Hello again!
The last few posts bring us pretty much up to date for where we are now - Canada. Or Whistler to be exact.
We arrived in Canada, Vancouver, towards the end of Feb. We had a silly amount of luggage, our papers to get into the country, and a stressed out short lady... I was really worried that for some reason I wouldn't be let into the country. If you were not aware - you dont get a visa before you go to Canada - you do a big detailed application for a working visa and in return they give you a 'letter of introduction'. It's then up to the person at the immigration desk when you get to Canada to decide whether to give you a visa, and how long it will be for based on the letter and a few other things you are supposed to show them. How terrible if after quitting my job, moving out of my place, missing an important wedding, and flying to the other side of the world - they only let me stay for a month!
In the end though, I worried for nothing (like Chiraag had been telling me the whole time), they let me in without any questions at all. The hilarious thing though was that Chiraag got grilled! He has a Canadian passport and expected (rightfully I would have thought) that he would just walk through. But no - they wanted to know where he was from, how he got the passport, where he was going to live, what he would do for work... He was apparently a very suspicious character. I dont know what they would have done if they really didn't like any of his answers... Can you deny entry to a citizen of your country?
Thats not really important though. They eventually let us both in.
Vancouver
We spent the first few days in Vancouver not calling/emailing my parents to tell them we'd arrived safely.
Instead we had early mornings (thanks jet lag - which I dont believe in, but which I manage to get quite a lot, even tough I still refuse to believe in it and not plan for it) and long days - organising Social Insurance Numbers (which is the Tax File Number equivalent here); a bank account (joint acount no less - this must be gettin serious!); a local phone number; a magic phone for me! We also went to about a thousand sports shops looking for ski clothes so that we wouldn't freeze to death, or have to spend tourist town prices when we got to Whistler. I have now seen every sports shop in Vancouver city, and not a single attraction or sight.
Day three I got an annoyed email from Dad reminding me that I should occasionally tell them I'm alive. So we did that.
When we were planning this trip Chiraag was always going on about how Canada was this utopia where everything would be better than home... So to remind him that he wasn't totally correct I have a few things to tell you about what we learnt in our first few days in Canada:
- Mobile phone companies seem to have quite the racket going on - all plans are pretty expensive, and they make you pay extra for basic things like caller ID, voicemail, 911 service and also charge long distance rates for calls to other mobiles not in your local area!
- In Canada they give you all prices without tax. Every advertised price, down to the labels in the supermarket are like this - it's super annoying! PLUS Canada has a tipping culture for all service type things - between 15-20%. So if you come here remember to add about 30% to most prices you see...
- Hire cars here also have many secret, undeclared taxes - but the big killer is the insurance, or lack of it... Hire car insurance is always super expensive, but normally we dont need it because our travel insurance covers the excess... In Canada though they have made sure you need to buy their insurance by making themselves not fit into the terms of anyone's travel insurance... we ended up paying more for the insurance then for the rental itself!
We had also made our first friend in the immigration line at the airport, so we caught up with Claire (from Scotland) in the evenings. Canadian beer is pretty good, and much more reasonably priced than the $10/pint asking price in Perth :)
After our whirlwind and uneventful stop in Vancouver we collected our hire car (we had too much luggage for the bus), loaded it with our ridiculous amounts of luggage and drove on up to Whistler. I'd been told that it is the most beautiful drive, but unfortunately the whole way up we were in a cloud so we couldn't see much past our rainy windscreen. We did catch a few glimpses of some huge lakes with islands though, so i'm looking forward to doing the drive again with better weather.
Whistler
We checked into our B&B (which we had to book since we were apparently arriving in the super busy President's week, so all of the other cheap accommodation was booked out), and hit Whistler running with three interviews already set up with prospective housemates. Everyone who might know has told me since before we left that we were going too late in the snow season to get any accommodation or jobs, but it seems like we were really lucky with our timing as a lot of places were being advertised from March 1st (a few days after we arrived). A lot of people must have been going back to uni or something. Whatever the reason we saw a few places all with pros and cons, but as soon as we saw the house we ended up in we knew that thats where we wanted to live - it is only a 5 or 10 minute bus ride to the different lift locations, we have a big room to ourselves with an ensuite and balcony, and it's a pretty new and nice townhouse sharing with pretty cool people. We basically pestered them until they said we could stay :)
On our fist night we also caught up with Chiraag's friend Mark for a few drinks, since he had been in town for the last month and a half. It was great to have him here - we've 'aquired' a lot of his friends and they're all lovely. We go to the quiz night at one of the pubs with them all once a week - and we've been the reigning champions for about 4 weeks in a row now! We'll lose it all when Phil goes this week though - he gives us about 80% of the answers...
