Permanent Residency at Last!

After a slightly frustrating and long process, we received our passports back in the mail earlier this month confirming our status as permanent residents! We have to go to the border to make it official, but we’re pretty much there. This means that we can stay in Canada for as long as we like. We can choose to apply for citizenship in around another 2 years, but for now, permanent residency is great. To celebrate, we have booked a weekend in Maine in June so that we can get it all made official and have a nice relaxing time while we’re there.

In the meantime, I can tell you all about the trip we took to Grand Manan last weekend, which was a long weekend here in Canada. Grand Manan is a small island just off the coast of southern New Brunswick. We went with our friends Corinna and Andrew, and took the ferry on the Saturday.

Andrew, Corinna & Ben on the ferry

We stayed in a bungalow with a great view of the sea.

View from the bungalow

Grand Manan is a small island (with less than 2,500 residents!), so there isn’t a great deal more to do than walking and cycling etc., and even less when you go out of season like we did. Nevertheless, we had a nice, relaxing time exploring the island.

Dark Harbour

Exploring some old fishery buildings

Me & Ben

We were lucky with the weather, as it was sunny and nice pretty much all of the time. As it is an island and we were right by the coast, there were some inevitable patches of fog. These were rather more chilly!

Attempting to walk in the fog

The beach was about a 10 second walk from our bungalow. We spent a surprising amount of time there skimming stones and throwing smaller rocks at larger rocks. This amused Ben and Andrew immensely.

Steps to the beach

On the beach just in front of our bungalow

Rocky beach

We also came across a few deceased critters.

Shell of a crab

The bungalow had a barbecue, which we put to good use by cooking bison burgers for dinner. Yum!

Barbecued bison burgers for dinner

More exploring led us to the famous ‘Hole in the Wall’, and a cliff with one of the island’s lighthouses.

Hole in the Wall

Ben, Andrew & Corinna on top of the Hole in the Wall

View back over the island

Seat with the best view!

Lighthouse

Our bungalow was perfectly nice and comfortable, but the (tiny) TV was not up to much. We didn’t mind this for most of the time, but the weekend we went to Grand Manan also happened to be the weekend of the Lost finale. Any Lost fans will understand the importance of this event. Unfortunately, the TV only “received” 3 channels, although saying that is being generous. Fortunately, one of them was the right channel for Lost, so we decided to give it a try. It was ok to start with, but as the night wore on, the picture got worse and worse. As the signal faded by the second, the only way it seemed to improve enough to be watchable was if Ben stood in a certain position with his head leaning over the TV. He did this for the last 15 minutes or so of the finale. My hero.

Trying to watch the Lost finale...

Since visiting Grand Manan, we have been fairly busy. Ben is now a fully trained football referee, and has been linesman for a couple of games already. His first outing as a referee is on Monday. It will be fun for Ben and another great way to run around, plus he gets paid for it, too! Bonus!

I have had a few sessions as a kids.now mentor, and have really enjoyed it so far. My group of kids are great, and I’ve been impressed with how they have done. There are only 3 more sessions left, and I’m looking forward to those.

Ben has now finished his thesis (well done Ben!), and is doing some landscaping work as well as some work for a consultancy company. He did a fantastic job with his thesis, and I’m looking forward to getting a bound copy to keep. I’m sure he’ll be sending some poems off to try to get them published, too. This stage also comes with some sadness as we have to say goodbye to a lot of our friends that were studying with Ben. Most of them live in various places all over Canada, and as I type this, most of them have already left for home. It’s a sad time for Ben especially, as he made some great friendships with some fantastic people. They are sure to be successful in their next adventures, and we wish them well!

That’s about it for this update, so I will be back in a few weeks when we been to Maine and are officially permanent residents! I’ve got barbecued steak waiting for me for dinner, with some rhubarb crumble that I made from rhubarb picked in our own back yard, so I’m off to enjoy that now. Yummy!

Take care,
Helen & Ben

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