A House, A Car and A Visit to A Beach!

It's late here and I should be sleeping but I thought that seeing as I haven't written for a few days I should otherwise you might think we'd dropped off the face of the Earth.

Yes, we finally have a place to lay our heads! It's been a long road but we have finally negotiated for a short term house - 2 months. The house is brand new and we can move in tomorrow. In fact, it's so new that it's not yet finished so we will put up with the builders for a few weeks. The gib dust will make us feel at home, having just been through a renovation. It's not really that bad, they are just putting the finishing touches on, like installing the gas fire which they did today.

Anyway, it will give us somewhere to live for the next couple of months until we get jobs and decide where exactly we would like to live.

So, that's the house. I'll post a photo when I have one but forgot to take my camera today.

A Car!

This is a frustrating story. We have spent a couple of days this week looking at cars. We have decided that we would like an SUV, some of you will laugh! The roads are so much bigger here and there are a gazillion trucks so we thought something bigger would be good - also we need to consider the snow. Okay, so you're still laughing - for those of you who don't know, in NZ I always cursed the SUV owners because, driving a car that was low to the ground, I couldn't see past them. Now, I understand why they drive them.

Anyway, enough of that. We test drove a few - yes I actually drove on the wrong side of the road! We decided on two, a Nissan Xtrail which felt good to drive and had all the extras but it was black and I'm not so keen on that - it's been so hot here, the idea of getting into a black car just doesn't appeal. We also liked the Pontiac Torrent which is a nice looking car and felt nice to drive also. It has heaps of room in the back for our long legged daughter.

We agreed on prices for both - around the $18,000 mark with tax and on-road charges - you have to add all sorts of things to the price so if you think you're buying a $15,000 car, you end up paying about $18,000.

I rang an insurance agent only to be told that you can't register or insure a car without an Ontario drivers licence so we couldn't complete the deal! You can imagine how frustrating that was!

The most frustrating thing that we've found here is that no-one seems to know what the hell is going on! Every person you ask gives you a different answer - even if they work for the same company! Anyway, so the end result is that we now have to sit our drivers licences to be able to buy a car. So we've arranged to rent a car for another 2 weeks so that can happen. It's funny, we can drive a car but just not buy one!

So that's the frustrating part of the week. Now for the good part!

A Visit to A Beach!

Yesterday we drove to Windsor which we thought was going to take about 2 1/2 hours but ended up taking more than 4 hours. Chris and Cristina wanted to go to a lovely beach but they thought it was a lot closer than it was.

The cool thing about this was that it is just across the river from Detroit.

This picture is of a dead body we found washed up at the beach! They do say that Detroit is very dangerous.

No, not really, it's of Seb - he just looked like he was dead lying in the water so I took a photo of him.

This one is of Detroit - Jesse took this photo out of the car window while we were driving alongside the river.

Kids playing in the water with the Vortex.

Chris and Cristina taking a walk.

Totem pole at the beach.

Jesse playing in the sand.

Andy and the kids in the water.

Ok, it's well after midnight so I'm going to sleep now. I'll post the rest of the photos tomorrow.

Thunder and Lightning

It's raining today again - it seems that we have brought some unseasonal weather with us. Everyone here is complaining about the weather - it's meant to be about 30 degrees but instead it's averaging about 23-24 and it seems to rain every day. Having said that, it didn't rain yesterday, it was beautiful.

There have been many thunder storms since we arrived, the most impressive was on Sunday but it's happening again today so thought I would blog about it. The lightning is fork lightning and the thunder is like a gun shot. We were driving around looking at yet more houses and the lightning was all around us, the thunder was almost instant so it was obviously right there. Like nothing I have ever seen before.

Yesterday we put in another offer on a house. The other one fell through as the landlord was simply being unreasonable about the terms. This house is short term - for 60 days, just to give us some breathing space. It's brand new, still being finished and we have agreed to live with that in return for the landlord throwing in internet, cable and paying for all utilities. The offer was presented to them last night so we should hear sometime today -keep your fingers crossed.

Today we are hoping to buy a car. We've been driving a rental since we got here and it's costing a fortune so we need to buy something. Not great car hunting weather but it has to be done.

That's it for now, will no doubt blog more later.

Niagara Falls

Wow, that's all you can say. We set off about 10am this morning and went to Niagara on the Lake which is a small village. We passed through a town called Virgil on the way - for some reason I thought that was funny.

Niagara on the Lake is a beautiful place. We spent quite a long time there. We walked up and down the main street and looked at all the quaint little shops. I'll just pop the photos here and let you judge for yourself.

This is an imprint of a maple leaf on the concrete.

It looked like someone had printed it there.

We decided to go get some lunch but managed to lose our hosts along the way. We went back to the lake side to wait for them but they never showed up (apparently they were looking for us too but we missed each other).

We then drove on to Niagara.

Whanau in front of the bridge to USA.

