The Middle 1 The first two days

Day 1: Sunday, 8 April 2012:

Wakefulness came with the realisation that we still don’t have our bags and that the clothes we’ve been wearing for the past two days will have to suffice for another day. In SA Kobus joked that a pair of underpants can be worn for 4 days, right side round, wrong side round, then turn it inside out and repeat days 1 and 2. He didn’t know that he was going to have to put this theory to the test so soon. The same laundry sparing procedure posed some peculiar difficulties with my G-string.....

Retail therapy was a no-go as everything was closed, it being Easter Sunday.

My grey Ford

At least we could pick up our two rental Ford Escapes, so at least had some wheels. Driving from the car rental place back to the hotel was my first taste of driving on the right hand side of the road. Sheer unadulterated terror. I kept chanting “keep right, keep right”, and then my semi-dyslexic brain would summarily forget which side was right and I had to check where my watch was to get my bearings. Any type of crossing became a Rubicon with cars coming at me from unexpected directions. The reflex to glance up and to the left to check the rear view mirror now suddenly had me staring through the side window. The mirror was now up and to the right!

Kobus's red Ford

We left my car at the hotel and took to the streets with Kobus’s. The rest of the day was spent driving around the city, having supper at a restaurant and an early collapse into bed.

Day 2: Monday, 9 April 2012:

This day was our 18^th wedding anniversary. Who would have thought that 18 years after promising to love and to hold that we would find ourselves in a new country in the midst of so much change.

And what better way to celebrate than to finally get our bags!! Oh the simple joy to have your own stuff again, clean clothes, clean underwear, pajamas, games for the kids, your own toothbrush, hair brush, face cream and shampoo. Whoever said that material things don't matter has never spent 2 days in a new country in a hotel room with 2 boys without anything of their own.

The bags have arrived!!!

We went to Bell, one of the big cell phone providers, to get connected. The sales lady’s excitement at making a deal on this blustery cold Monday morning quickly disappeared when she realized that we did not yet officially exist in Canada and she could therefore not sell us any SIM cards. Ghosts we were without social insurance numbers, OHIP cards and/or driver’s licenses. Buying a starter pack at a supermarket, loading it with airtime and getting onto the airwaves is not possible in Canada. Canadian pre-paid and SA pre-paid is not the same thing! She gave us her business card and told us to call her as soon as our existence have been confirmed by the powers that be. I wonder with what I was supposed to call her and informed her that we will be sending smoke signals..... In the modern world of today to not have a cell phone is like dying. You feel disjointed and not completely whole. Stupid I know, but there it is.

We went to Wal-Mart to stock up on some groceries. The variety was overwhelming and very few brands were recognisable. Long life milk does not exist, the cream soda is pink and doesn’t taste like the smooth green stuff from home, salami tastes like bad polonie (ughh!) and my kids took one taste of the mayonnaise and collapsed in fits of disgust. I eventually bought 3 different brands of mayonnaise before we found one that they liked.

The brand new Canadian housewife in me knew that I was going to have to do laundry and washing powder and fabric softener was on the list. There I stood, mile long shelves stacked from top to bottom with what I hoped was laundry products in unfamiliar packaging with strange color schemes and unrecognisable names. Each one promised to demolish any stain, be it from this world or not, in cold water, warm water, hand wash, machine wash, front loader or top loader. I eventually chose Tide Pods, based purely on the fact that I saw it advertised on TV the previous night. Viva marketing!! The fabric softener was chosen as the bottle’s shape and color scheme resembled Sta Soft, our trusted SA brand, and to this day I couldn’t tell you the product’s name.

