When You Get Right Down To It….

Grouse Mountain - The Peak of Vancouver

Apparently blogging about blogging is really not on.  Totally off, in fact.  Utterly not cricket in the blogosphere, wherever that is.  I learn these things from my  husband, who has been blogging longer than me and hates the fact that I get more readers.  I keep telling him that I will not sink to his level, I will not play these sick little games of whose blog is better, then I find myself obsessively comparing our stats and laughing to myself (more Mwah-ha-ha, than hee-hee-hee).

The thing he finds most difficult is that the top search, the main reason, the path that leads my readers to me is, in fact, Sushi.  Last week I wrote about the women’s locker room – surely naked women would be a more frequent search subject than sushi, yes?  It was a post I wanted to write, but I will admit that I felt pretty smug including “women’s locker room” in the tags list.  But no.  Top Search again is, of course, Sushi.  And “knitted Marmite” (if you are the knitted Marmite person, let me know if you find a pattern – I quite fancy a cuddly jar of Marmite.)

I have been writing for my own creative outlet, and for the benefit of those who might be considering taking this giant leap of faith to another country, or who have recently done so and are asking the inevitable questions (“Will I ever feel comfortable saying pants instead of trousers?”, “Will the roadworks on Highway 1 ever be finished?”, “What the heck is Poutine, and should I be innoculated against it?”*)  I’d like to feel I’m doing a small public service, but apparently I am helping those who are confused about sushi (and want knitted Marmite).

So today, I’m just going to tell you what I have been up to this week and include the word Sushi in the tags for the fun of it.  If you arrived here searching for Sushi, there’s a blog post here.

It is Spring Break this week in British Columbia, or at least in School District 41 (Burnaby).  School holidays are not standardized across the Province, so many schools have started taking a 2-week Spring Break.  Without half-term holidays, the long drag from January to July is very, very long and this is a much needed break; 2 weeks would be nice.  I decided to take the week off and, as we could not afford a real ski holiday staying at a real ski resort, I designed our own.  Every day this week we have loaded the car and driven 30 minutes to Grouse Mountain, where we have had a lesson and spent an hour or two skiing, skating or hiking the trails, followed by hot chocolate in the cafe.  The whole week has cost about $1000, which includes a private instructor for the 2 eldest children, lessons for me and Tiny Weasel, rentals and some ski passes (we bought annual passes for the girls at the end of last year, for $60 each).  Not bad, really.

Dim and I also visited our local Garden Centre on Saturday to buy a blueberry bush for the hamster’s grave (have we really been here as long as a hamster’s life cycle?).  The Garden Centre was hosting a whole weekend of speakers and free workshops on all subjects – planning your garden, arranging plants in planters, composting, and our favourite, the Forest Grove School Garden with guest speaker, our friend, the wonderful and inspirational Barb McMahon, of Sprouting Chefs.

Barb McMahon at the Sprouting Chefs stand

Barb’s passion is food – growing it, cooking it, introducing others to it in all its infinite variety, which is why she is such a key part of The McTraslerRomeroMahon Dining Club.  Three families, one English, one Canadian (with Japanese in the mix), one Mexican, with 8 children ranging from 4 years old to 16 years old, meeting monthly to experience new cuisine wherever we find it.  My children are shamed into trying new food by their adventurous and confident friends.  Any day soon we’ll be trying the Chinese Dim Sum at Yan’s Garden on North Road.  February was Korean Barbeque at Insadong, also North Road, and January at Fuji... can you guess?  Yup, Sushi!

*the answers are yes, no and don’t ask, don’t touch, avoid at all costs.

Here Be Whales!

Here be Whales!

