Our First Month Here

Calgary Tower and our amazing blue sky!

Last week, on Tuesday (September 20^th) we completed one month in Calgary. Yes, time flies… It has been one month already.

As everyone who follows our blog knows, in Nanaimo, we met special people who helped us and made our journey even nicer. So, in the beginning we were anxious to know if the same would happen here, since we were moving to a larger city in a different province.

It was a pleasant surprise to meet great people here as well; everyone has been so kind and friendly. The person who (along with his fiancée) welcomed us here and hosted us at his house for a week is a friend of a friend. It means: we have not met one another in person until we arrived here in August! We met them in the Calgary Airport. Nevertheless they did everything they could to make us feel comfortable at their house! A very special thank you to Alexx and Geneviève for the perfect welcome to Calgary!

My internship mentor also was so nice. She (together with her husband) invited Renato and I for a delicious dinner at the Calgary Tower Restaurant as soon as we arrived here. It was a night of good chat, good food, and good fun. Another very special welcome to Calgary!

For us Nanaimo is, for sure, the most beautiful city we lived in. We always asked ourselves: will we like Calgary the same way we like Nanaimo? Will the city be beautiful? Will we find a cozy home? 

Well, the answers are “yes” for all the questions! Our second pleasant surprise was to discover the beautiful city of Calgary! Calgary is full of historical and contemporary attractions.  It is possible to step back in time by visiting the blacksmith shop or riding the steam locomotive to get a taste of what Calgary was like 100 years ago, and it is also possible to be impressed by the modern architecture of the buildings in downtown. The Bow River flows through the city of Calgary, which makes the city even more beautiful. You can check out some pictures here! 

Besides, we found a cool home in less than one week. Thank God! And thanks again to our patient friend Alexx who helped us a lot! We are living near downtown, Renato and I are taking the bus to work and we both get on our offices in less than 30 minutes! You can see our home sweet home here!

Now we are anxiously waiting for the real Canadian winter! People are saying that we will likely have some snow by Halloween! Yes…by Halloween! Since we arrived here, however, the weather has been amazing; warm; very sunny; but a bit cold at night! The temperature ranges a lot during the day. When we are going to work at 7:30am, it is common to see the thermometer showing the temperature of 5°C, and at the same day, when we are going back home at 4:30pm, it is 27°C! Just like that...

Last but not least, just to let you know that we have forgotten what is rain! It rained only two days since we are here! Please do not be mad with us, but this is true! We are missing Nanaimo, our BC friends and VIU, but not that annoying rain that falls “just” nine months of the year! LOL!

Thanks for reading! See you!  

Let’s Have Some Fun…

One of the most unforgettable place in my life…Lake Louise!

Hey guys, here we are again! As everybody knows we are working hard since June 2010 and there has been no time for fun! Last weekend, however, was different! We had a really special weekend visiting the Alberta Rocky Mountains area. And the best part was that we were not alone, a couple of friends from Brazil came to visit us here: Gabriela and Fabricio!

I felt comfortable to say that the region is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. On Friday at 6pm we are already in Banff National Park. The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is so close to our new city! Banff is about 90 minutes west of Calgary and the trip is beautiful! This is one of the coolest things about living in Calgary… You can reach the mountains at 6pm every Friday if you want!

Banff is a very charming town, only four square kilometres, bordered on all sides by wilderness! The town is a service centre for park visitors and offers everything from nice accommodation, dining, lively nightlife to shopping etc. On Friday we only had dinner and drink some wine in our hotel room!

Saturday morning we decided to go to Lake Louise! Oh My God… The place is hard to describe, in two words, I would say: breathtaking scenery! The emerald waters of Lake Louise is probably the most beloved and most photographed scene in the Canadian Rockies. I have some friends that already visited Lake Louise, and I had seen their pictures, so I already had an idea about how beautiful the place would be, but when I arrived there I was impressed with such beauty that only nature can create. We spent a couple hours looking at Lake Louise! We walked a three-km trail towards the end of the lake. It was amazing. 

After that, a scenic drive took us to the awe-inspiring Moraine Lake. The lake is far quieter (so it is also more intimate) than its famous neighbour Lake Louise. Despite its name, Moraine Lake was formed by a rockfall, not a moraine. And just out of curiosity, during our trip, we figured out that the mountains once appeared on the back of Canada’s $20 bill. 

At the end of the day, time to relax at Banff Upper Hot Springs. The hot pool (it was 39°C on Saturday) is outdoor, so while we were in the pool, we could look across the valley to Mount Rundle. So nice…

You can check our pictures from Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and Banff Upper Hot Springs here!

The day before was so intense, so on Sunday we decided to stay in Banff. We decided to walk to the Bow Falls Trail. The path leads right past the Bow River, so we had all the time a beautiful view over the water. Before going back to Calgary, we stopped at Lake Minnewanka and we figured out that the average water temperature is 4°C! Do you wanna swim? You better stay right there, eh! It was very windy and we had fun taking some pictures! Check it out!

What an amazing weekend we had! Hope you have enjoyed the reading! See you!

New Life in Alberta

After the ferry, the buses, and the train, we deserved a beer with our friend Gustavo at his place in Richmond…

After a long time, here we go again. Sorry for the “postless” time, but the last few weeks were very tough for us…Everything started with two finance exams in the first week of August. We wrote the CIFC (Canadian Investment Funds Course) accreditation exam. This accreditation is from Investment Funds Institute of Canada and, if you pass, you are allowed to be sponsored by a Canadian financial institution to sell mutual funds in the country.

After that we still had an international finance exam… Hard course and hard exam, but I have very good memories from this course and from Professor Charles Schell, who taught us something that no other teacher could teach me in 30 years: the meaning of liffe. Yeah, he taught us the real meaning of LIFFE: London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange! J This is such a nerd comment, but I have to say that I had a good time on Charles’s classes and I will miss those…    

Upon passing on both exams and making our last shifts in our part-time job on a grocery store in Nanaimo, Patricia and I had another mission: move to Calgary!! Our first plan was: rent a big car, take all our stuff, drive to Calgary, store the stuff, and look for an apartment. However, this would be very expensive and, then, we changed our minds. The new plan: sell the furniture, give away some stuff, try to put our lives in four suitcases, and fly to Calgary!! Patricia suggested posting our furniture at Kijiji.ca. It worked: we quickly sold almost everything and made some money for our trip. Then, we had to shrink our suitcases: we brought 128 kilos of stuff from Sao Paulo to Nanaimo in June 2010. Now, we had to turn that into 92 kilos… It was very hard, we left some stuff in Nanaimo, more stuff in Vancouver, and then we got it! Ready to go to Calgary in the very last minute!

So, after walking a lot, taking a few buses, one ferry, some train rides, a taxi ride, one flight, and a very comfortable car ride, we could finally rest for a while in a friend’s home in beautiful Calgary. By the way, we have not met this friend of us until we arrived in Calgary. He is, actually, a friend of a friend of us who lives in Brazil. Got it? Even though he has not met us in person before we come, he and his pregnant wife took care of us for our first days in Calgary until we find a place to live. They (Alexx and Geneviève) definitely took care of us and we are very thankful for the perfect welcome we have received here in Calgary. What a good start… We cannot complain about anything.

I will let Patricia tell you about our first days here in Calgary in the next post, OK? Banff, football game, 6 degrees in the summer…  But before I go, I wanted to thank Nanaimo for everything we have lived there… Thanks a lot, Harbour City! Do not be jealous about Calgary, because we love you!

See you soon guys!