Our house hunting also commenced. Rentals in Guelph are a dime a dozen, if you are a student. It being a student town there are loads of apartments, townhouses, basements and other student friendly adobes available. But good luck in finding a nice big family house. After scouring kijiji (a website where you can buy or look for anything) we found 2 houses that piqued our interest. The first was a typical middle class Canadian house. It was nice and had the required amount of bedrooms but it was just way too small. There was no way my dining room table was going to fit in anywhere, except maybe in the garage.

from the front

The second house took our breath away. It was a huge two storey house situated in 100 acres (about 40ha) of woodland. The rooms were big with huge windows framing the most gorgeous views of the surrounding woods. There was room for all our furniture and it was only 2km out of town. Ideal!! It does have ghastly 1980's psychodelic carpets in pink and blue (imagine what our Nguni skins were gonna look like on these...) and Biggie Bestesque flowery wallpaper in the bedrooms. But they say you can't have it all....

from the back

These flowers are just not me

We also visited our new banker at the Royal Bank of Canada. Kobus had opened a bank account when he was in Canada during February and we just went to meet her, a lovely, friendly and very helpful lady. Canada’s banking system is overall very progressive but some things are still positively archaic. The favourite mode of payment is still cheques, those strange old world strips of paper that we haven’t used in years!! Electronic funds transfers seem to be regarded with some strange deep seated suspicion and is not widely used at all. We needed lessons from the bank on how to fill out a cheque!! I even heard of faxing cheques and e-mailing money but haven't yet figured these modes of payment out. If you pay at any store with a debit or credit card you swipe the card yourself and enter the required pin. The card never leaves your hand, which seems to be a pretty secure system, and the drive through ATM's are just brilliant!

The Beginning 6 Leaving

As I struggled up from the depths of sleep on the morning of Friday the 6^th of April the realisation hit me that it was leaving day. I had just slept my last night in SA.

Last night we had a wonderful dinner with Andre and Lizel. They treated us to a real South African braai and we will always remember it as our last braai while still living in SA. This morning though we were all a bit quiet and subdued............

We were to meet the family, except for my brother and his family who were on holiday, for a last breakfast together. I really did not feel up to it and wished that we didn't have to.  This is not because I didn't want to see all of them but I dreaded the inevitable emotions and sadness........... The trouble with saying goodbye is that everyone says goodbye to only us but we have to say goodbye to so many people that we know and love.

In the end though it was great spending the time together and we really appreciated everybody’s well wishes and blessings. Luckily there were no emotional breakdowns and everybody was very brave. I know I sound callous and hard but its just a question of not being able to cope with it at that particular point in time as I was in pure, unrefined survival mode.

During the last weeks and days before leaving people would constantly ask me how I was feeling. Although I pretended that I was all excited and scared, there was in actual fact just a big empty space of emotional nothing, and that last day was no exception. I was feeling disconnected, going walkabout in a desert devoid of any emotion.

 I had to get the house cleaned and ready for the tenants, so could not think of all the things we still wanted to do and see in SA.

 I had to sort  the house keys into two sets, one for the letting agent and one for the tenants, so could not worry about whether our workers would be cared for by their new employers.

 I had to pack our hand luggage, so could not think about all the wonderful family we were leaving behind.

 I had to get the kids ready for the long flight, so could not afford to think about this beloved Africa of my blood.

 I had to remember all the passports and check-in papers, so could not worry about our house that we were entrusting to strangers.

I had to remember to get some cash from the ATM to pay the airport shuttle, so could not think about all our wonderful friends that we were going to miss so much.

I had to see to it that all 6 big suitcases were packed and within the specified weight limits, so I could not think about the wonderful school that we were no longer a part of.

 I had to remember to give the kids Avomine for motion sickness before the flight, so could not think about all the good people that we did not get to see before our departure.

Leaving day was so jam-packed with stuff to do, remember, finalise and arrange that there was just simply no time for an emotional hurricane to make landfall.

All our suitcases

 At 7:15 pm the shuttle arrived to pick us up, of course with a mini bus as there was no way all our luggage was going to fit in a car. We arrived at the airport nice and early-Kobus likes to be in first. We were first in the queue and full of bravado we strolled to the counter thinking we can quickly  book in our bags and then spend some time relaxing in the shops and restaurants before boarding the plane. Of course Murphy had other plans. When the guy behind the counter swiped Kobus' en Cilliers' passports the computer system pulled a fast one and blocked their passports.