On our first full day we had a bit of a look through the local papers for any jobs that were available and updated our CV's....and by updated I mean dumbed down to make it look like we were suitable for retail / bar / grunt work :P Half way through doing this though, Sam, one of the housemates in the place we ended up moving into, called to tell us he had a job lined up for Chiraag! He had casually told us when we'd met him while looking at the house the night before that he would ask his boss about any jobs available, but we thought he was probably just being polite.
So we hurried into town, and without any interview process whatsoever, Chiraag had got a job as a dish washer (aka dish pig) at the Dubh Linn Gate Irish pub! It’s a better gig than it sounds – he managed to get a discount season pass from them, gets free food while he’s working and free rentals from the ski shop next door, and he can store his skis at work, meaning that unlike me he doesn’t have to waddle to and from the bus loaded up with skis, poles and helmet in ski boots – which are horrible if you didn’t know.
It took me a bit longer to get a job, but after a week or so I started as a receptionist in a hotel day spa. It’s cruisy and they give me just enough hours a week, so I’m pretty happy.
Whistler - The Mountain and the Snow - A note from Chiraag
Because Chiraag has spent a lot more time on the mountain than me he's going to tell you about how fun it is....
Well we seem to have timed our arrival rather well. Apparently there had been hardly any fresh snow for a month or so before we came, and it has been snowing consistently at least every couple of days since then, with some days even getting 30cm or more of fresh powder! The amount of area available to ski here is pretty ridiculous! There are two mountains, with each one easily big enough to be a ski resort on it's own, so there are so many different runs to do and a really good variety of terrain! After about 1 month, I've still probably only done 50% of the actual runs here, let alone all of the other stuff that is available off the runs, through the trees, etc.
Unfortunately, since it is such a big resort, there is a massive amount of people on the mountain - especially on weekends, where you might have to wait for 15-20 minutes on some of the more popular lifts! Once you're at the top of the lift however, it's generally pretty good since there are so many different runs that you can choose to go down. So on powder days, I've been trying to head up the mountain as early as possible in search of the fresh powder, because by the afternoon most of the intermediate and advanced runs are pretty much moguls. But in the morning, the skiing is REALLY good and I've been pretty lucky getting some fresh tracks in quite a few places. My skiing skills in powder were pretty average to start with and I had a fair few impressive stacks, but slowly but surely my technique is getting there and I'm now pretty comfortable and searching out the more difficult runs and even starting to hit the terrain parks a bit (although only the small jumps for now). So looking forward to spending the next couple of months on the mountain - should probably go for some lessons at some point, and might even give snowboarding a go if I get a bit bored of skiing...
Last words from Megan
I have spent much much less time on the mountain than Chiraag, but I did a few lessons and now have my own gear. Recently I even got the guts to get off the lesson slope and do some green and blue runs with Chiraag (they bore him, but he gives me helpful pointers and is very patient with me) and our new friend Mary. I’m starting to feel less terrified by it all, but I still look stupid while I do it.
Luckily we have the people we met through Chiraag's friend Mark, and now we have the housemates, so even though I've been so chicken and lame Chiraag's still had people to go out with occasionally :)
We are in Whistler until the end of May and don’t know what we’ll do after that, but I'm sure it will be fun!
Love to you all,
Megan and Chiraag
xxxxooxxx
P.S. Now that I've told you all about what we've been up to I'd appreciate it if you all got back to me with some of the stuff that we've missed. It doesn't have to be big exciting news - just tell me about your life in the past week or so - I miss home and all the people I know and would like some stories to make me more/less homesick!!!
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