4 days to go

Here is a photo taken a couple of days ago out of the window of the house we will be living in next year in Vernon Canada. We fly out of Australia in 4 days. The temperature on Christmas Day is forecast to be 39c and the following 2 days 35+c. I am picking up our exchange family (Aaron, Kara and kids) from the airport on Christmas Day so they may need some time to not only recover from jetlag but also to acclimatise to the hot weather.

More Paperwork

Only 4 and a half months to go until we fly out! We really want to be able to book flights but are still waiting for Canadian visas to be made available. We had to get Australian Police checks as well as a full medical with X-rays, blood tests, eye tests etc etc. The results of all these checks have been sent to the Canadian Consulate so that our visas can eventually (hopefully) be issued. Every day that goes by means that it is harder to get flights. Moving a family of 6 just after Christmas is not going to be easy.

Paper, Paper and more Paper (plus some money)!!

We have finally got all 6 of our passports so I decided to get the other paper work done today. Little did I know that it would take almost the entire day to complete. By the time I had completed 2 work permit applications, 4 study permit applications, a family information form, copied passport information pages, exchange certificates and an Authority to Release information form and cut out 2 passport photos for each of us (12 all together) it was getting dark outside. I had to make numerous calls to Central Office to clarify parts of the forms with the Exchange coordinator which slowed the whole process down. I think I also emailed the coordinator a couple of times as well! Now I need to organise the bank cheque to pay for the applications (a small fortune added to the other small fortune we spent on passports) before I drive them all into central office for processing. Hopefully, if all goes according to expectation, we should get our permits in 6 - 8 weeks.

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Six Months to Go

There is still six months to go but so much to do before we get on that plane to Canada. I have been sorting through the mountains of paperwork that needs to be done in order to leave Australia and get into Canada. Passports, visas, work permits, study permits, Federal Police clearances, health checks etc etc all need to be completed in a specific order.

You can't do much without passports so we have just spent a small fortune getting 6 applications in. The forms are a pain because you have to completely rewrite them if you make one small error.  I think I had to rewrite forms at least 5 times!! They are checked over very carefully and are often knocked back because of some minor error. We were given poor quality photos and had to get more before the Post Office would accept them. I got the last one lodged today. Once I get them back I will then apply for Visas and work permits.