Life can be such a whirlwind

It has been a crazy month. When we started the planning of the wedding, I honestly thought the most difficult part would be planning the wedding and completing the immigration papers. While these two major tasks are now behind us, the looming hunt for an apartment and a job seem to be really big walls to scale. Either way, we carry on, putting one foot in front of the other and hope by the time we get to Christmas, that we will have come out the other side!

So just what have we been up to?? We spend the final 2 weeks in Athens meeting up with people, packing the bags, gathering Greek recipes and booking airline tickets. While I was in good spirits about our trip home, Akis was sad to be saying good-bye. I can't say that I blame him and I would probably have been the same if the roles were reversed.

We flew with British Airways, and it was actually a pretty good flight home. We landed in Toronto and needed to pass Immigration. Armed with lots of documents, the whole process of getting Akis into the country actually wasn't that painful. After explaining that we are married, that we already applied for Permanent Residence, and proving that we paid our fees, he was granted the Visitor Record. So he is here for 6 months ~ wahoo. He does have a ticket to go back to Athens in January, just in time for his Name Day.

After passing Immigration, we realized that we had LOTS of luggage, which isn't surprising given the move. We opted to keep one of the bags at the airport and even with this, we filled Chauffeur Craig's car to the brim. We stayed with the Lavery/Loveys for a few days and checked out the Job Fair in Toronto. While that wasn't quite what I was expecting, I did get some valuable information regarding recruiters, and was able to catch up with some 'Y' gals... well they are both 'Y' gals now. In addition to this, Akis also had some lawn cutting lessons and trips to Tim Hortons. How can you go wrong with that?

Riding in the back seat with Aunt Carrie to go to Timmy's.... Yummy Timmy's.

Liz graciously offered to shuttle us from Peterborough to Bayfield where we stayed with her and her hubby Athen and wee Katerina for a few days. Akis was excited about the trip to Bayfield, Athen is a Australian/Greek and he was able to hear Greek yet again. With Athens Aussie accent, I could only make out a couple of words, which makes me realize how difficult it can be to hear a language with other accents.






The final stop on the ON tour was to Dad's house. We spent the last few days at home and some great weather. We went to Pumpkinfest ~ will write another post for this, you won't believe the size of winning pumpkin ~ and caught up with some friends and family. Taxi Jim was available and he and Jane graciously took us to the airport for our flight to Vancouver.

We arrived in Vancouver knowing that we had 2 tasks left on our long list ~ a home and a job. My friend Al was a super star and has allowed us to use her apartment as a home base for a few days. Task 1 was to get the car from storage, get is serviced, Air Care'd (emission tested) and insured. Oh yeah, did I mention she needed a good wash??? This turned out to be a whole day affair, but at least we were mobile.




Task 2: Find a home. I had been checking out Craigslist before arriving in Vancouver and had a couple of appointments to look at 2 bedroom homes. We went out on Friday to our appointments and found that many of these homes were going to be a fair distance from any stores, restaurants, etc. So we shifted plans and started to look at apartments. During this hunt we discovered that I would need to provide references to the new potential landlords. It had been about 4 years since I have lived in Vancouver and wasn't sure if I was going to be able to track down my last landlord. As it turns out, while browsing Craigslist, there was a listing for my old apartment building, and a showing at 11am. We went to the viewing to ask if Ann would be a reference, and as it turns out, we viewed the apartment and yes, we are moving into my old building. We are on the ground floor which means that outside our patio door, we have a larger area and some grass. There is no view of the mountain, but hey, I guess we can live with that. Move in date is November 1.

Final task: Find a job... While this one is still in progress, I did receive an email about a potential job from a recruiter. I understand that this is far from being hired by someone, at least I have skills which someone wants. We'll see how we progress next week with the final task. We'll keep you posted.