Lady of the Mist

Amish people, had to pretend I was taking a photo of Jesse who stood slightly to the side. Unfortunately, these women just wouldn't shift.

It's really just too beautiful for words. We spent about 3 hours there but it was getting late so decided to head home. We will go back and spend a weekend there. One thing that we found very unexpected - there is a whole city at Niagara, we kind of expected that it would be out in the whops but it wasn't.

Had a most fantastic day!

OK, it's time I had a moan I think. Fast food here sucks, in fact, we've found that gluten free food here is almost impossible to buy. We found a pizza place that did gluten free pizza and for that privilege we had to pay $18.24 - the price for Andy and Jesse for 2 pieces of pizza, fries and a "soda" was $5.00. I have not yet seen gluten free bread in the supermarket. I make my own so that doesn't really matter but I'm wondering what others do.

OK, that's it, moan over.

Looking at a school for Jesse tomorrow and yet another house as we negotiated on the other one and we finally rejected their second counter offer because they wanted too much. I feel positive that we will find something soon.

Night Life in Toronto

Here are some photos of the Toronto night life.

At the Loose Moose

Jenna picked up (not really) a guy from Florida who had driven all the way up to support his favourite baseball team (the Rays). His name was Jeff.

Toronto!!!

Yesterday we decided that we would spend the weekend in Toronto. We spent the morning becoming celebrities in Mississauga - our Realtor (as they call them here) asked if Jenna could take some photos of a presentation at the Mississauga City Hall at 10am. We showed up and she ended up roping all of us into it. Andy and I did video and Jenna took photos and now Andy is going to edit the video and make a presentation. We met the Mississauga Member of Provincial Parliament and had our photo taken with him which was funny. He welcomed us as Mississauga's newest residents! Hope that photo doesn't end up in the paper.

The presentation was for the Mississauga Youth Games (MY Games) which got a huge grant from the Trillion Foundation.

Anyway we spent about 2 hours with the Realtor after that as we were waiting for documents to be drawn up. We put an offer in for the house we hope to rent. We found out this morning that it was rejected. We have countered so hopefully they will come back.

Last night we walked the streets of Toronto. We ended up at Mr Greenjeans for dinner. I swear it was the best chicken I've ever tasted - it melted in my mouth!

We walked back to the hotel and by this time we were exhausted. Put Jesse to bed and Jenna and Andy went out on the town. They went to the Loose Moose Bar! Apparently it was a sports bar. There was a huge baseball game on at the Rogers Centre so town was very busy. They stumbled home about 2am.

Today we decided we would check out Queen Street (it's kind of like Cuba Street). It was amazing. We got a taxi to one end and intended to walk back but we only walked about 4 blocks in 3 hours because the shops were so amazing.

Angela, I found the button shop! Two rooms of nothing but boxes of buttons - wow!

Not only that, I found a shop that sells nothing but ribbons and trims. Talk about heaven!

We walked further down and found lots of shops that Jenna liked. We also found fabric shops. Wool fabrics were only $9.99 a metre which is cheap.

I will definitely be visiting this street again and again!

We walked back to the hotel and are now blobbing out having a hot chocolate.

The Last Few Days

Well, it's been really busy. On Tuesday we went to Toronto and got our first look at the big city. We really enjoyed it but really didn't see that much.

Cool sculpture outside the Rogers Centre

Open air double decker buses - when it rained later there were people sitting up the top with their umbrellas!

We went to the CN Tower which was just amazing although we did spend an awful lot of time waiting in line.

Mountee Moose with Whanau

We waited for one hour just to get in and then another 20 minutes or so to go up to the Skypod which is the top level.

Waiting in line, looking down at the shops.

View from the lower platform of the CN Tower.

We had to wait 30 minutes to come down. It was just so busy there. But it was all worth the wait. We took heaps and heaps of photos of Toronto from up that high.

Jesse going through security - it blew air at you - couldn't figure out why and they didn't seem to be able to tell us.

I can't remember the stats but the lift (or elevator as they call them here) went up incredibly fast. Something like 60 seconds to go up 446m. Two sides of the lift was glass so you got to see out when you were going up and down.

Jesse pointing to the stats for the CN Tower.

Jesse enjoyed lying on the glass floor and looking through the binoculars. One day we will visit the 360 restaurant which rotates.

Andy and I at the top (terribly unflattering photo of me).

My family being attacked by a bear!

After we came down we decided we needed food (it was 3pm!) and we visited the food court. Jenna and I sampled the curry and Andy bought two slices of pizza - of course they were so big that he couldn't eat them all. Jesse, being Jesse had McDonalds.

Jenna was keen to go and see the art district which to me looked a lot like Cuba Street. It was raining by this time so we went back and got the car and drove down Queen Street. We didn't see many galleries but we did see a shop called "The Condom Shack" which was funny. No idea what it sold.

