November/December madness!!

After a year and a half of hard work and persuasion, on November the 18th Ailsa was at last offered a job transfer to the Burlington branch of her company in Canada.

As you can imagine, this was very exciting news for us all. It means we can apply for Temporary Work Permits, and start working and living in Canada as soon as we can get there, without needing to wait for Permanent Residency status.

To that end, we decided to book a short trip in December, to try and sort a few things out, like bank accounts and work permits. Ailsa was needing to go over for work anyway, so we only had to pay for flights for me.

So early December we headed to Canada with everything we needed to activate our TWP's, or so we hoped. 

The Temp Work Permits were much easier than we had feared. But then, we were well prepared, which is definitely the key. Do as much research before you go, and you should sail through.

So with our fresh TWP's in hand, we headed into our new country. First stop...Tim Hortons of course, lol

While Ailsa was working, I spent my time driving around exploring possible areas to settle. But despite visiting many new areas, it all came back to the town of Ancaster. It just fits us perfectly.

We successfully opened a bank account, got a credit card approved, and a pre-approved mortgage for when we need it. We also visited "Service Canada" where we arranged our new Social Insurance cards, which are needed for health and tax purposes.

A very worthwhile trip.

On returning to Scotland, lying on our doorstep was our Medical Exam requests, from Canadian Immigration. This is a vital step in the PR process, and if all is well, then the next step after that is passport requests in a couple of months.

We wasted no time, and had booked our meds for the the next couple of days. So they are now done and dusted. We now need to send CIC more money for our PR Fees, then after a few months we will hopefully have PR status. What a great couple of weeks.