To blog or not to blog....

Right. Here I am, sitting at my desk for the third evening in a row, glass of wine at arm’s reach, trying – once again – to blog, I’ve written & re-written too many times. It’s all about choosing a theme, for me.

Blogging is just not blogging if you don’t grab a theme of the last few weeks and ponder on it. That’s the problem though, that’s been the delay; the theme of the last few weeks has been a sombre one, not all lows but a considerable amount more of the low stuff than has been so far in our blogging history.

It’s not that the shine has worn off, nor that the people have become less friendly, less unbelievably generous with their kindness, nor is it that the house has become small or the scenery less dramatic or awe inspiring, it’s none of the above, Canada is still amazing Canada and we’re still blown away by our move… but. You knew it was coming, that ‘but’, it was staring us in the face too and quite ridiculous to think the bed of roses would smell so beautiful for every second of every day. This is real life, right?

Through those perfect rose-tinted glasses, every now and then a shard of loneliness seeps in; we are, in the truest sense of the word, pretty lonely at times. We have some good friends already – goodness only knows what we’d do without them, but there is no way of avoiding the fact that we tucked our lives up into ten previously-owned suitcases and left our comfortable lives, our family, our friends, oh so many wonderful friends, and moved half way across the world to a rather lesser-known world with only each other for comfort on ‘rainy days’…

I guess that Christmas and all it’s ‘familyness’ (I’m allowed to make up words, it’s my blog) was always going to bring it home rather rapidly that we didn’t actually have any family close by, and I also know that after the last year of preparation and the last three months of screeching through life in top gear was bound to slow down at some point and reality was going to hit, we just didn’t duck in time and some days in the last week or two have been pretty hard for the grown- ups in this equation… the smaller ones (with one or two emotional exceptions) seem pretty unaffected, so far.

The book (our emigration ‘bible’)(don’t snigger) says we all experience Culture Shock in one guise or another, let me elaborate, if I may. I’ll try to keep it brief:

Stage One. The honeymoon stage, lasting from a few days or a few weeks, uses words like ‘positive’ and ‘euphoric’ ‘insulated from everyday life’… I think we can safely say we experienced this stage.

Stage Two. Rejection or Distress stage. The complete opposite of the above. A period of crisis. Starting to deal with the normal pressures of life – except that this life does not resemble your life. Possible regression into your culture (what do they mean, like my desperation to find the equivalent to Jonathan Ross & a curry on a Friday night, never..…?) Seeking out other expatriates (not on your nelly)… only good things back home are remembered…

Stage Three. The flight Stage (“because of the overwhelming desire to escape”). This section uses words like ‘Depressed’ ‘Angry’ ‘Impatience’ ‘Focus on negative aspects’ ‘Sadness’ ‘Incompetence’… I’m not going to go on, you get the picture… it’s not a nice place to be.

You see, Andy & I have discussed this at length (as you might imagine..!) and we have followed this ‘stage’ path, albeit on a fairly minor (although still quite distressing) level… We accept that we are not coming into a brand new culture, with a different language or an entirely different way of life, it is, however, still unbelievably exhausting to have to re-learn everything you took for granted. We are quite firmly, placed at Stage three, having experienced one & two almost in-sync over the last eight weeks. Somebody said to me recently (in jest… don’t want to make them feel bad!) that some people are never satisfied… we are so satisfied, truly, we are, satisfied, fortunate, living life to the full, don’t want to come home, but still we can feel frustration… incompetence – (that’s my one, Oh yes, I forget by the hour that I am a competent business woman, wandering around here sometimes like a ditsy blonde without even trying to engage my brain, it’s so befuddled with everything else), and homesick. That’s Andy’s department, and mine I suppose if only I was to admit it…

So there you have it. What’s that? You want to know about Stage Four? Oh yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel, in fact we’ve even been tasting the air over the last few days, yes, Stage Four is much more like it… and we know we’re nearly there;

Stage Four. Recovery Stage. Integration, adaption, “the environment doesn’t change, what changes is your attitude towards it..” You attain more competence in your surroundings (I’m still not measuring my butter in ‘cups’ for goodness sakes.. what’s up with weight??!, OK, perhaps I’m still at Stage Three..) Feel more ‘at home’ realise the place has good and bad points like any other…

Yes, we dip in and out of Stages Three & Four, at ease, no real stress but just a realisation that this is kind of ‘it’, what we worked for, saved for, fought for no less, you all know what a struggle it was, we did it & we have it, so no more complaining (that’s what my book says, think yourself positively out of the negative.. it works, really) we just wanted you to know that there are lows to these highs, what goes up must come down and eventually re-balance ( – I made that bit up) – it’s the law of physics and we’re at its mercy…

Now what is that scratching under my house? I think we may have visitors… large visitors… tune in again soon :)

Bundle up, it's cold out there...

A month? Never… really? Yup. A month it is. We have been ‘landed immigrants’ of this beautiful land for one whole month. Our eleven suitcases decanted & lined up in the garage, our home has slowly filled room by room, we’ve bought everything from tin openers to TV’s and everything in between. It’s amazing what you take for granted, years of growing a home, I need a paperclip – Oh we don’t have any.

