our goods have arrived!

Marlies WobbenAt Home, At Work, Regina & Area

all our small boxes stacked up against the wall of the utility roomFinally, after 6,5 weeks (including some delay in Montreal because we needed to prepay something and they apparently couldn’t reach us) our shipped goods, our 65 boxes of household and personal goods, have arrived in Regina! We both worked on Tuesday and saw on our phone later on that we had missed a call from Fastfrate. The next morning I phoned them back to find out that our stuff had arrived, texted Nico if he could take a longer lunch break maybe and that I would go home earlier too. Joy (Nico’s boss) sent him home for the day, so we had plenty of time to take care of this! We went to Fastfrate, they gave us some papers and together with the stuff the agent in Montreal had emailed us, plus our packing list and ID, we went to Customs at the airport. A nice lady helped us, gave us spontaneous compliments on our detailed packing list (like the guy in Edmonton, btw) ๐Ÿ™‚ She stamped it all and we were out there again in 10 minutes! YAY! Now we had to wait for Fastfrate to get the goods from the bond warehouse (in another part of town, with a railway company). We ran some errands and an hour and a half later we could come and get the goods!! We got a hold of Ken Stephenson, who had offered to help us with his pickup truck, and it turned out they could put one whole pallet in the back, so he drove twice to get both pallets to our place, where we put them in the garage for the time being. Thanks for the help Ken!! Then we brought all the boxes to the basement and much to our surprise all the small boxes fitted exactly up against the wall in the utility room (just outside of our apartment), lined up one row thick to the ceiling! Only the 4 bigger boxes, Nico’s photo case and one box with CDs are inside. Awesome!! We’ll only unpack what we think we need, the apartment is already pretty full by now ๐Ÿ˜‰

Nico is working normal day hours at the moment, because of introduction courses, and some days he works on the unit as a “shadow”. He has nice and helpful co-workers and loves it! At the end of the month he’ll start with his normal schedule and 12 hour shifts. I started working at Canada Life 2 weeks ago and I love it too! I have to dress a bit more business-y (no metal shirts and jeans to this job) and you need to make production there (data-entry), but that’s ok, and I love the work. You get a workflow list with scanned beneficiary forms (for pension plans) that you have to check and put certain data off it in the system. I have my own cubicle by the window (luckily), I can listen to my own music (earphones) and decide for myself when (between Mo-Sa and 8am-8pm) I work my 20 hours (max. 7.5 hrs/day)! I try to work 2 full days so I can travel with Cortney (who works full-time with fixed hours) plus a 5 hour day.

ยป photo album 2008/0325 ~ New Job Marlies

A good week ago, Tim left for a 5-6 week tour (US and Japan) and I took some pics when they were packing their RV and trailer and when they left:

ยป photo album 2008/0328 ~ Into Eternity Leaving For Tour

Friday we went to a show presented by the Band Of Brothers, a benefit for the Fraser family called “Strength For Chris”. We don’t know him, but many here do, and he is struggling with cancer (brain tumor) and luckily now seems to be on a long hard way of recovery after some operations. The show brought about 10,000 dollars in, so that’s amazing! I’m honoured to say that Lisa has asked me to become a member of the board of the BoB organization soon!

Yesterday we went to the 30th annual Pow Wow of the First Nations University here in Regina. That was quite an impressive event! We stayed for several hours, watching all the colorful dancers and listening to the mesmerizing singers with their chants and their drums. It was held in a small arena (the Brandt Centre), and I hope that we one day also get a chance to go to a pow wow in a more natural setting, like outdoors on a reserve. Anyway, pictures of both events soon to come.