At first I thought that maybe there was something wrong with the passports but Kobus used his without any problems 4 weeks previously. Nightmarish scenarios of us spending weeks at the Department of Home Affairs trying to sort out passport problems reared their ugly heads. What if it was a problem with the Canadian visas, would we have to camp out there on the embassy's sidewalk too?? We didn't even have any camping equipment left!!

 It transpired that KLM and Air France had rolled out a new boarding computer system 3 days previously and we were the lucky winners of the first major glitch. When the first guy realised he could not fix the problem he called the next in line, and so it went with one person after the other unable to make any sense of the big red warning flags on the computer screen.

 Eventually Dudu arrived and apparently the buck stops with her. By this time we have been standing, sitting and slouching in the check-in hall for well over 90 minutes. All our hopes were on the very intelligent and capable looking woman who quickly took charge in such an efficient and friendly way.

 However, even Dudu was dumbfounded by the system's idiocy. Eventually she phoned the system designers in Amsterdam. But, after spending 2 and a half hours on the phione with them, even they just shrugged and said they have no idea how to fix it. How can even the guys who designed the system not know how to fix it...duh!!!!

By this time we have spent 4 hours in the check-inn hall and the plane was warming up its engines and straining at the chocks. Dudu made an executive decision, wrote out our boarding passess by hand and dispatched a runner to escort us through passport control, through security and onto the plane.

I wondered why this decision to go all old school and do things manually could not have been made at a much much earlier time.......

The shops and restaurants that we wanted to spend some time in were just blurry images flitting by in our mad dash to get on the plane. Huffing and puffing (we are definitely not the world's fittest forty somethings) we stumbled  onto the plane and tried valiantly to disappear into our seats. The plane was delayed by 20 minutes, waiting for us, and the deep displeasure of the other passengers was curling in the air. I wanted to stand up and shout that it was not our fault, that we were the hapless victims of an evil computer system, that we were hungry and thirsty and irritated and tired and frustrated and annoyed and upset and...and.....and......

At last we were on the plane on our way to Canada. The 11 hour flight went smoothly and all of us slept most of the way, arriving safely at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. We had to wait 6 hours for our flight to Toronto but fortunately Schiphol is probably one of the nicest airports to spend time in. We browsed the shops, found a great restaurant, sampled most of their menu and slept on the very comfortable benches.

The boys at Sciphol

Having travelled for 26 hours we eventually landed  in Toronto at 7:30pm, Saturday night local time. Getting through immigration was a breeze but our elation soon disappeared when we stood next to the baggage carousel and as it went round and round and round none of the bags coming out even closely resembled ours. Our bags, al 6 of them, were not there!!  It seems that although we made it onto the plane our bags did not. They only left Johannesburg 24 hours after we did

I wanted to cry, I was so tired, felt so dirty and wanted nothing more than to get to our hotel, have  a bath, get into clean pj's and sleep.

The shuttle deposited us at Staybridge Hotel in Guelph, about a 45 minute drive from the airport, we checked in, had a bath, dressed in our dirty shirts and surrendered to Morpheus.

We have arrived.......................

The Beginning 5 Packing

The morning of Monday 2 April 2012 the men from Elliott arrived. Within 10 minutes they off loaded big rolls of bubble wrap, stacks and stacks of carton to be made into boxes, rolls of packing tape and lots of newsprint. Each of the four man team started in a room and the speed with which they worked was mindboggling. Like a whirlwind stuff was being wrapped in paper or bubble wrap, packed in a box and the sound of packing tape sealing the boxes became the new rhythm. So it continued without pause for the next 3 days, from 9am to 4pm. Apart from a very short lunch break these guys worked continuously in absolute silence with a single minded focus. The team even custom built wooden crates for the 2 television sets, our grandfather clock and a priceless art piece of mine.

 I’m glad we sorted out the house well in advance. This made the packing task much easier as we put everything that was to go in our suitcases in one cupboard and the rest could be Elliotised and containerised for the long sea voyage.

 During these packing days we felt completely redundant and  Kobus warned that if we dared to stay in one place long enough we too would be wrapped, packed and tagged.