As I sit, the children and Andy are watching a movie and the roast is bubbling away, the house is full of competing smells from the oven to the Christmas tree – I’ve never had a Christmas tree that smelled – and smelled good! At first I thought someone was smoking marijuana in the basement, seriously, I couldn’t understand what this massive smell was, hanging in the air. Did you know they could smell so strongly? It’s beautiful. The tree, quite the most perfect Christmas tree I ever did see.

We looked forward to the tree buying day… they grow here all over the place (funny that!) Christmas tree ‘we cut’ signs everywhere. We just had to do that, experience the ‘cutting’ – an “I want that one” moment, if you get my drift. Off scurries the man in dungarees and a checked shirt, hands so rough that he probably hasn’t even heard of Swarfega…. (that’s for girls) off he kerthumps with his saw, one zip & it’s yours. Timbeeeeeeer.

Well, as it goes, we had none of that! We did try, we drove in, looked at the trees all lined up waiting for their fate (I swear they drooped deliberately) felt completely out of our depth and then drove out again, wheel spinning out of the driveway like Thelma & Louise – straight to the local supermarket & bought our beautifully coiffed, stunningly scented, Canadian Christmas Tree. Cop out? Well, probably, but there’s only so many times a day you can blame your naivety on being “English”, sometimes you just want to ‘be’.

So, it’s here, it’s installed and it’s perfect. Twinkling away in the corner – the corner that was seriously lacking a piece of furniture, no need for that now for another few weeks. The house is positively Christmassy, it’s perfect. Andy borrowed a ladder from a kindly neighbour and spent a hilarious hour or two in the dark (he’s determined to be the ‘weird English neighbour’) installing the newly-bought (temperamental) Christmas lights onto pre-installed hooks on the fascia boards and plugged into pre-installed sockets – solely for the purpose of Christmas lights – switched indoors. They don’t just do Christmas here they do Christmas BIG – and I love it! Even the lawns peppered with herds of illuminated reindeer and “Happy Holidays” signs don’t make me recoil like they do in England, what’s happened to me? Aren’t I supposed to be all English and snobby about it? I just get into the spirit of it here and somehow it’s so inoffensive, it’s for the kids & they love it too. Bah Humbug. I’m not buying an inflatable snowman for anyone and you can’t make me. I’m only a teeny bit concerned that our house light are blue (my choice) and red (Amélie’s) making our roof apex look like it’s waiting for the ‘white’ to advertise the Brits have arrived. Toe curling thought…

So, a month of shopping, flat packed furniture, cars and trucks. A month of new schools, bus trauma and PAC (PTA) meetings. A month of old friends and new friends, of introductions and explanations, and a month of finding our feet – one step at a time. What’s been the hardest bit? I guess we’d all say different things. For Amélie, probably the forced independence of having to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ of bus rides without mummy and big schools, although she’d say she loves it, she’s made great friends already and thinks her teacher is wonderful. It must be pretty scary to be six here sometimes. For Tom, well, I’ll come back to Tom. For Andy, I’d say the worry of work, maybe.. ever the worrier, and lack of security – balanced out by the wonders of modern technology shrinking the globe and allowing him to continue to work for ever-faithful UK clients. Money out, out, out, he clutches his heart with every purchase…! For me? The hardest bit has probably been having to absorb so much of the ‘different’ all at once. I’m the kind of girl that has to stop and slowly take it all in, allowing my senses to build up the bigger picture; I’m easily overwhelmed with detail and emigration, new culture, new everything just isn’t conducive with my modus operandi. When you realise that a simple trip to Sainsbury’s when you grab the tea bags and the gravy powder without thinking is all out of the window. Now each & everything on the list has to be scrutinised, each label read, each price considered, nothing looks the same, you can’t just run and grab you have to read so many words, who would have thought that shopping would be so darn challenging. So that’s my hardest bit, and my take on Andy & Amélie’s, how about Tom? My portable mini-me. He is seemingly untouched by any of it. He is so unbelievably flexible and 'comme si comme ça' about the whole move. He has absorbed Canada like he lived here for the last ten of his nine years. I am truly amazed by his unflustered, pragmatic approach. He is the ‘head down, bottom up’ kind of kid that I never really saw in our Greatham bubble, he has just got on with it. When quizzed tonight about his best bit and hardest bit he shrugged his shoulders and said “..well, I guess the hardest bit was on my way to school on the first day worrying what my teacher was going to be like – and the best bit was when I arrived to see that she was great”. That’s my boy. Chill out mum, it’s no big deal, it’s not like we moved country or anything…

So, the weather has begun to turn, Autumn is fading, the beautiful leaves are all but gone, the temperatures are steadily dropping and the pool hasn’t thawed now for over a week. It’s minus nineteen tonight… We’ve had a peppering of snow with the promise of more on the way soon and have invested in much more sensible winter footwear. Christmas is around the corner and we’ll be stuffing our pockets full of tissues for the children’s school concert later this week, the big inauguration – never the same unless you have mascara streaming down your cheeks. Every time we pull up the driveway in my ‘van’ or Andy’s ‘truck’ it feels more like home, we miss it when we’re not here and Jules and Andy are bedding in, thinking of our family and friends a lot and finally being able to take my mother’s advice seriously – we’ll never go out without a shovel & a blanket in the car, somehow it seems a bit more appropriate here – thanks Mum!