Blizzard Prep

As I am writing this on Thursday evening, we are several hours into our first big blizzard of 2014 - one that they say could last into Monday. In the time we have been here, I think the longest blizzard we have weathered was half that time, so it will be interesting to see what it looks like when all is said and done. Prior to today, there wasn't enough snow on the ground since it's been sooooo cold (> -50 for long periods of time) but it warmed up significantly (-18 today??) and we had about 5 cm of snow fall...and that's when the wind started to pick up.

Prepping for a storm requires some foresight and planning. I thought I would share what we do to get ourselves ready for the potential of being stuck inside with a blizzard.

Lily's Top 10 Must-Haves for Living in Nunavut

If you do any search for tips on living in Nunavut/the arctic, etc. you'll find any number of lists of essentials that you'll need. We've talked about them here, and I'm sure there's nothing on that list that is going to be a surprise. Everyone knows they need to buy a good parka and stock up on all the food they can possibly pack...but what about the other things? What about the things that you don't necessarily realize how awesome it is to have until you've already shipped off your belongings?

Well, I was thinking about this the other day as I was using some of my top items that make my life better here, and decided I'd share with you my list of the top 10 things I didn't think would be important, but have turned into items I use almost on a daily basis.

Hopefully it helps you to think of what your list would entail if you were to move to the north! :)

Lily's Top 10 Must-Haves for Life in Nunavut

Travel Reward Cards

Traveling isn't cheap on a regular basis, but traveling when you live in Nunavut is crazy expensive. There are a select few airlines who service the territory, and they charge an arm and a leg because they have the market trapped (literally). If you're not using discount codes, or flying on a seat sale, just getting out of Nunavut can cost you thousands of dollars - not to mention the cost of the flight elsewhere afterwards, say if you're going on to Toronto or anywhere other than Ottawa, Winnipeg or Yellowknife. We've often said that for the cost of one of us getting out of Nunavut, we could both fly across the world...and we're sadly not even exaggerating.

Since flights are so expensive, most everyone who has a credit card here uses a travel rewards card to earn points to get free flights home - and that's something I would highly recommend you switching to if you're considering living in the north and have the means to a credit card. The most popular one seems to be the CIBC Aerogold Visa. Unfortunately, CIBC will only send your card to a branch and you have to go and pick it up - hard to do when you live a flight or two away from the closest branch. I recently switched to an American Express Aeroplan card because they mail them directly to you wherever your home address is, and the application process is relatively painless. The only downside is that there are still some places that don't accept AMEX, although we've been able to use ours all around Baker Lake without a hitch.

Whatever you choose as your card, you should keep an eye out for bonus point promotions when you sign up. Most cards will offer to waive the first year of your annual fee, which ranges from $120 to $500 per year depending on what kind of card you get/what benefits you want (though that seems like a lot, think of how much you spend on a card and factor in whether or not a high annual fee that allows you to earn free flights faster works out to be a better savings in the end. If you're paying $500/year and getting a free $3,000 flight - there's no question that it's worth it.) It's a little bit of research now that could save you thousands of dollars later, so I highly recommend taking the time to choose a card that's best for your needs/spending habits. You'll be so thankful for it later!

-L

Cell Phones, Part 2

In our original post about cell phones, I mentioned that I have a Virgin phone that runs off the old CDMA network and works here in Nunavut. For the most part, the phone works pretty well - the reception is quite clear, texts are sent/received in a fairly timely manner and only during blizzards and such, does the service get lost. There are some oddities that occur occasionally - texts that show up a week or two after they were sent, or texts that are broken up into multiple parts and random parts are missing, etc. However, for the most part it's been fairly consistent and reliable and allows us to keep in regular contact with our friends and family.

The phone I have is on a monthly Canada-wide plan that allows me to talk/text unlimited (no pictures or anything fancy like that) for $60/month plus tax. I was able to transfer my 905 area code number from Ontario to the phone so when people from Ontario call us, it's free for them and neither parties get charged long distance. In all, we've been happy with our choice to go with Virgin since it provides us with the basic necessities that we needed to keep in touch.

Enter the confusion.

Winnipeg: It's the New Buffalo!

A play by play of our spontaneous weekend trip to Winnipeg, complete with numerous pictures of  us looking ridiculously happy and some delicious food - this post is so long it may take you a whole weekend to read it! :)

Before we moved to Nunavut, we lived fairly close to the Canada/US border, and would often drive the 45 minutes to hop over and do some shopping and eat some food. This past weekend was sort of the same...only instead of driving for 45 minutes, we flew for 6 hours. Almost exactly (not really) the same thing! Either way, it was with the same intentions: buy things we can't buy here and eat food we can't eat here.