We mostly lived on take aways and spent the nights at my brother's house. They were away on holiday and it was great to be able to at least relax in a comfortable place, watch some television, unwind and sleep in a comfy bed. It is these gestures from friends and family that makes one feel really special.

On Thursday, at 9.30 in the morning a big rig with a ginormous steel container pulled up in front of the house. Suddenly everyone shifted into 6^th gear and furniture and boxes were carried out and loaded with fortune 500 efficiency. At 12 o’clock sharp the packing job was done. The container was sealed, the truck engine rumbled to life and with a last goodbye the big yellow steel box with MSC emblazoned on the side disappeared around the bend with Kobus singing “There goes my only possessions...” 

 It’s uncanny to think that it’s travelling all the way to Durban, gets loaded on a ship, that’s first making a stop in Mauritius to load some more cargo, and travels around the Cape of Storms and up across the length and breadth of the Atlantic Ocean. We can only hope that we see it again in front of our new house in Guelph in two month’s time. May it encounter no hurricanes, leviathans, pirates or icebergs...........

The Beginning 4 Pets

We are, or I should now say were, the proud owners of 3 beautiful dogs. Rex is a shorthaired pointer, Lulu a tiny little psychotic dachshund and Luka a live teddy bear of a basset hound.

At first we thought we were going to take the dogs with us. They are, after all, part of our family and Canada doesn’t have any quarantine laws. The dogs need a vet certificate and some rabies shots and on the plane they go, easy. Then the problems started to present themselves one by one. We soon realised that finding a rental house in Guelph that would allow pets is almost impossible. Most of the rentals, of which there are not all that many to begin with, specify no pets. I find this strange as the city is full of trails and parks where you can take your dogs to and every second person on the street is leashed to a canine of some sort or other. The houses there are not fenced in and I had visions of us trudging through the snow in the middle of the night with storm lanterns in hand calling out forlornly through the mist to our missing dogs. The fact that we were going to stay in a hotel for 2 months until our container arrives posed yet another problem. This meant that the dogs would have had to stay here with someone until we have a house on that side and then arrangements would have had to be made with agents to collect them and put them on a plane. We also came to the realisation that dogs running in and out through the doggy door would trudge in snow, mud and all kinds of dirt foreign to SA which would have to be cleaned by....me!!

We then decided that in an effort to keep our already soaring stress levels at below meltdown proportions we would look for loving homes for our 3 four legged children and leave them in SA. To break this news to our two legged children was a story of a different colour. You see, Lulu belongs to Cilliers and Luka belongs to Loest and the bonds of steel are strong.  For days we struggled with the how, where and when to tell them. I was absolutely convinced that they would be emotionally scarred for life and someday would tell their children the sad tale of “do you know what our parents did to us when we were young.” How on earth could we snatch them from everything that is known and comfortable and expect them to leave their pets behind!!

It had to be done though and one evening we sat them down and told them of our decision. After we outlined our reasons in our typical left-brained manner, with bullet points and all, a silence descended and then their right-brained reactions kicked in. Loest burst out in tears yelling Luka, Luka!! Cilliers just sat silently with his head bowed, stood up and walked out the room. In the short silences in between Loest gasping for air you could hear both our hearts shatter.

After days of talking, cajoling, explaining, hugging, drying off tears, talking through it and us sticking to our guns acceptance slowly began to emerge. I dared to think that they would survive it and maybe still think of us as loving parents.

Before I continue with my sad story of love and loss let me first introduce you to our 3 canine family members.

Rex was Kobus’s hunting dog, although they couldn’t hunt as often as both of them would have liked, and he has been a part of our family for 9 years. Pointers have an innate desire to bring you stuff, it is this singular trait that makes them such successful retrievers when working in the veld. When he was a puppy he would drag absolutely everything into the house and proudly present it to us. These gifts included big palm leaves that fell from the trees, sticks, stones and of course the obligatory shoes, which incidentally he never chewed. One day he, very proudly, gently deposited a dead rat on my lap and sat tail waggingly waiting for his profuse praise. It was only with great self-control that I refrained from showing my shrewish side....

