Week 2

After 2 weeks we are finally settling into day to day live in Calgary   We arrived just as the cold and snow did, so it's right in at the deep (freeze) end for us! 

We have finally secured an apartment right beside Heritage C-train station, this location makes it an easy commute for Stu to get to his work in the south east and handy for me to get downtown and anywhere else I need to be.

Getting the apartment was a bit of a nightmare, firstly we found that if you don't move fast when looking to rent someone else will get it.. we met some lovely folks from Ireland on the train last night who said the same, in one case they had made an appointment to see a place and it had gone before they had managed to get there! so you need to be on your toes. When you find somewhere most will ask for a deposit to take the property off the market, then they will do some credit checks and get references - this poses a bit of a problem when you have just got off the plane and have no credit history in Canada! we nearly lost out on ours because of this - but a bit of quick thinking and a copy of our UK credit reports from mycreditexpert.co.uk seemed to satisfy them - so we move in on the 1st December.

This is where our next problem starts.... the apartment is unfurnished. we have furniture being shipped from the UK, but it's not even left yet! We've been told this will arrive in Vancouver on 24th December, it then has to clear customs and then be railroaded to Calgary, so we don't expect this any time before mid January! so this weekend, we're off to Ikea to get a sofa bed which fulfills at least 2 major furnishing requirements - sitting and sleeping...until our gear arrives it's either paper plates, takeaways or eating out every night - i reckon eating out is the best option - after all this is still being covered by the relocation allowance, so we will get the money spent back!! mind you if we go for this option i'd be as well telling the shipping folks to keep all my clothes where they are as they ain't gonna fit!