking for a furnished flat and we've just discovered Canadians don't really do those (even though hubby is Canadian, he hasn't lived there for 15 years!).
So that's the situation at the moment, and it will probably all change when I get out there. In the meantime, I still have my brother, my sister, my best friend, aunt, uncle and various others to say goodbye to. Here goes, eh?