Knowing that he was going to be a working dog we could never admonish him for this behaviour, it is after all what he was supposed to do. This trait came in handy at times. When Loest was a baby I would send Rex to go fetch me nappies from Loest’s room whenever I needed one, which he would then very obligingly do. Rex even dragged that big old doughnut cushion all around the house wherever I went so I could put Loest down when I needed to. I tried to teach him to change nappies but this, alas, was not successful. I think Rex, being his regal self, drew the line at that expectation. Rex’s biggest joy would be when the kids were playing in the swimming pool. They would throw in an empty bottle, stick or piece of a pool noodle and Rex would do an Olympic style dive, retrieve the object and bring it to them. This could keep them all busy for hours on end accompanied by the boys’s shrieks of laughter and Rex’s high-pitched yelps signifying his utter and complete ecstacy.

Lulu, the dainty little lady dachshund was Cilliers’ 5^th birthday present. This little lady is a force to be reckoned with and possess the characteristic stubbornness of the dachshund breed in droves. She is at heart a hunter and would not desist from hunting down a lizard on the stoep or trying to get her tiny little teeth into one of the gecko’s that kept our home spider free. She had a high pitched voice that would resonate throughout the neighbourhood whenever we returned home, be it after an absence of 5 minutes or 3 weeks. I’m relatively certain this was not because of overwhelming joy at seeing us again but instead a very loud admonishment to us for leaving her behind.

She is a fun loving little girl and her favourite game is chasing down the little red dot of a laser pointer. She would pester Cilliers with sharp little yelps and jumping up and down until he takes the laser pointer and plays with her. On cold winter nights she likes nothing more than cuddling up under a blanket on Cilliers’ lap and would growl menacingly if he dared to move. Despite being the smallest one in the house she was the undisputed matriarg and the big dogs never dared mess with her. She would very quickly assert her authority that would reduce the other dogs to quivering bags of jello.

In October 2009 Loest, then 4 years old, suddenly came to the realisation that Dad and Cilliers both have dogs and in no uncertain terms informed us that he needs one too. At this point in time we already had 3 dogs (we had another little dachshund which later died, but that’s a story for another day). There was no way that we could say no to this little strong willed boy and plans were set in motion for dog number four. Without actually knowing anything about the breed we decided on a basset hound. In one of Loest’s books was a picture of a brown, white and black puppy basset hound and we told him that he would get such a dog. What we didn’t realise is that bassets are usually only brown and white but if they also have black in their colouring they’re called tricoloured and are double the price of a bicoloured one. We started to look for a puppy and quickly realised that Loest was adamant that the puppy should look exactly like the one in the picture, i.e. a tricoloured one. Every bicoloured basset we saw he rejected as they didn’t match the picture in his book. Eventually we found one that met with Loest’s approval and Luka became family member number 8 at 6 weeks old. Right from the start Loest and Luka were inseparable and we stood amazed at the bond between them. They would play together, sleep together, eat together and very soon the flop-flop sound of Luka’s big feet and floppy ears became part of the symphony of our home. Luka is the naughtiest dog that we have ever owned. Don’t let those big ears fool you, they are only useless skin appendages with no connection to his brain whatsoever. Obedience was not his strong suit and quickly he became known as Luka the destroyer. He figured out how to open my cupboard and helped himself to a smorgasbord of my shoes. One pair he destroyed was a very expensive pair of shoes I received as a birthday present from one of my closest friends, whose love of shoes are legendary. On the particular day in question he opened my cupboard and zoned in on this specific pair. It was winter at the time so all my winter shoes were at the front but Luka bypassed all these wonderful leathery boots and sheepskin slippers and dragged out both of the fancy jewel encrusted heels and proceeded to destroy them with a tenacity not even the best pentathlon athlete possesses. It took me two weeks to gather the courage to tell my friend that her loving effort to drag me into the stylish 21^st century disappeared in a maelstrom of slobber.

Despite his destroyer mentality Luka stole all of our hearts, he is cuddly and loveable and liked nothing more than to snuggle. He would sleep on Loest’s bed, where else, but as soon as he heard our alarm clocks he would run into our room, jump on our bed with boundless exuberance, lie down between us and demanded his early morning dose of love. I would get another basset hound without even having to think twice about it, I’ll just make sure my cupboard can be locked securely.

