places along with Bell, our phone/Tv/internet place. Also, around the corner in the other direction is the post office and gas station and of course Tim Hortons whish is NEVER empty(still not sure what this place is, but it seems to be the local Starbucks or something) and up the street the other way is the info center/town hall. Oh, I almost forgot, there's a McDonalds on the corner and across the street is a Subway. I've got the two paths just blocks away that I can take Hayde running or walking. They've done a great job building paths all over town too. (I'm really not too concerned with traffic here like I was in Madison for running safety, although come darkness, I'm sure I'll still gear up with all my lights and reflective.) We've ventured into Pembroke for most of our shopping excursions. They've got the Wal-mart, hardware stores, grocery stores, we do have two grocery stores here, but we keep hearing things are cheaper in Pembroke. Pembroke is where we've had to go to do all our paperwork. Unfortunately, HR wasn't overly helpful with this on what we needed to do so poor Jeremy had to take off early each day of his 1st week to run into town to get things done. We first had to get our Social Insurance Number - I think this is like a social security card. That was fairly easy. Then, we had to figure out how to get our health card. After many many calls, we finally figured out we had to make an appointment for this (Oct. 21) to apply. We have a 3 month waiting period, so hopefully come the end of Nov well be registered for the Canadian public health care. Within the 1st few days, we tried to open bank accounts so we could transfer money and have a Canadian cash flow. No bank would open an account for us until we were permanent residents. ???? Finally, Jeremy's boss had to make a call to a bank in Deep River so they could start paying him. We finally found someone that would try to help us and luckly they were able to establish an account for each of us. (Whew, Jeremy could get paid now too!) I'm still waiting for my check to be deposited. They had to hold it for 20 days. I'm still confused by this. In the next week we're hoping we can make another trip to Pembroke to get valid driver's licenses and get Jeremy's boat, trailer and truck registered and licensed. He got his letter in the mail for his trailer the second week so we were able to take that to Canadian Tire to have it inspected, but we've been wondering about his truck. I think we've figured since his truck is 15 years old, it doesn't need as much paper work so I think we're good on that to get it registered. We're just waiting for a letter from the WI DMV stating when Jeremy originally got his drivers license as he renewed it in Dec of '07 and we have to prove we've had a valid license for at least 2 years. I just renewed mine in June, but thankfully I saved my old license, proving I've had it longer than 2 years. We've also been struggling trying to figure out the permanent resident application. We've gone in circle after circle on this calling this person and that person and no one's been very helpful. I think we finally figured out which application we needed to fill out and now have most of it done. We just have to figure out a few more things we need. It's insane as we've had to list each address we've lived since 18, everything we've done (jobs, school, etc) since we were 18, we're supposed to have a notarized letter stating the dates we've worked at each job (ya right!), we had to get our pictures taken (similar to a passport picture, but they made sure to tell us it's not the same as a passport picture), etc. What a pain! And, Jeremy's been trying to figure out what he needs to do to get his firearms registered (again, like everything else, we're on a timeline). He needs to pass the firearms safety test before he can register his guns(or take the class, but all classes in the area are full). Before he can hunt I believe he also needs to take the hunting class, but he's not allowed to take that for X-number of months. I think we'll wait to get a fishing license until next year...
We've also had to adjust to the fact that most stores close at 6:00pm and aren't open on Sundays. Yickes, I guess we'll have to plan everything and save bigger things for Sat. In a way it's nice, you don't have to spend your evenings or Sundays running around doing errands, but it's nice not to have to worry about if places are open or not. Also, they only have two places to buy alcohol (the Beer Store and the LCBO)- with limited hours of course! They take the empty bottles back too, though they charge a $0.20 deposit.
Well, I think I've finally caught up minus our last weekends excursions so I'll do that later as this is pretty long.
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