Saturday, July 26, 2008

Some recent News!



Since I last updated the blog, prior to today, several things have happened.

The first rather important event of course is that Jerry finished his course, and now has his Honours Diploma in Carpentry. The Convocation was a wonderful evening, and Jerry looked pretty spiffing in his gown.

We also have a new arrival here since March, called Branwen, and she is now 5 months old. She is a Siberian Husky, and everyone pretty much is her friend now. It has been quite a challenge having a puppy in the house again, but we are over the worst of it I think.

I received a Labor Market Opinion through my company, and now have a new 2-year work visa based on that, so there was much celebration over that. The aim once Jerry has his work permit through, is to start working towards provincial nomination, which will help us to fast track to permanent residency.

We have come to some decisions over the winter: we realise that to build a house from the ground up, with the price of lumber here in Canada, would be very expensive. We have been looking for property for Jerry's Mum and stepdad who currently live in Spain, and were looking to buy a property here with some land. As we were in that process of searching, the lights went on for both of us, that this was something we should be doing as well.

That is the current situation, that we are looking to buy a property that is within a sensible driving time out of town, which has some land that can be worked. Since Jerry has finished school, we are no longer so tied to the need to live in town. The plan being that whatever we buy, we will make changes to the property, to make use of passive solar where we can. We have equipment that we have purchased since we arrived, which will work as well in an existing house as a new build.

Will update again, when we have made some progress.

1 comment:

Matthew said...

Great to hear how you are doing. Many congratulations to Jerry on the graduation and you on the work permit.

We thoroughly recommend the PNP route. We now have our PR visas and hope to cross the border next weekend to become "landed". This took about 12 months from applying to the Provincial Office of Immigration. The staff there are great and really helpful (unlike the federal immigration people who seem to want to stop you becoming Canadian). If our experience is any use during the process - let us know.

Giving the Halifax Provincial office a call and sounding them out may be a good idea. My job didn't sound like it would qualify from the website but they advised us to apply anyway and it went through.

Good luck with the house hunting and thanks again for posting an update.