After our decision to look for adoptive parents for these 3 monsters I utilised the power of SMSe and FB and soon we had reaction.

 Good friends on a hunting farm outside of Kimberley offered to take Rex. He was the first to go and our friends kept us updated with his progress. From the very first night Rex slept on the bed with their 8 year old son, who informed them the next morning that they now have to buy him a double bed as a single bed does not have enough space for the both of them. He has settled in nicely and we know he is with loving and caring people.

Lulu posed a bit of a problem. At first my sister-in-law took her but a week later returned her. She was fighting with their other dogs and their cats and just wouldn’t settle down. Kobus then took her to a farmer near Delmas and there she soon became a little farm dog who followed her new owner all around the farm.

One of Cilliers’ friends from school adopted Luka. They too live on a farm and Luka also settled in quickly. He was of course quickly up to his usual tricks and would help himself to whole loaves of bread from their farm shop and would kidnap all the bacon from the breakfast table.

To entrust our dear furry friends to others was no easy task but at least we know they are well looked after and loved.

The beginning 3 family and friends

People are a strange cosmic entity indeed.

Overall we received many positive remarks and lots of support from friends and family regarding our big move. Although most (I hope!) was sad to see us go they were very excited for us and sometimes we stood in awe at the support and love we received.

But, on the other hand, some people's reactions and opinions left me speechless.

There were the fair weatherners:

The commonest reaction was some or other stupid comment about how cold it was in Canada, be it from colleagues, the guy doing repairs at our house, parents at school, close friends, loose acquaintances or someone on Facebook. By the umpteenth time of encountering this comment I felt as if I would strangle the very next person to say something about the Canadian winter. The ironic thing is that none of the people making these idiotic statements have ever been there and nobody that's been there made a statement along these lines. I kept wondering why they don’t have anything else to say that’s more positive or uplifting. Now to be fair, I do realize that's it probably a natural thing to say and that it is a perception about Canada in sun drenched SA but really, if you can't be supportive at least be a bit more creative!
I caught myself trying to explain over and over again that the Canadians are geared for the winter, that their houses are more comfortable in winter than ours are in our mild winters, that we are going to live in the southern part which is not as cold as people think it is, that 30 million people survive it every year, that the Guelph summers are hotter than Durban, that winter does not last the whole year, that, contrary to popular belief, there is a sun up there too, that we will be learning to do all kinds of fun winter activities, that we won't have to worry about skin cancer, that I can save on sunblock and anti-perspirant, that I won't have to worry about the pigmentation on my face getting any worse, that I can eat as much as I want as the winter clothes will hide all my rolls and that it can't be that bad if so many people immigrate to the Canadian shores every year. As soon as I started with all my counter arguments a veil would drop and I could see their ears and brains shorting out!

If only they would understand that the weather is in any case at the bottom of the list of  things that I worry or wonder about.

There were the interrogators:

Some friends would subject us to gruelling interrogations that would do any special ops interrogators proud, this was pure emotional torture and the only thing missing was the bright lights, the pliers and the shocky thingy with wires. They would ask us if we thought about this, have we thought about that, how are we going to handle this or that, have we thought it through carefully, will our marriage survive it, are the kids going to be OK...blah blah blah. Do they think we are children and that we woke up one morning, looked at each other and said Oh, it sounds like a good idea to go to Canada, lets go. Nooooo, of course not. We thought it through, chewed on it, spat it out, chewed it again, digested it, sat on it, looked at it from all angles, turned it around, pummelled it to death and only then made our decision. We are, after all, adult forty-somethings you know.

There were the ignorers:

Some friends chose to ignore the subject just completely. They would hear of our plans, make a couple of comments (these invariably included statements about the cold) and just flatly refused to ever ask us anything about it. These are the ones that never called to hear how it was going, how were the kids feeling or any of the other things that you would kind of expect from people that you thought were caring friends. Perhaps jealousy, perhaps a total inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes??........I haven't got the foggiest and this will probably always remain a complete and utter mystery. 