Careful What You Wish For

Apologies that this post is a day late, but our modem broke on Friday evening and we just got internet back up and running today.  After many promises, we want to finally talk about our trip up from Ontario to Nunavut, and how you really should be careful about what you wish for.

The last few days at home were a whirlwind of tears and goodbyes, a frantic all-night packing of our carry-on luggage and checked bags, and an emotional drop-off at the airport. All of that we anticipated and were bracing ourselves for. What we didn't plan on was the airport stresses of dealing with our incredibly large and heavy luggage, long lines and flight delays/cancellations.

Crunch time!

Now that we're three days away from lift-off, I'm finally weighing in with my take on this whole process. It's hard to put into words the feelings we're experiencing right now. I imagine it's like sitting in the plane moments before you jump out for your first skydiving experience. We are eager to begin this new chapter in our lives, but we are also trying valiantly to stave off our anxiousness. Doing anything new is scary, and this journey we are about to embark on is equal parts exciting and terrifying. As I reflect back on the last three months, there are a few things I wish we'd done differently. I would have liked to spend more time with more friends, and that goes for family as well. I would have preferred to send some furniture and books instead of all of our dishes. All things considered though, I'm pretty happy with where we are now, and we did a good job preparing to leave without a how-to manual.

There have been hundreds of little details that needed to be dealt with, and about a hundred major ones, too. Transferring insurance, selling our cars (on that note, if anyone wants to buy a Kia Soul, email me!), and buying ridiculously warm jackets are just three of them. Even now there are a dozen things left to accomplish before Monday, not the least of which is mentally preparing to kiss our old lives goodbye, and all the comforts and people that have been a part of them for so long. The old adage is true: you don't realize how much you love something until you don't have it anymore.

Cell Phones

I know I said we weren't going to get a cell phone. We had these grandiose ideas of saving extra money, etc. Well...I couldn't do it. I caved. Threw in the towel. Waved the white flag. You get the point. Long story short, I got a cell phone that will work in the North.

Having had two (work and personal) cells for the past few years, quitting cold turkey was going to be a challenge. I've been transitioning this week with a non-smart phone and it's already been giving me withdrawal symptoms. That was pretty much when I decided we were going to have to get a phone that was going to work.

The satellites in the North run off the old CDMA system, so we needed to find either a Bell, Koodo, Telus or Virgin phone that hadn't switched to the 3G train. That in itself was pretty difficult, because most providers are moving away from CDMA and it's becoming obsolete here.

My intention was to get a compatible phone and keep my current 905 number (which I've had for over ten years). I'd then get a Canada-wide plan so I could talk/text unlimited without incurring long distance charges.

In the end, I went with Virgin because it was the only phone I could find that would work. However, this phone is so basic, it makes the one I had in high school seem fancy. Coming off a Blackberry, it also feels about the size of a peanut when i hold it. Sigh. BUT! It will work (hopefully) and I got my Canada-wide plan for $50/month, which seems pretty standard.

I just have to get used to not being so reliant on the phone!

-L

Essentials

I started looking into weight restrictions for our luggage when I heard that our stuff didn't get loaded onto the truck until this morning (ummmm, we're definitely going to beat it at this rate??). So I started thinking about stuff that we should bring to hold us over until our things arrive...and the list felt really long in my head, but now that I see it written out, I feel like I'm forgetting key things.

Since we are flying on First Air, the baggage restrictions are pretty limited because we're going to be on a smaller plane. Basically, if we don't want to have to pay for any excess fees (though they may be cheaper than paying to courier/ship things up separately and we'd be guaranteed to have the baggage with us), we both get 2 bags at 44 pounds each. That sounds like a lot, but after going through the process of packing up our house and under-estimating our belongings, I don't want to take any chances.

I think we're going to have to borrow someone's scale next week and do "practice packs" to see what we're looking at in terms of weight.

Below is a list of things that I can think of as essential to get us through the first while that we're there in case our things haven't arrived yet.

Tuning In

Note: Another cost comparison post that may be a little boring for most of you (sorry). However, if you're interested in learning about TV options in Nunavut, read on!
 
