Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Snow in Calgary
Woke up at 06:15 today to find downtown Calgary blanketed in snow. It's May the 5th - yesterday it was 21oC, bright a sunny and I got a bit of a sun-tan. And now, suddenly, it's snowing! Apparently this is not unusual - it's snowed in all the months of the year before this!
It's 10:10am and I'm posting from the Medical Library at the University of Calgary. We got here 4 days ago from the UK and we've been pretty busy. We've found a home, we're setting up a bank account and Paula and I have been to see our new place of work and meet our new bosses. We have 4 or 5 days left in the city before we go home again and get our stuff packed up in the UK ready to move out here big-style in the last week of June.
I've got a 2-year fellowship in Surgical Oncology at the University of Calgary, and Paula has landed a job as the project director of a big nutritional epidemiology / cancer project here at the same centre. It's going to be a big change for us to come out here for 2 years, which is part of the reason for making a weblog to keep track of our impressions of the whole process.
We've viewed over a dozen houses and finally picked the one we like the best. It's been one of those really odd things - we've seen big houses, posh houses, expensive houses, new houses and old houses, but the one we picked is not the biggest or the grandest. In fact, the rent on this house is the lowest of all the properties we've seen, and we could afford to pay quite a bit more. The house just _feels_ right to us. We felt it the first time we went to see it, and when we visited again last night to confirm both of us were more sure than ever. It's got an open-plan living/kitchen/dining area downstairs with a deck, a big double garage and a big undeveloped basement / storage area downstairs with three bedrooms upstairs, three bathrooms and a wonderful 'bonus room' upstairs. We'll post some pictures of it when we get home (forgot to bring the camera lead with us!). A UK/New Zealand couple Richard and Emma and their daughter Hannah are currently living there, but they're moving out in mid-June to a new house they are having built. They've been looking for someone to take over the remaining 3 months of their lease, and it just seems 'meant to be' as their timings fit so perfectly with ours. Now we have to jump thru a few hoops with the utilities companies and the rental agencies, but in a few weeks it'll all be sorted out and we can maybe ship some stuff out to the house before we arrive. The four of us seem to have 'clicked' a little as well, and we were invited over for dinner last night which was excellent. As they're not going to be far away in the new house, we'll have to have them back for dinner again once we've moved in!
It's been an exciting few days, and the jetlag and the altitude are catching up with me, making me feel a bit tired all the time as I'm not sleeping well at present, but I'm still really quite excited about the whole thing. Calgary here we come...
It's 10:10am and I'm posting from the Medical Library at the University of Calgary. We got here 4 days ago from the UK and we've been pretty busy. We've found a home, we're setting up a bank account and Paula and I have been to see our new place of work and meet our new bosses. We have 4 or 5 days left in the city before we go home again and get our stuff packed up in the UK ready to move out here big-style in the last week of June.
I've got a 2-year fellowship in Surgical Oncology at the University of Calgary, and Paula has landed a job as the project director of a big nutritional epidemiology / cancer project here at the same centre. It's going to be a big change for us to come out here for 2 years, which is part of the reason for making a weblog to keep track of our impressions of the whole process.
We've viewed over a dozen houses and finally picked the one we like the best. It's been one of those really odd things - we've seen big houses, posh houses, expensive houses, new houses and old houses, but the one we picked is not the biggest or the grandest. In fact, the rent on this house is the lowest of all the properties we've seen, and we could afford to pay quite a bit more. The house just _feels_ right to us. We felt it the first time we went to see it, and when we visited again last night to confirm both of us were more sure than ever. It's got an open-plan living/kitchen/dining area downstairs with a deck, a big double garage and a big undeveloped basement / storage area downstairs with three bedrooms upstairs, three bathrooms and a wonderful 'bonus room' upstairs. We'll post some pictures of it when we get home (forgot to bring the camera lead with us!). A UK/New Zealand couple Richard and Emma and their daughter Hannah are currently living there, but they're moving out in mid-June to a new house they are having built. They've been looking for someone to take over the remaining 3 months of their lease, and it just seems 'meant to be' as their timings fit so perfectly with ours. Now we have to jump thru a few hoops with the utilities companies and the rental agencies, but in a few weeks it'll all be sorted out and we can maybe ship some stuff out to the house before we arrive. The four of us seem to have 'clicked' a little as well, and we were invited over for dinner last night which was excellent. As they're not going to be far away in the new house, we'll have to have them back for dinner again once we've moved in!
It's been an exciting few days, and the jetlag and the altitude are catching up with me, making me feel a bit tired all the time as I'm not sleeping well at present, but I'm still really quite excited about the whole thing. Calgary here we come...
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