And then there were the Great Ones:

Then there were the supportive and positive friends, colleagues and acquaintances. These were our rocks throughout the whole process. Some have gone through the same process, some were going through it at the same time that we were and some are just super dooper people that really cared. To these my heartfelt thanks for being there every step of the way. Thank you for the phone calls, the dropping in, the going out to dinner, the messages on Facebook, the quick SMS and the quick hug at school. Thank you for still welcoming our boys for playdates even though you must have felt that you wanted to start severing the ties between your kids and ours.Thank you for not always asking how I was feeling and instead just talking about every day normal stuff, you had the personal savvy to realise that I needed any sense of normality that I could find amongst all the turmoil and that sometimes I did not want to talk about moving. Thank you for bringing food while we were packing up, you even brought paper plates and disposable cutlery because you knew that all ours were already in boxes. 

 Thank you to our family that has been so positive and supportive all the way.Thank you to my brother and his family for giving us their house to sleep in while we were packing up and they were on holiday. Thank you to our parents that bore their sadness in stoic silence and never let us see them cry because they knew we wouldn't be able to handle it.

The beginning 2

Back in SA we had to break the news to everybody and get this huge gigantic ball rolling. Of course it was December and with SA going into shut down mode we couldn't do much until January. December was spent telling everybody and making lists and lists and lists. The lists got written, re-written, underdone, overdone and re-done, again and again and again. The colossal task of packing up a life began to dawn on us and there were many times when we thought we were crazy, and if we weren't yet we feared that we were soon to become complete nutters.

January 2012 came and we shot out of the starting blocks quicker than Hussein Bolt on his best day. Within the first week we put the house on the market and visited an emigration consultant. With the help of  this consultant we got all the unabridged birth certificates, passports, unabridged marriage certificate, letters from the Department of Transport and Police Clearance Certificates within 2 weeks. What sterling service we received from this guy!!

By the end of January all the papers were collected, stamped, verified, copied and scanned and on 31 January 2012 Kobus handed the lot in at the Canadian High Commission in Pretoria. Now the big wait started. On 17 February we went for our medical examinations and on 20 March 2012 we collected our passports, all ready with work permits for us and study permits for the boys. It was exactly 7 weeks since we handed in our applications until we had our passports back and ready to go.
Our plane tickets got booked with D-day being 6 April 2012, exactly 360 years after Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape. He arrived on a Dutch boat and we were leaving on the Dutch airline, luckily the plane's a bit faster than the Drommedaris!!

During this time we sorted out the house. It is absolutely ridiculous how many things one can accumulate in 11 years of living in the same house!! I’m sure stuff is actually an as yet undiscovered life form that breeds and slowly and surreptitiously creeps into every available nook and cranny when your back's turned. Forget pest control, scientists should devise ways to curb stuff distribution, perpetuation and accumulation!!
This is just the go away stuff from my clothing cupboards.....see what I mean?

We gave away anything that we weren’t going to need or no longer wanted and divided the rest of the stuff up into two categories, those that we still wanted/needed but can do without for the 2 months that it's going to take the container to make the Atlantic voyage and those things that we were going to need during those 2 months. The plan is to stay in a hotel in Guelph while waiting for our container during which time we will hunt for a house, get connected with phones, get the boys into school, get cars etc.....
In between all the big decisions the rest of the small things that form part of your life needs to be cancelled, transferred, changed etc. DSTV, insurance, cars, cell phone contracts, e-mail addresses, Post Office, Mweb, Telkom, municipal accounts,clothing accounts, school, work,....the list goes on and on and on and on......
The difficult thing for me was the fact that your life did not suddenly grind to a halt. We were both still working full steam and the kids were still going to school and having all their usual demands for attention and the household still had to keep on running. Now suddenly there were just a thousand extra things that needed doing. Very quickly I learned to do only what needed to be done on that particular day and not think about what needed to be done on the following day or following week. During this time I would go stark raving mad and in serious need of some wine and sedatives if anyone even dared to tell me how busy their lives are!! You, deary, have no idea what busy means!

