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.