Dear Friends and family
The last two weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. We moved out of our home on November 30th and moved in with our awesome friend Meg who put us up for the last week of work. It was a strange feeling walking away from everything we have built together. Over all I have not found that I got as emotional as I expected myself to get. More on that later. The last week was really busy with things that kept creeping up. I sold the car as I drove out of the north, I think that’s when it started feeling exciting.
Heather offered to help with our final day in the north once I left school. We headed to Meg to pack up all our things that had to be moved over to my moms and say goodbye to Chika before he was collected. He was very nervous when we got home. It was really hard saying goodbye for the next 11 days. Heather then went off to fetch Thomas with a very full car and I left to do my last tasks and drop the car at Hyundai. She would then fetch me from there and we would head to the east.
Duncan was about to finish work, so we started the drive to my mom and collected him from the Marlboro Gautrain station. It was a lot of fun doing this part of the trip with Heather. We were able to both allow the official excitement set in because she is preparing to do this trip in a few months, so I didn’t feel I needed to hold my emotions in to protect anyone around me. We had KFC and our ice-cream tradition, however they had apparently discontinued our favourite, so we tried a Rollo ice-cream. {Editors hindsight note: KFC in Canada doesn’t have desserts :< }
It was a lovely weekend spent with all the siblings because Heath was also visiting from Cape Town. We had to finish a few errands and then some time to just chill. Mom made us a braai as our last dinner in SA. Sunday was spent only packing as we had to repack and shuffle our belongings, to get our four bags the correct weight.
We had too much luggage to fit in one vehicle, so Duncan caught an Uber with some of the bags and I went with my family. We had a light dinner with them and Duncan’s uncle and cousin’s family, as well as one of Duncan’s colleagues. We then had to get our bags wrapped and chatted with mom for the last half hour before check in.
We decided to use the Bidvest business lounge instead of the FNB SLOW lounge because the SLOW lounge closed before the flight was due to board. I would not recommend doing this as it is more expensive and had almost nothing to eat in comparison. We were very disappointed. Boarding was delayed by 40 minutes and then we also could not take off straight away due to the bad weather. Once we took off we both slept most of the way. I didn’t manage to finish a single movie.
Due to the delay with our first flight we landed as the boarding gate was closing for our second flight. We only had an hour and a half lay over initially, which was now lost due to the delayed departure from Johannesburg. We rushed off the plane and were greeted by a whole host of Emirates officials calling out departing flights that they knew had passengers on boarding flights. We found a man calling for “Toronto”, and began with what ended up being 10 minutes of running, undressing and redressing at security checkpoints. The official kept calling the gate to tell them where we were, and he kept getting told to hurry up. He escorted us from the arrivals gate right to the aircraft door.
It was a tiring exercise, but we made it. I think they may have delayed take-off for ten minutes or so, otherwise they would have had to put us up in a hotel while we waited for the next flight (two days later). Nothing like settling in for a 14 hour flight after a bit of exercise to make you drenched. About an hour into the flight, we were informed by the cabin crew that one of our bags didn’t make it onto the plane. They handed us some sheets to fill in, to be given to an Emirates representative in Toronto. The form presented us with a few problems, however. Firstly, is there anything in the bag that we need to declare. Well, we put four bags in the hold. How are we to know which one was left behind? Secondly, provide a Canadian phone number where we can be contacted about delivery. We don’t have such a number yet. Thirdly, are we residents of Canada? Technically, yes. Actually no (not before we land anyway). Duncan assumed that it was our heaviest bag (we paid a heavy bag fee for one bag) that was left behind, thinking it may have been separated from the other three due to its weight. This assumption turned out to be correct.
The flight was mostly uneventful, with the odd patch of turbulence when flying over the ocean. It was interesting to see the flight path we took… Straight over Iran (there was a beautiful and very large volcanic mountain we could see near Tehran [Mount Damavand, pictured at the top of this page]), over Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway. Over the ocean, skirting the top of Iceland, over Greenland, and then into Canada from the North.
Everything worked out with the bag in the end. It took extra time to get out of the airport due to having to process the missing bag, but Emirates gave us a care package and 200 CAD for the inconvenience. We would receive the bag two days later when the next flight came in from Dubai… Couriered to our Airbnb.
We were met at Union station (downtown Toronto) by two friends that immigrated here almost 2 years ago. We took our luggage to the hotel which was right by the station. High five to me, for picking such a close place. They took us to a nearby shopping centre called Eaton Centre and then we went for dinner at a pub-restaurant near our hotel called Jack Aster. It was the biggest pub Duncan has ever seen.
We are officially in Canada after a year and a half. I can’t believe this is real. Here are a few pictures from our first week in Canada.