I had no idea looking into television packages/providers was going to be as complicated as it has been. I feel like we've been researching so much that I'm practically an expert! We went into it thinking that we wanted something that made us feel connected enough that it felt like "home" but also wasn't going to break the bank. With very little social activities, and Netflix probably not being a viable option, we also figured we should be looking at something that offered a lot of channels.

The people that we've talked to have mostly been on Team Satellite. It gives you the widest variety of channels, but the reception may be spotty when there's bad weather. I suppose that's true no matter where you are, but I feel like we'd be more likely to have worse weather in Nunavut as opposed to Ontario. However, with satellite, you're looking at doing a self-install (I would be soooo useless in this task) and more money than going with a regular cable provider.

At the end of the day, here are the costs that we were looking at:

Under-Estimated

Yesterday was a big day in terms of the move - the moving company came and took our Nunavut-bound things away! While we thought we were going to be fairly accurate around the 4,000 pound mark, we were actually over by 700 when they went to weigh our things. Oops! So that meant that unless we wanted to pay for the freight (we certainly didn't want that, eek!), they had to pull the few furniture pieces off the truck that we had packed (no more bookcases, desk, freezer, etc. BOO!)

Look how big the truck is! It made our house look teeny tiny and took up 3/4 of the street to boot! The movers arrived around 9:30 and we helped them finish the rest of the packing before they loaded everything up. That was actually pretty frustrating itself because when they left last week everyone knew that more packing was supposed to be happening this week - but they didn't bring any more boxes, and said that we didn't discuss that. I know what was said, and I absolutely told them as we did a walk-through, that there was going to be more stuff to pack (considering there were entire rooms they didn't get a chance to go into last week!) Grr! Luckily we had a couple of empty boxes and we ended up packing most of the remaining items ourselves while they moved the other boxes out to the truck.

Packin' Up

It has been a busy week so far! We spent a day sorting through things into different piles, and then the packers came by yesterday to start boxing everything up. Who knew we had so much stuff?? The moving company sent two people and one man spent the majority of the six hours they were there, packing up my kitchen. Not including the food, just dishes and small appliances and everything that wasn't the kitchen sink. It was getting pretty ridiculous. He estimated that it was probably about 800 pounds or so of just those things.

Oops. I guess I really have no excuse to keep buying dishes (but I love buying dishes!). It also turns out we have 9,893,238 glasses (thereabouts, anyways.) Add in the food and supplies we've been buying and we're probably at about half our weight limit already! I had no idea things were that heavy; I thought we'd be struggling to reach our limit! Now I'm hesitant to bring some of the "nice-to-have" pieces of furniture that we were contemplating because I don't want us to go over and have to pay for the shipping.

Goosed!

When we decided that we were making the move, one of the first things that we started looking up was which jackets to buy. I have a closet full of winter jackets that have kept me warm enough here, but we both needed something that would be able to withstand the extreme conditions that we'll be facing this winter.

There are a lot of options when it comes to jackets, and two separate camps of people when it comes to what is the "better" route for protection. First, you have to decide what is best for you: either you want to go with a lighter jacket and layer underneath with good base layers, or you can get a thicker jacket and you're all set. Most of the time, the base layer method results in a less expensive jacket - but don't be fooled, you can still spend a pretty penny by the time you're done.

Dates

We finally have a date set for our move! Something that I've been anxious to have since we made the decision to leave, because I'm the kind of person who needs to know what my schedule/timeline looks like. Even though I was told not to worry about it until July, I pushed for a contact at the moving company a couple of weeks ago - and that woman told me that I really should have called earlier because the end of June/beginning of July is the busiest moving weeks out of the whole year. (Grr! I have been trying for over a month to set this up!!)

My new work pays for 4,000 pounds as part of our relocation assistance, and we have been thinking that we were well under the limit and needed to buy more food and supplies so we don't let any of our allowance go to waste. However, according to the man who came to do an estimate of our stuff, we are putting 4,000 pounds into storage and bringing 6,000 pounds with us. Really? We own 10,000 pounds worth of stuff in the house? No! Surely there is a mistake somewhere. Aside from a couple of chairs, we aren't bringing any furniture - so I have no idea how he came up with that amount. The woman from the company who received the estimate went briefly through the list and suggested that perhaps he over-estimated but we should still sort things into a "must-go-with-us" pile, and a "nice-to-bring-with-us" pile the day the movers come, since they'll be weighing our things as they pack.

