.

My work is going well and I have been put forward to manage a three year health care project for the New Brunswick Dept of Health (same people who interviewed me but didn’t move quick enough to make an offer). It would mean that I wouldl not be sent overseas etc for three years (which is nice).

 .

Gemma is settling in well at Fredericton High School and finding it easier now she is in classes with the same age group (probably too easy if the truth be known). She is scoring well on her class tests and starting to venture out of her comfort zone in this huge sprawling high school (it used to house 3500 pupils and was one of the largest in the Commonwealth). She still has to discover the Library and Cafeteria!

 .

Kathryn is going from strength to strength; she is studying at the New Brunswick Community College to get her Canadian High School Graduation Certificate as the University of New Brunswick (UNB) didn’t recognise her BTEC and AS Level qualifications. The good thing is she is studying the core subjects again and improving her grades scoring 80%+ regularly on her English tests and the same for Math’s. Her chemistry seems to be moving to another level as she now has a great grounding from studies in UK so here she is picking up on all the nuances of chemical equations and is very enthusiastic about telling us all chemically how close alcohol is to anti-freeze.

.

We have ordered our three piece suite. Well a pair of sofa’s, a three and a two seater (called a loveseat over here) plus our appliances are all set for delivery on Dec 16^th, the container has arrived and has been put in storage until the 15^th and will clear customs in Fredericton on the morning of the 16^th for immediate delivery to the house. The 16^th December is going to be one crazy day!

.

I think we are all still in the honeymoon period there has been no emotional crunch yet. Infact there has been no time for it.

 .

Our Next steps

Who Knows …..  Preparing for the winter, it has been below zero for all week and today at 11am it is -7 snow is predicted later in December. We have David’s works Christmas do to go to on the evening of the 16^th at the Beaverbrook hotel for a casino night (I can imagine we will be so tired losing money will be easy).

All of our Christmas cards and presents have been posted so we can relax on that front, just ours to buy now.

Our bags were delivered to our cabin the next day (6th Nov) while we were out sight seeing. We found them sitting the lounge when we got back from a brisk walk around Odell Park.

.

We have been in Fredericton, New Brunswick a grand total of ten days and how things have moved in those few days. We have become permanent residents, exchanged our old paper driving licences for new shiny new Canadian one’s, registered for Medicare (their NHS) and also for Social Insurance Numbers (there is something nice about asking for a SIN number ). You must have a SIN before you can start work and they prioritised mine getting one allocated within 48 hours!

.

The weather has been good, with cold crisp autumn mornings (or fall mornings as they say over here) and generally dry days, snow is forecast for this afternoon. People have said it is often more damp and dreary than this in November.

.

We attended a very cold Remembrance Day parade in Fredericton city centre on Nov 11^th. Remembrance day is a public/bank holiday in Canada.

Mounties on the Rememberance Day Parade. It was very similar to something in the old UK with scouts, cubs and brownies marching in the parade to the cenotaph for prayers.

From left to right, Kathryn, Gemma and Julie on Rememberance Day. I have seen more Union Jacks here that I would see in the UK. Notice the chemist shop behind as a rememberance day window display!

.

I had two interviews on the 8^th, and on the 10^th I secured a job as a senior project manager for Xwave, the largest IT Consultancy in Atlantic Canada…. It sounds impressive anyway. (www.xwave.com) I start on the 21^st November (no rest for the wicked). Dress is business casual with dress down on Fridays? Benefits include 3 weeks paid holiday, health and dental care insurance for the family, retirement savings pension plan, bonus scheme and free coffee all week plus free donuts and muffins on Friday afternoons (oh no not more temptation)

.

House hunting has been a slog, with the girls have far more say over what sort of house we are going to live in that ever before! We finally found one we all love and we are making an offer on a Cape Cod style house today with an impressive asking price of $239,900 or £116,456. This house is in the Island View district of Fredericton about 10 minutes drive to the city / town centre and for details of the house. We will enclose photos in the next update (providing they accept the offer).

Today we have an appointment at the Fredericton High School for Gemma (hoping to get her in to start next Monday (21^st) so I can take her to school on the way to work.

.

Julie has been getting used to driving left hand drive cars again although this time it is in an automatic and the car is as big as a whale! Below is a photo of Julie in the kitchen, dining / lounge of the cabin/chalet.

