Photo Wall

This is a wall in my kitchen that I'm slowly covering - with Welcome cards, goodbye messages, postcards and photos. Please send me a photo by email or a postcard to: 406 4502-52 Ave, Whitecourt, T7S0C4, Alberta, Canada and I'll put it up!

Yesterday Craig and I found the most beautiful antique shop in Edson - about an hour away (actually I pointed it out - he would have never gone in unless I had wanted to! but he loved what we got) and we bought some gorgeous china cups and saucers - different rose prints, a vase and some platters. He also bought me a vintage evening clutch and an old fashioned compact mirror! Isn't he lovely...

Snowy Scenery

Here are the promised photos of a snowy Whitecourt and surrounds. The view from our window of the trailer park is incrementally more beautiful when covered in snow... leaving us perpetually disappointed when it thaws!

Our new bedroom

We decided that although we have very little money to live on until some comes in, we need our living space to be beayuuutiful, so here are the pictures of the main bedroom - I hope you like!

Before:

After:

P.S. Has been snowing, quite hard. Will put up some photos tomorrow.

Final Destination: Whitecourt

We arrived in Whitecourt on Easter Monday, and were welcomed with love by the other South African medical couples. The apartment (condo!) that we are renting from our friends is lovely and had been stocked with rusks, fresh food, a freezer full of meat and frozen meals, flowers and chocolates. As a settling in present it snowed, covering the ground and our newly borrowed Ford 4x4 truck with white powder.

The last few days have been taken up with setting up bank accounts, cell phone (mobiles) contracts, land line phone, internet, movie contract and everything else that modern daily living requires. Tomorrow we are going into Edmonton where Craig has his appointment with the College of Medicine, and we will also stop past IKEA (wonderful place!) to find new furnishings for our new home.

Our new condo:

Snow on our first night - borrowed truck, left hand drive: poor Craigy!

Edmonton - pick-up trucks and neon

Executive Royal Inn



West Edmonton Mall



Our four hour flight to Edmonton was thankfully uneventful, just tiring. We arrived at the West Edmonton Executive Royal Inn hungry and tired, still on Toronto/Dubai/Cape Town time, only to be told that the money we had paid our travel agent had not reached the hotel! Not the fault of our lovely travel agent - it had got held up at some agency in between.

Gazing out of our hotel room window, after a burnt Pizza Hut dinner and giant Pepsi (the tempting glass of wine was so much more expensive), the only thing we could see was neon fast food signs and car headlights. Travel, always wonderful in retrospect, can often be dispiriting and isolated. It was only the next morning that we realised that our hotel was also surrounded by surburbia - brand new identical housing estates that hadn't had any lights on the night before.... Freaky. But the West Edmonton Mall (biggest in the world when it was first built and full of lovely clothes) was amazing. A combination of American and European high street stores, the occasional designer store, many department stores and the largest roller coaster and indoor water park in the world serves to part you from your money while you have fun. Horrible and garrish from the outside we were so pleasantly surprised when we walked in! Retail therapy really does work...

sunshine glint water friend tower

Toronto

Fortunately for us, we were able to call on our good friend Mikey to show us around. The good man not only waited for us throughout the immigration process and luggage collection fiasco, but also drove us around the city, showed us the hotspots, answered millions of tiresome questions ranging from Canada's range of fizzy drinks (pop), to strange and wonderful vocabulary (gas, condo) but also provided very good (Canadian) company. Great to see you again, Mikey! Toronto has an arty and eclectic edginess, evident in the Queen West street area, which we really enjoyed. But after only 20 hours in the city it was back to the airport, where I spent my time engrossed in Canadian magazines and newspapers, trying to acclimatise to the media culture of the country. More pics up soon, promise!

Canada at last!

Sorry for the large gap - changing time zones, running through airports, buying hangers and black bags and emptying suitcases over the floor have meant that internet access has been sorely limited. But in the great CA we are, safely and with all our luggage (still waiting for air-freight which is crucial, so cross fingers)!

Will put photos up soon - as soon as I have internet access on my own computer.