Taking Inventory

We received some disappointing news last week, and although we weren't entirely sure we'd hear good news, there was always a sense of hope that maybe the stars would shine down on us. Hearing a definitive negative response is always hard. So that's really been weighing on us both. I'm not going to lie. Last week was tough.

It also feels that time is speeding by much too quickly as we near our moving date. Whole days will pass and we look in exhaustion/bewilderment at each other and wonder where the time went. Work has been busy for both of us as we prep to make our respective departures, and we have had something to do/somewhere to be almost every night. Our weekend was also packed with seeing friends and family, which we absolutely want to soak up every single second of, but it feels like we haven't been home for anything other than sleep these days. Not that I'm complaining - there will be plenty of time to sit around just the two of us on our own when we get to Baker Lake - so I often find that if there's a gap in our schedule, I'm trying to squeeze in an extra visit here and there with whomever is available. Exhausted by bedtime, yes, but thankful for every moment we have here with our friends and family.

Mental Prep

We would be remiss to talk about how we're prepping for the move without mentioning how it's affecting us internally. I thought planning a 200+ person wedding on an extremely tight budget in 9 months was stressful, but that was a walk in the park compared to this. Mainly because a wedding is something that you have a general idea of what to expect...but how do you know what to expect living thousands of miles away from your family and friends, in a community and culture that is very different from what you're used to? To say it's mentally draining would be an understatement.

The Cost of Staying Connected

Note: This is going to be a long post (sorry) - and not very exciting - unless you're one of our geeky friends, in which case, you too, will be appalled at our internet "conditions" we'll be facing; but I wanted to share the research we've done on what kind of bill prices we're looking at for phone, internet, etc. So family and friends: appreciate the lengths we go to so we can stay connected to you! HA! :)

One of the things that we've been researching is how to stay connected after our move - I want to try to work it so that the minute we walk through the door of our house, we just need to plug in a phone and our computer and be connected. I've heard a few stories of it taking days/weeks to get things hooked up, and I don't want to be disconnected from our loved ones for that long - especially when they'll be anxious to know that we've arrived/settled in ok. We've been told that we absolutely must have a land line because it is much more reliable than a cell phone, and we will obviously need internet (How did the world survive without the internet? I remember tying up my parents' phone line for hours with our horribly slow dial-up....sigh, those were the days!)

Lists

With being so overwhelmed and having a lot to do over the next couple of weeks, I thought I should write everything down in lists - maybe if you're looking to make a move (big or small) these might trigger you to add things to your list too! Our lists may be a little different because the new house will be fully furnished, and our current house is going to be rented out so all our utilities, etc. aren't being cancelled...

I'll keep adding things as I think of them, but it's a good start I think. (Please comment and add things if you think I'm forgetting them)

Making it Official

My announcement at work came out yesterday (one that I wrote, mind you) - I tried to slip "princess of awesome" into it, but I didn't want to seem egotistical. :) There's really no turning back now that it's out there for the "world" to see. After the announcement was sent I was flooded with emails and phone calls from people - even those I didn't expect to say anything - and everyone had the nicest things to say. It made me get a little teary-eyed, actually. So often you get into a comfortable zone when you're at a place for a while, and you don't realise how appreciated you are until something like this happens. I felt very validated in my career and the work I've done over the past 5 years. It was a good/emotional day. I kept telling everyone to hold the goodbyes in though, because I'm still here for another 6 weeks or so and I didn't want to start all-out crying just yet!

No Turning Back

Up until now it hasn't really sunk in that we're going. I mean, we talk about it and plan it - but it hasn't felt real. Until yesterday that is. Yesterday, I gave notice at work and officially resigned. True, I gave them 6 weeks notice, but it feels like the end of a huge chapter in my life. Being at my company for 5+ years, it's become part of who I am...and there's a sadness over closing that chapter and starting a new one.

I stressed about telling my team and hyperventilated every time I started thinking about it, so it was obviously not a decision I took lightly. In the end, they were really supportive of me and happy that I have the opportunity. I feel like a huge weight's been lifted off my shoulders because I've been worrying so long about it.

On the flip side, it makes it feel SO real. I've been putting off packing or buying anything for the move because sub-consciously I wasn't ready to face the reality of what we're about to do. After I told them I was leaving, I emotionally shopped and impulsively (not really, I've been tracking the prices and it was on for a ridiculously awesome sale) bought an elliptical. I figure I will need something to keep me active on the days that it's too cold or snowy to go outside, and I've always wanted an elliptical...the cherry on top was that it was 70% off and poor Jeff found himself lugging the box home.