This weekend we will go back to Toronto and walk the streets to get a feel. By this time it was 4.30pm and we didn't want to get stuck in the traffic so we decided to go. Of course, we got lost as our GPS was telling us to go down one way streets and we ended up taking 30 minutes to get out of Toronto so were well into the 5 o'clock traffic but it actually wasn't that bad. Took us about an hour to get home.

Yesterday we went house hunting. We got a huge list of properties from a couple of agents and drove around all day looking at the outside of houses and deciding which ones we'd like to see again. Because we didn't know where we were going we ended up ping ponging all over Mississauga but it was really good for us to get to know it better.

Today was a much better day. It was raining and we were fascinated by the rain coming straight down (not horizontal like we're used to). It was quite heavy but very refreshing and not at all cold. It had stopped by about 11am and then it got really hot.

We decided to get takeaways for dinner. Everyone wanted KFC which of course Jenna and I can't eat so we tried Taco Bell. It is in the same place as KFC owned by the same people. It was interesting to say the least. Jenna didn't enjoy her beef one but I didn't mind my chicken one although it just had chicken and lettuce in it because I couldn't have the cheese so it was a bit dry. Don't think I'll be rushing to have it again.

I've decided that there is one thing I really hate about Canada - everything is so sweet! Even the Coke tastes different.

We looked at 3 houses today, the first one was just around the corner from where we are staying but the house itself was needing a bit of an update. It would have been a great house to buy but not rent. It was 4 bedrooms and had a finished basement and garage. Interesting fact about Canadian houses - a lot of rooms don't have ceiling lights, they have a light switch which is connected to a power outlet and you are expected to buy lamps. When I discussed that with Cristina I realised that the lounge here doesn't have any overhead lighting either. So, not only do the light switches go up to instead of down, they don't even turn on what you think they do.

The second house we looked at was lovely. It was in a nice neighbourhood and had a beautiful kitchen. It was lovely and bright but only 3 bedrooms and no finished basement. This means that you can see the insulation in the basement, the walls aren't lined. The laundry is always in the basement. So it seemed a lot smaller than the other house. The garden was really overgrown.

Second house - we didn't choose this one.

The third house we looked at was the one. It is in a lovely neighbourhood although it is close to a main road. It is also just around the corner from the mall and petrol station and all sorts of other convenient things. It's also close to the bulk buy shop that I found the other day which sells all the ingredients for my bread and baking so I'm quite happy.

It is a semi-detached with 3 bedrooms but has a beautifully finished basement with a gas fire and a "walk out" (ranchslider) to the garden. A good place to put Jesse's drums as the bedrooms are not big enough to fit his drums and it's also better for the neighbours if he's underground.

I didn't take a photo of the outside of this house but honestly, they all look pretty much the same. I will upload a photo once we have it.

Unfortunately, this house is not available until 1 August so we will stay with Cristina and Chris until then. Our stuff arrives from NZ on 2 August but won't be cleared of customs until the 12th so that's not too long to wait. Can't wait to get my own stuff.

Well, it's 11.17pm and I need sleep so I'm signing off now. Hope you're all having a good day.

Monday

Today we decided it was time to get mobile! We went for another long walk to the car rental place. On the way we passed by a whole street (called Motorway Drive) filled with car sales yards. It was funny. We wandered through and no-one approached us. We had cash in our pockets and would have been very interested in buying a car but obviously these sales people did not want our business. You know how they are in NZ, they pounce on you as soon as you set foot on the lot. We just couldn't believe it. So we continued on our way to the rental place.

Andy had his first taste of driving on the right hand side of the road. He did really well and by tonight he was actually looking really confident. We got a Suzuki Swift so it's nice and small - probably a good idea to start with. Seb came with us and sat in the front so that he could direct Andy which lane, etc.

We had lunch at the mall and we tried Root Beer - YUCK! None of us liked it. I tried Canadian Dry (lemonade) but I must say it wasn't the same as Classic Dry Schweppes!

Okay, so tonight I finally managed to get a photo of a squirrel! It's not very clear because they are quick little buggers who just don't want to be photographed but I sat there for ages trying to get it.

After dinner we went for a drive to the lake - see the photos - it's like the sea but it's a lake! You get your first glimpse of the US across the lake too - it's that thin stripe of dark on the horizon.

We fed the Canadian Geese and some ordinary ducks and swans too.

It was beautiful here. The houses are massive - huge mansions worth millions and they back onto the lake. Maybe I'll have to win the lottery for one of those.

This picture is of a gallery at the lake.

We also had a real treat and a fox posed for some photos. I can't believe that we are seeing all this amazing wildlife. Our hosts think we're funny because it's so commonplace to them.

On the way home we decided to do a chocolate run - what a mission - 3 shops to get dark (non-dairy) chocolate. By the way, I'm very, very disappointed with Canadian drinking chocolate - it all has dairy in it, even the Cadbury which is the only one I can drink at home. I might be asking someone to send it to me! No, that would be silly, I'll just have to change my drink!