Where did the summer holidays go?  We were looking forward to it so much – 10 weeks of lazy days and slow starts, picnics and barbeques and camping, and now it’s nearly over.  This was our third summer in Vancouver; our first year the older girls started school in April and finished in June, and neither Dim or I were working until late August so we had a blast.  The following year we joined the ranks of Happy Campers, booking the girls into a few activity camps, including their first residential.  This year, with both of us working Monday to Friday, we went a bit overboard, with the result that the girls are more tired than they were when they broke up; karate camp, riding camp, day camp, science camp, not to mention the cost.  I guess we’ll learn to balance it next year and give them a few days off.

One of the highlights for me was a whale watching trip from Steveston, Richmond.  Despite the rough start crossing the Gulf to the San Juan Islands (too rough to pour and drink a coffee – barbaric!), when we arrived at the Islands, the sea was like a millpond.  We joined the ranks of tourist boats watching a superpod of 40-50 orcas, fishing for Chinook salmon, and we watched for nearly an hour as they popped up, dived, played and fished.  We live in a truly fabulous place, and I have never felt so lucky.

We took the trip with Seabreeze Adventures who also do river trips looking for seals and sealions.

The Worst of Times

Frozen Burrard Inlet

It seems appropriate, in the grim long days of February, to talk about when emigration is at its worst.  Is it the first confusing, jet lagged days? Or when you realise you haven’t had a coffee with your best friend for 2 months? Or when you start to lose your starry, open-mouthed wonder at everything new?  Here’s my opinion…

We had excellent advice from our friends Frank and Sue Gerryts, realtors and relocation agents (www.relocation2bc.com), who suggested we stay at Rosellen Suites, right by Stanley Park, when we first arrived.  We took a suite for a month, and that gave us the breathing space we needed to find a house.  It was a holiday, but scary.  A holiday with real life thrown in.

Then the first six months – still a holiday feeling, but more scary as the months keep rolling by and the money keeps rolling out.  Starting to miss friends and family, but excited by all the new stuff to be discovered.  Realising that the kids have settled quicker than you, and you might be passing the point of no return.

Then the upswing – a job! New friends! Summer! So much to see and do and so much fun to have!  First visitors!

But the hardest by far, for us at least, was Year 2.  When the shine has worn off, and the little annoyances have been chafing like sand in your shorts for a while, when real life has reestablished itself, and you realise that you are no longer on holiday.  You may be surrounded by Super, Natural British Columbia, but you haven’t got time to get out and see it because you have too much work, commitments to school and kid’s clubs and your new social network.

So now what?  Well, the same old story – balance.  Emigration is about swings of great joy and deep loneliness; wonder and panic; confidence and doubt.  Gradually, the balance is restored, as work and home become manageable, and the wonder reasserts itself.  Remind yourself, you would be managing the same issues if you had stayed in the UK, but you have challenged yourself further than anyone who stayed.  You have disrupted the old familiar routine, thrown it all up in the air and made something new.  It takes time to settle and find peace again.  Be kind to yourself.

Emigrating to Vancouver

So, let’s start with the Big Question everyone asks – “Why Canada?”  Before we left England, I usually replied “We are not emigrating to Canada; 99% of Canada is completely uninhabitable.  We are emigrating to Vancouver because it scored highly in the Best Places in the World To Live survey (Mercer), we want an adventure, England is going to the dogs, we want to see whales, climb mountains in summer and ski down them in the winter – so many reasons”.

We arrived on a freezing March evening and staggered from our downtown hotel apartment on our first morning into the coldest wind we had ever felt.  We walked to the end of the street, looked north across Lost Lagoon to the snow covered mountains and breathed in the freshest, cleanest air we had ever tasted.  From that moment on, whenever anyone asked “Why Canada?” we simply replied “Have you SEEN it? Where else would we want to be?”  We are well and truly in love with our new home.  

We were right about some things, and utterly wrong about others.  We have been surprised at how quickly we have got used to some of the differences, and how slowly the kids are picking up Canadian accents.  Over the pages of this website, we aim to give you some ideas, steer you to useful resources and answer some of your questions.  Mostly, if you are set on this crazy course called emigration, we aim to give you hope that you can achieve it!