People & Places
Wallace's Canadian Blog May 07
Rachel Wallace, now resident in Nova Scotia, provides her fifth blog on life in Eastern Canada - and a holiday in Mexico!
We have just come back from two weeks in Mexico and it was great. Ian was getting rather stressed with all the exams [on piloting a tugboat in Canada] so we decided to have a break. It was nice for us to just relax after all the months of trying to tie up our old life and start a new life over here.
Finally spring seems to have arrived here. There are flowers out at last! It is also getting warmer and people are getting their barbeques out. Apparently, it is a very popular thing here. When our lake was frozen the people a few houses away from us had a barbeque on the ice whilst it was snowing!
The one thing we are not looking forward to are the insects, which are due very soon. There are noseums (black fly) which are awful and bite you with worse itching than mosquitoes; they are here for three to four weeks. Also, of course, are the mosquitoes and horse flies. Living by the lake we will probably see loads of these but if there is a breeze hopefully it will get rid of some - the price we have to pay for living where we do!
Ian is now at home doing his next three courses on the computer. These will probably take about a couple of months then he can finally start work. I am still enjoying my work in the book shop. Trouble is every time I work I come away with a couple more books that look good!
One thing which is quite different over here is house insurance. Our insurance is a lot more a year here than in England. Admittedly, our house here is a lot bigger than our old one and there is a lot of wood inside - which would cost a lot to replace. Be prepared to have plenty of time at hand when enquiring about your insurance. We only spoke to two companies instead of three or four as they needed to know so much information I couldn't go through it again! You had to give them square footage of the property of each floor, also any outside decks. They needed all sorts of information about chimneys, boilers, furnaces, smoke detectors, nearby fire hydrants, do you deep fry (!), etcetera. A few weeks later the company then sent round an inspector who thoroughly checked everything you had said even down to measuring the rooms. He also took loads of photos of special features (i.e. the wooden banisters, etc) and boiler and furnace inspection dates. The original information we gave was based on the realtors spec sheet for the house but after the inspector had been our insurance went up by over CDN$500. Great!
Jack is coming along well with his basketball. He had only played a couple of times in the school here and has just been playing the last few weeks for the Bantam League. It was a course of eight weeks, which consisted of games only and no practices. It finishes next week and his team is in the finals. Jack is still unsure of some of the rules but has managed to keep up. Hopefully, in October he will join where he has a practice and a game a week so he can learn properly.
Kerry this week brought home a letter about joining the band at school. Where we are they are only allowed as beginners to join the band in Grade 6 which then lasts through to Grade 12. In High School they have special classes for band members who do practices whilst the other classes have regular lessons. As far as I am aware we do not have to pay for the tutoring but only for the instrument. I will find out more soon when we have a meeting about it.
Well better end for now: I've got lots of books to read!
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Read other blogs by the Wallaces:
Wallace's Canadian Blog March 07
Wallace's Canadian Blog February 07