The Great Upheaval

I haven’t written here in a long time because it’s of The Great Upheaval, ie moving across the country. It’s not as though I’ve been particularly busy, but more about having lost a certain rhythm that lends itself to such things as blogging. I’ve also had to share computers with entire households of equally computer-needy people so when the moody strikes to write the means isn’t often available.

Anyhow, here I am on the Sunshine Coast. What can I say about the last month? The move from Montreal, mainly shipping all six hundred pounds of boxes to a small-town bus depot and still being on the other side of the country when they arrived, went off without a hitch. And arriving here, at my parents old seventies-style house in the woods, has been joyful, relaxing, and therapeutic. It’s also been strange, for Alex as much as I. Coming from Saint Henri and landing in the boonies on the West Coast, the lifestyle is about as different as you could imagine. No more Metro, just rural buses that come every hour and a half and are usually predicable only in their lateness, or earliness… The snow has turned to GREEN, dark, wet forests, moss, grass, cedars, firs, alders and so much water. Non-stop rain, high creeks and ditches, and the ocean. We have taken many walks along various beaches. One of the best beaches on the Coast is a ten minute walk from my parents house and I’ve spent some afternoons lounging at the end of wharf with a book in the rare hours of sunshine.

Life is so slow, and sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s stressful. It’s hard some days not to be productive. Our main project has been house-hunting. This is what seems to be the situation on the Sunshine Coast: many one bedroom suites in great places for reasonable rent, a few one-bedroom or loft-style cabins here and there for reasonable rent, the odd two-bedroom suite or house for reasonable rent but hard to snatch or else not the right location or else just not our style, and finally, many entire large houses for too much than we can spend. We’re holding out for a great two bedroom place, so we haven’t found a house yet. We’ve only been here for about two and half weeks, which is funny to think because it seems like an eternity.

But the house we’re in right now is somewhat ideal, despite it not being our own. My parents are easy going and happy to have us here, so for now this is where we are, boxes stacked in the basement and no plans to move them. We figure it won’t be so bad if we end up staying here for the summer. We’re happy to be saving money, especially with this move to Vancouver on the horizon and a Masters degree to fund.

So that’s the situation so far.

What else can I say? Today the family is all a little anxious because Simon is still out sailing in the middle of the South Pacific, and possibly in the path of the tsunami after the huge earthquake in Japan. In fact we’ve been under tsunami warnings all day ourselves, and have been warned against going to the beach. My dad is in Port Alice, at the Northern tip of Vancouver Island for a business, and that area and Haida Gwaii are on serious tsunami watch. It’s hard to imagine an earthquake on the other side of the world could possible devastate our region. I think we’ll be fine though. For now, we’ll just wait for Simon to get in touch with us. He’s expected to reach Samoa by the weekend.

Sebastian turned seven months old a week or two ago and has been charming the locals everywhere we go. People already “know” him as “the happy baby.” Today we went into a bakery and some people were like, “oh there’s that baby…”  The other day I was walked around the docks and as I passed a woman she leaned in and said, “Hi Sebastian.” Hahaha. On his seven-month birthday he fully learned how to crawl! Just suddenly he could do it, and now he’s ripping it around the house (well, maybe that’s being generous). He’s a trouble maker now. I wish he could see his old pal Olive now that he’s more capable of actually interacting and moving! I’ll have to find him some baby friends here soon.

Alex seems to be adjusting to the Coast fine. He got a short research contract with the federal government on remote-access communities in the North, which is so ideal for us because he can work from home and is making about three times the amount than he was at his last job. I received a decent sized entrance scholarship to UBC so that was pretty cool! Now the work begins of actually applying for scholarships and milking the institution for all its worth…