The beginning 1

Our big adventure started in November 2011 when the company that hubby works for asked us if we would consider relocating to Canada from South Africa.
When Kobus (husband) phoned me with the news I immediately fell from my chair in the throes of a violent panic attack, started screaming in my head and answered quite calmly..."O gaats". Roughly translated this means something like "oh boy".

Now one thing you all need to understand clearly is that we had no reason for wanting to leave SA and no pressing desire to do so either. I always said that there is no way that I would want to live anywhere where there is no campfire or an impala within 50kms from me....Ugh, me and my big mouth!
But now suddenly we were faced with the opportunity of going places, opening up the world for our kids, learning to ski, living in a heated house and freezing our butts off.

Very quickly we decided to go over there and have a look. They call this a LSD trip, look, see and decide. During the first week of December 2011 we got ourselves on a plane and landed in Toronto. We rented a Jeep at the airport and then had to make our way to Guelph, our maybe future home which is about a 100km to the west of Toronto. The first challenge was driving on the wrong side of the road. I kept whispering "hou regs, hou regs" ("keep right, keep right") and twice Kobus almost opened the car door in an attempt to change gears. This in itself was funny as it was a vehicle with an automatic transmission and gear changes while on the highway was not called for. Obviously we drive manual transmission cars in SA. Technology was however on our side and the trusty GPS managed to get us to our hotel in Guelph.

We made contact with a realtor (an ex-South African) who took us to view some houses. The first question I asked him was to show me the furnace of the first house that we visited. We descended into the bowels of the house and there stood this monstrous contraption that allegedly ensures that the whole house is toasty and warm. I still have no idea how this thing works!!

I stood there wondering what on earth am I doing here when I saw the washing machine and tumble dryer in the adjacent room. Immediately I started sweating, getting palpitations and felt my knees go weak at the prospect of having to figure out how these machines work. In a tiny voice I told Kobus that if he's looking for me I'll be down here doing the, dare I say it, the laundry.
My overall impression of the homes that we saw were that they were very small compared to our SA homes. I wondered how on earth I was going to fit in all our big and bulky furniture. Then, of course, I was reminded friendly but firmly that I have to keep in mind that I have to clean the house on my own and then, as if by magic, the houses suddenly took on gigantic proportions.

One day we were driving around with the realtor and drove past a school. We drove into the parking area, I wound down my window and took some photographs. Some 7 minutes later a Christmas tree pulled us over, all decked out in flashing lights. A big and very imposing state trooper approached and with a stern face asked us to identify ourselves and explain what we were doing. Apparently some concerned citizen saw me photographing the school and phoned the police, probably wondering about possible terrorists or a disgruntled parent wanting to kidnap a child. I was having visions of being thrown in a Canadian jail and all hopes of being a law abiding Canadian citizen vanished. After explaining who we were and what we were doing he asked us, by this time very friendly, if we were going to photograph other schools in the vicinity, upon which I replied in my most subservient voice “not anymore”. The trooper smiled and sent us on our merry way.

The other big decision we had to make was where to send the boys to school. Canada has very strict zoning regulations and the children must go to the school assigned to the area where you live. This posed a bit of a problem. If you decide on a certain school you have to look for a house to rent in that area. We visited two schools while there, one was a public school and the other a Christian school. Both impressed us a lot but in the end we decided to go with the Christian school, Guelph Community Christian School, the obvious reason being that we are Christians and would like our boys to have a Christ centred education, the second reason being that this is a private school and is thus not bound by the zoning laws.

Eventually we had to make the BIG decision, do we make the jump or not. We came to the startling realisation that Guelph has roads, cars and shops. There are actually houses to live in and people here too have fun and live their lives. We were sitting in our hotel room staring at each other with big round eyes. Kobus said it’s now decision time, after a pregnant silence that stretched to forever we both started to smile and said “Yes, lets do it!!” We both felt that this was just too big an opportunity to pass on. We would rather make the jump and go back to SA if we don’t like it than looking back 5-10 years from now and wondering why we didn’t even try.