Howdy y’all!
We just moved into the new house! It has been a long and winding road to get here, but we’ve arrived here at last. Here at last! And what a journey it was, too!
Friday 18 July: Last day of work. I was teaching the science summer camp to five to fourteen year olds for three weeks. It wasn’t so much teaching as it was prolonged infotainment. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it wasn’t great either. The hardest bunch were the eight and nine year olds. Everybody else, I could get something interesting and at the right challenge level for them. I just floundered with the eight year old set. Thank goodness that is over. Never have to do that again.
Saturday 20 July: We boarded a red-eye for Inchon, South Korea. We paid extra for two bags each and maxed the weight allowance for each of them. I’m thankful they didn’t weigh our carry-on luggage or our personal items. It took some doing to hump the 200 kg of bags out of Cambodia.
Sunday 21 July: The luggage humping odyssey continued on into Toronto where they had to be carried from baggage claim to the car, from the car to the garage where we had a veritable alchemist’s wonderland planned for their contents.
Monday 22 July – Saturday 2 August: The famn damily split up with Ma Belle Femme heading into the heart o’ Canada to take possession of the house, buy a car, and acquire furnishings enough to get us started while La Petite Fille and I cooled our heels at a friend’s house. We also worked on an online course to help La Petite Fille get admitted to university.
Sunday 3 – Tuesday 5 August: We drove across Canada. Beautiful country, but so much of it. We couldn’t pack our 200 kg of luggage into the back of the car. We already had stuff at the sister-in-law’s house. We mixed and matched and took all that we could, but some new and old stuff remains. Just a good reason to make the trek back across the country to pick it up in the spring.
Wednesday 6 August: It’s been a busy day of shopping for essentials, putting things away, and working on homework. My muscles are sore, I’m a little agitated and anxious, but I’m very happy and proud.
A couple of more observations before the pictures:
- I miss paper maps. I hate trying to navigate with google maps and all that digital crap. They could at least give the map narration voice an anxious, annoyed, and frustrated voice when you deviate from the course they’ve prescribed.
- Canada is cold. Supposedly we were here during a heatwave. In the breeze, I felt a bit of a chill. That isn’t to say that a few weeks ago when it was “feels like” 48, it wasn’t hella hot, but it is to say that temperature is relative.
- The grocery stores are freaking overwhelming. They’re too big, too cold, and too bright. They have too many people who speak too much English and too many products all doing the same thing. The parking lots and approaches are crazy. There is just way too many cars and people to be watching for. I suppose we’ll adjust, but for right now, it’s driving me a bit nuts.
- Cell phone service is stupid. Why can’t I buy a SIM card and pay x amount for y amount of data and z amount of phone minutes and when the money is used up, I pay more like we do in the civilized world? I would keep my Cambodian cell card and just pay the roaming fees if the card actually roamed. I keep getting the “Welcome to Canada” message from my old SIM card carrier with instructions on how to using roaming services and how amazingly cheap it is, but I never can actually use it. So, there’s that.
Okay, here are some pictures.
Pre-Flight Last Looks at Cambodia
Driving Across Canada
The NEW House
Well folks, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past week and what I’ll be doing for the near future. I hope to get the house ready for winter, revitalize the composting, and lay in several cords of wood. It’s a beautiful well-maintained house, but there’s still lots to be done to make it our home.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Well, I saved this one, and finally got it opened and read, along with the 8/28 update along the side, and the comments. I hope things still “continue apace,” meaning I do so hope all is very well-I feel that if you all are at home in the kitchen, the house is yours-and that things smooth out. Your yard looks delightful!
Howdy Ali!
The yard is a delight, if a little intimidating. I should post some pics from our lie here. It has smoothed out, but we are encountering all the things homeowners encounter. We had a leaky toilet that we hadn’t noticed until the wall was damaged. We moved the door from the house to the garage to a different wall because where it was was so inconvenient as to be inexplicable. We might have to replace the hot water heater. Then, there’s getting ready for the -40 winter weather.
The wildlife in the yard and neighborhood is amazing. There’s a squirrel that has their winter cache under the deck, so we can monitor their trips too and fro with nuts and other food stuff. The timid rabbit that hangs out in the front yard. The mysterious raccoon that can be seen some nights traversing the backyard. The deer that visit on occasion. And, the birds. The multitude of birds that inhabit the yard.
The pond is a particular point of fun. Watching the birds drink and bath in it makes me stupidly proud. The raccoon washes its food in it. The squirrel will pause in its daily routine for a refreshing drink. Then, there are the water lilies that open and close each day as the sun rises and sets.
We have settled in. The daily routine has become normal. It’s fun hanging out on a university campus again as I coax my terminally organizationally challenged daughter through her first university courses.
It makes a great refuge from the madness of the world.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
This is good news to read, Jack. (Well, not the water heater replacement, etm.) It is great to have a nice yard with relaxing perqs!
Moving is such a pain in the ass…..hope all goes well with the relocation…..love the water feature…..chuq
Howdy Chuq!
