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!