British Expats - Moved: At last we've arrived

Well we've been in Calgary, well Airdrie to be exact for 2 weeks now. It's absolutely flown by but we are so happy to be here.

Have to say the whole process wasn't quite as difficult as we expected. PR came through within 2 months (phew, as we had already booked flights back in April!).

On the flight side, we flew with Thomas Cook booked through Canadian Affair. We upgraded, which gave us an extra 10kg of luggage each (we were 20kg over the extra anyway but they never batted an eyelid!) We were the first onto the plane. We had also pre-selected our seats so we knew where we would be sitting. Had plenty of room (me being a larger lady could still move around in my seat!), the food was very nice, the drinks were free, we had an extra 2 movies to watch and the lead steward even wished us well in her closing announcement.We landed at Calgary airport armed with every form/letter we had ever filled in/sent. Went straight through to Immigration, a very nice immigration officer took about 15mins to complete the paperwork and we walked towards baggage reclaim with "welcome to Canada" ringing in our ears.

Baggage was already there when we got through, so then onto another immigration officer who checked through our lists, stamped them, took copies which she gave back to us and then again "welcomed us to Canada".

Altogether a good experience. Nowhere near as stressful as we were expecting.

Since being here we have got our SIN numbers, moved into a rented house. Have had to put deposits down on the utilities but then again I expected that. We have sorted House contents insurance through Johnson (saw the threads on here), for 40,000$ of cover it cost us $244. They gave us a quote on a 2005 Jeep Liberty of $800, reasonable I thought. The only 2 blips have been with Rogers, ordered 2 cell phones online, they confirmed the order took the money from our UK Mastercard. I called them when I hadn't heard anything for 6days only to be told they don't accept foreign credit cards online (although they do in the stores!) and the order had been cancelled. I hadn't been told and am still waiting for the money to be refunded. The other is the lease on the Jeep, we have applied to take over an 11month lease and currently it has taken a week and we still haven't heard anything. Other than these 2 things it's been a breeze, everything is as we expected, just waiting for our container which should arrive sometime next week. We absolutely love it here and was definitely the right thing for us to do.

Looking forward to posting our 1 yr canniversary now.

Hope this helps anyone in the process.

KAT