This move has been a bigger pain in the ass than most. When you change countries for a job, your new employer actually does a lot for you. They often find you an initial place to live, help provide furnishings or at least funding for furniture and someone to help you contend with visas and government. As a retiree, there just ain’t nobody here to do those things for us. We gotta do them all ourselves. Not only has the move been physically challenging — the long flights and drives, the heavy bags — it has been emotionally challenging — closing on the house, meeting deadlines, dealing with Canadian immigration, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, literally.
The house is well worth the money, though. It is in good shape for being fifty years old. The water feature is my favorite thing about it. The pollinators and birds in the backyard are great. I’m hoping to make it turtle friendly by supplying a couple of inches of soil at the bottom for them to hibernate in.
All in all, I cannot complain. In many ways I have been extremely fortunate to land in th situation I’m in.
I hope all is well with you.
Huzzah!
Jack
Sounds exhausting but you seem to have a great attitude and a dynamite house….good luck.. chuq
Such a beautiful place to finally land! I envy you a little bit!
On the other hand…welcome to homeownership! Things will start breaking immediately! (although I may be a little biased right now, having spent Tuesday in a frantic race to purchase a new freezer, transport it home somehow and manage to get it into the house (we had to remove parts of our kitchen door frame to get it through!) and set up before all the stuff in the broken old one thawed out. (very old…we bought it in ’92)
Howdy Bruce!
You make home ownership sound so inviting… intoxicating almost. We’re fortunate to have a house in as good of shape as it is in. The appliances are all relatively new including the hot water heater and furnace. The foundation checked out. There doesn’t seem to be a mold problem or moisture issues or a leak in the roof. The neighborhood is nice.
I feel ya about the hurry to replace your freezer and the trouble moving it. That’s been the biggest pain in the ass about the move is getting things into the house — mattresses, beds, chairs — and then assembling and attaching them to the walls. It has been an intense week going from empty to one quarter full. The worst part is that we’ve got more to go. What happened to the world we lived in where you could tip the delivery driver a quarter and they were happy and give the movers a coke and they were disbelieving of your generosity. Developing countries had their downsides, but they were cheap. Lord have mercy, how have y’all been doing this for the past thirty years?
Huzzah!
Jack
Well, “be it ever so weird, old, and a PITA, theere’s no place like home!” is our mantra.
As for getting it all done, just remember the rules for eating an elephant: one bite at a time.
Well, Jack, welcome back to North America. The house looks quite nice. Yes, the super markets are all that you say; too big, too bright, well, too everything, but remember, in the “Western World”, our primary job title is not “citizen”, “voter”, “worker”, but “consumer”. Those other titles are just side gigs.
Howdy Bob!
I have to say that this is the nicest house I’ve ever lived in. We had a great sprawling place in Kenya but it is not was not as nice as this. I’m feeling very fortunate to be in the situation I’m in.
I remember reading “Future Shock” as a teenager and wondering if any of those things would come to pass. While paper wedding dresses never materialized, our transition into a materialistic, consumer-based, disposable society overwhelmed by rapid changes in technology and information did. My goodness, I can’t get over how stunned I feel every time I go out whether it is to a restaurant or other type of store. The traffic alone is leaves me feeling overrun and run down. I guess eventually, we’ll habituate to the pace and size of everything, but, man, I’m amazed at the effect.
When we’d just come here on vacation, it was easy to kind of ignore some of these things and our reactions to them because we were going back. Then, it was just funny and odd. Oh, I can’t quit listening to all the conversations that are happening around me even though they are banal and boring. Being able to understand the language that the attendant is speaking is distracting, I can barely formulate a response. Ha ha. Isn’t that funny? Now, it is just distressing. The oh shit this is our new reality reaction rather than marveling at the exotic animals at the zoo reaction of before.
Hope all is well in your end of the world.
Huzzah!
Jack
I get a lighter version of that just going from small town to big city on a visit, especially the traffic. On the other hand, I still remember the crazy traffic I encountered one day in ’68 when I had to drive from Cam Ran up to Na Trang in Vietnam. It seemed to operate in a Hobsian State of Nature every sort of wheeled vehicle invented in the last 100 years, plus the occasional ox cart pulled by water buffalo . Of course, I never realized my own capacity for aggressive driving until I drove a cab in Chicago for a while. Maybe you’ll be able to get back to watching the zoo animals. They really can be amusing.
Howdy Bob!
I remember the murderous intent that Boston drivers seemed to possess. Perfectly nice people would get behind the wheel, and then it was pedestrian beware! Cars had the right-of-way, everyone else be damned.
I can attest to the ongoing crazy traffic in Viet Nam. The only saving grace was that it moved slow and as long as no one made any sudden moves, it worked okay.
Huzzah!
Jack
I drove through Boston once, on a road trip. We were glad to have survived.
It did seem, that day in Na Trang that the key was to go with the flow, even if you weren’t sure it was going exactly where you wanted.
The traffic in Saigon was more like water than anything else. Going with the flow and letting it flow around you was the key. In Canada, everybody gives pedestrians the right-of-way and stops for you while you cross the street. They also let you in when you need to join a stream of traffic. Very polite.
Jack
That’s exactly what I would expect Canadians to do.