Hello. Seeing as I put up a load of Facebook photos today, I thought I'd throw some up here too to give you a taste of what we've been doing (mostly nothing much) and a bit of an explanation of the pictures.
Ciaran carrying toilet roll bought from our local Safeway in the background. Also, notice the American-style school bus in the background. Canadians probably wouldn't like me saying this but Canada (well, Calgary anyway) is quite American. Large roads with multiple lanes, big cars, Starbucks on every corner. You get the idea.
Me walking through the neighbourhood on a lovely day. The weather reached 27 degrees the other day.
The Irish Stew in our local Irish bar, Jameson's. I think it's an Irish bar chain. In keeping with the North American style, food portions are large.
I finally managed to capture one of these black squirrels on camera. Yeah, the squirrels are black. I didn't even know the existed in this colour. I want one.
Our new friend that I've named Kitty. It was so friendly. Just came up to us and started rolling around on the ground. There are about three cats who live two doors down. They help me not miss my own cat as much.
Halfway through our 10km walk, we stopped to get Starbuck's. Ciaran's drinking the very un-masculine looking Strawberries and Cream Frappucino.
Calgary's downtown skyline from SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology). It was a deadly view and the college itself seemed really nice.
Again, the skyline from SAIT.
The Heritage Building in SAIT. I thought it was pretty.
Astro-turf football pitch in SAIT. It was actually on the roof of a multi-storey car park. Awesome location with the skyline in the background.
This is the LRT or C-Train which is Calgary's version of the LUAS if the LUAS sped through the city at 80km/h and had two lines that actually linked up.
So, we're going to Calgary's version of Comic Con this weekend. Seriously looking forward to having something to do for three days in a row. Most of the time, we sit in the apartment and apply for jobs.
That pretty much sums up the last week. Expect more pictures from the Expo at the weekend.
So, I've been guilted into updating my blog. Here's looking at you Jen and Caoi. Quite a lot has happened since the last post. Six days after the last post, Ciaran and I got our visas. We booked our flights and left Ireland on the 11th of April. The flight wasn't the best now. Ciaran had this stomach bug that I apparently gave him. What I thought was a really bad hangover on the Monday after our going away party actually was this 24 hour stomach bug thing which I also gave to my Mum. So, if I gave it to anybody else, I'm sorry. It's not pretty. So, we flew Dublin to Gatwick with Aer Lingus, who are shitheads. I booked an extra bag with them after I realised that I wasn't going to get everything in one bag. Got to check in and they were all like "Eh, you realise that if you book an extra bag, it doesn't mean you get extra weight." Well, fuck. They were going to charge €300 until I burst into tears, at which point they reduced it to €150. Still a rip-off.
Not well at all.
We got to Gatwick where we had to wait about 5 hours for our connecting flight. So we had three suitcases to lug around from bathroom to bathroom as Ciaran needed to take frequent trips (without going into too much detail). After we checked in our bags on the Air Transat flight to Calgary, we went through security and slept in the waiting area before the displayed our gate number. It was only an hour but we felt so much better after our little nap, which was especially good for Ciaran. One 9 hour flight and two meals later, we landed in Calgary and got a taxi to the hostel. Of course, our first port of call after we got our bags and stuff into our hostel room was an Irish pub. Just for food though.
Thursday and Friday consisted of viewing apartments, getting phones, getting Social Insurance Numbers and the like. We had our eye on one particular apartment on RentFaster but they only provided a phone number and not an email address so we had to wait until we got our phones at about 3 o'clock on Friday. We called the landlord at about 4, went to view it at about 5 and we'd signed the lease by 6. It was actually so lucky. And I love it. We only have the lease until 30th of August at which point we'll have to find somewhere else, but that's fine. Once we get jobs we might want to live closer to them or get a bigger place. This place is plenty big enough for the two of us though. Cue the apartment pictures.
Kitchen
Bathroom
Bedroom with unpacked suitcases
Living area
We're actually in a basement apartment hence the high windows.
As far as meeting people has been going, most of it was done in the hostel. The hostel was really nice and the people were deadly too. We had our own private room because we had laptops, Kindles, important documents etc. We went out on a pub crawl on Friday night for the hostel owner's birthday. It was fun but we left the last place early with this English guy because we were starving. We'd skipped dinner with the whole getting an apartment thing. Drink seems to be slightly cheaper at home, even when you include the tip and tax. Actually, nearly everything is slightly cheaper than home, not dramatically cheaper but just a nice amount that makes you go "Oh, that's not a bad price".
What else? Oh, the weather. It's quite changeable. I mean, it snows one day and you get sunburned the next. But even when it's snowing, it's doesn't feel as cold as it would be if it was snowing at home because the humidity isn't as high here. As far as the job search is going, I'm really only starting this week. The response from say the girl at the bank when we set up our accounts, the girl who gave us our SINs, people at the hostel seems to be good. People tell us we came to the right place when we say we are Civil Engineers. Oh and speaking of banks, before I started this post, I transferred my money from my Ulster Bank account to my TD account here using online banking. Fingers crossed it makes it. Basically all of my money is somewhere in electronic banking world, hopefully on it's way to my Canadian account. I won't find out for 1-2 working days. I seriously hope I don't have to follow it up if it gets lost, but anyway, stop worrying Hannah. It'll probably never happen, and if it does, I'll have plenty of writing material for my next blog post.
So, that's basically it. I'll post again with more pictures that I'll take with our brand spanking new camera that our fantastic friends at home got us before we left. Thanks guys!