Kathryn has been using her English accent to good effect and demonstrating how nice she is to everyone. Both Gemma and Kathryn have been cruising the Regent Mall and shopping, typically Gemma has brought the most inappropriate combat style crop top and trousers (nice one for the winter) cool in more ways than one! I can see Gemma being the first person in Atlantic Canada suffering from a frost bitten tummy button. There was a full cooker in the cabin but only one ring worked. I never knew how Jules prepared sunday dinners in a single oven with one ring... She is really getting into this pioneer spirit

Kathryn sitting patiently waiting to be let in after Julie has cleaned the cabin (again).

We were excited and sad at the same time; here we were making ourselves homeless, and jobless starting a new life. We made friends and family promise not to come and see us off at the airport because that would make it harder for us at such an emotional time. I guess we felt we must keep the stiff upper lip even when leaving the country.

The checkin at the airport with 8 big suitcases and 4 rather well stuffed hand luggage was a little exercise in repacking to get the weight of the suitcases even. They didn't charge us for being overweight. We climbed aboard our Air Canada flight tired (lack of sleep) and me trying to cheer the girls up. They were more effected by leaving than I was.

We had planned to go through immigration in Halifax when the flight landed at St John's in Newfoundland for an hour and we had to rush through it there. As we landed it started to snow ... Magical.

The immigration was fine and even though I had this big wad of cash with me the immigration office didnt bother to count he just said thats ok and after completing all the forms and receiving our little booklets we were here. Landed immigrants. It seemed pretty strange.

Next stop Halifax, where we now had a 4 hour lay over to wait for the flights to Fredericton. We managed to get on the earlier flight to Fredericton, where we had a huge GMC Envoy Van (17 MPG) waiting to help us carry all our luggage. The plane was a little thing seating about 20 people. I warned the girls not to go to the loo at the rear of the plane otherwise we would tip up :~) at least it raised a laugh.

It's now 7pm Atlantic time and 11pm GMT so we are getting tired and on arriving at Fredericton's little airport we found we only had hand luggage. Luckily for us Julie is always prepared and makes sure that we pack our hand luggage with some overnight stuff for just such occassions.

The guy at the luggage counter is very friendly and tells us it will be on a later flight. I cannot complain too much because I changed the flights and I expect they took one look at the luggage and thought "holy cow, it will never leave the ground with all that and people too". 

So we loaded our four now seemingly little carry on luggage into our HUGE Envoy van to drive the 15kms to our two bedroomed accommodation . The "Holyoake Motel and chalets" on route 102. Easy drive and shock awaited us. We discovered that on the internet the words "extremely clean" when used to describe   accommodation are relative. It totally depends on your personal definition of clean! Julie decided to clean the toilet and bathroom several times before letting us in to us it.

We planned to leave October 4^th when suddenly the house sale was thrown into confusion. Don't you hate the UK house selling approach. It is so stressful on everyone anyway the completion date was put out another month! That meant eating into our finances.

I took some odd jobs labouring with a kitchen fitter to get some small cash boosts, hardly worth talking about. But they helped with the shopping.

We rearranged our tickets for the 5th of November 2005. We had to tell all our usual Bonfire Party attendees that there would be no party this year. I think we have held one every year since 1997. They had become quite a well attended get together. Julie's chicken curry was reknown around Surrey. Perhaps it was that they came for rather than watching me attempt to put on a firework display without setting fire to the shed or myself?

At the end of June 2005 we received a letter from the embassy. Julie waited until everyone was together at dinner to open it and there were big smiles all around. We didn’t need to attend an interview and could arrange our medicals!

Our medicals took nearly another month to complete…You forget that perhaps the doctor will be busy and not able to see you all on Monday morning!

We arranged them with a Doctor in Slough. We were all nervous but he was very good at putting us at ease.

Then we gambled.  I needed to give three months notice at work and resigned when the letter arrived. if the application failed or we were not ready for a September departure, I would need to find a new job! We also put our house on the market.

Then came another letter requesting me to complete a further medical examine on his knees (I takes medication for my knees). This was completed and faxed back to the original doctor who sends it to the embassy.

We had a few nervous moments and in hindsight wouldn’t recommend selling your house and resigning your job unless you plan to move anyway.

Today I received an email informing us “Congratulations you have been accepted” that was all we needed to hear. I actually left my job on the the 31^st August and rather than getting another job  we decided  to throw everthing into preparing for emigrating.

We concluded the sale of the house and trudged off to the car boot sales to sell lots of things that we have hoarded over the years!