So, firstly, no, I did not abandon my family to celebrate Christmas in Canada with my boyfriend. I celebrated the holidays with my family well and fully and was home with them from the 23rd to the 25th. On Christmas night, my sister and I drove back to my apartment together, and she stayed the night so that we could leave at 6am the next morning (the 26th-- boxing day) to drive me to the airport.
Note to self, however: do not wear a sweater with even a hint of sparkle in the thread. I lit the body scanner up like a Christmas tree and had the most thorough body search of my life. Had to tell poor Brendan that somebody already felt his girlfriend up before he could get to me. One day I'll get through without having to be searched... one day...
So I made it to Canada otherwise unscathed, but let me tell you, it makes such a difference having someone drop you off and pick you up on either end. The whole journey feels so, so much shorter. More importantly, it felt so amazing to run directly into Brendan's arms once I got out of the airport. He is such a good guy, driving the 2 hours each way to pick me up from the airport and bring me home. I offer every time to take the train, but he insists that he'll pick me up whenever possible. Also, my plane flew right over Niagara falls! That was a real treat-- it's not normally on the flight path for flights between Toronto and NYC.
Brendan's family was over the house for Boxing Day, so I had to say my hellos in passing and hurry to his room so I could put down my things and get myself sorted. My carry-on bag was packed quite literally to the brim with gifts for his family, so I had only brought a few articles of clothing, which I fit into my backpack, for the most part.
(I wasn't kidding-- it was a game of tetris to fit everything in there!)
In addition to all the gifts... I packed an entire loaf of Greek new year's bread (vasilopita) in my backpack. It's a sweet bread that has a coin baked into it, and the person who gets the coin is supposed to receive a special blessing for the new year. Normally at home we go over to my grandmother's house on new year's day and cut/assign the slices in a specific order, but since it was a little early and it was Brendan's extended family and they didn't know much about it, I just cut the bread once I was there and told them that one of the pieces had a coin in it and they'd have to choose carefully, skipping the slicing theatrics. Brendan's cousin ended up getting it pretty early on, but people seemed to like the bread.
Oh! And the best part... beneath all those packages and presents... I managed to fit in a fantastic Christmas sweater for Brendan so that we could wear "ugly" (I thought they were adorable) Christmas sweaters together! I had seen his in Target back in November and IMMEDIATELY thought "I need to get this." Why? Because he LOVES sloths, and this one has TWO!
Sorry I don't have a good one of the front of his sweater-- I thought I did, but there's a wine glass in the way. Please accept this instead. :P
We had a good time with his family, dinner was amazing, and I think overall it went really well and I feel more like part of the family now. He has two cousins who both recently got engaged to their respective partners, so there was, maybe, a little bit of pressure... but we'll take it at our own pace, don't worry.
After everyone was gone, we sat together and gave our Christmas gifts to one another. I had brought one each for Brendan's mom and dad, as well as one for his brother. His parents also had a bunch of gifts for me, mostly warm clothing for the cold Canadian weather.
Perhaps the greatest gift of all, though, as we would soon find out, was the cold I brought from New York and gave to Brendan! As a result, he wasn't feeling well for most of the week, so we spent a lot of time resting at home.Wednesday was a lazy day, but on Thursday I went with Brendan to get his hair cut and met his very chatty hairdresser, who has been masterfully cutting his hair to work around his extremely prominent cowlicks for many years. Then he took me to the mall, where we walked around for a bit, checked out the sales at Roots, stopped by the food court for some classic poutine, and finally headed to the theater to see the new Star Wars movie (in 3D, but only because the time and seating was way more convenient). After the movie, he took me out to Swiss Chalet for one of their holiday special dinners, complete with a miniature bag of Lindt chocolates.
On Saturday we borrowed a car and drove out to Point Pelee National Park, which was free for 2017 because of the Canada 150 event. Despite it being bitterly cold, and me DEFINITELY not wearing appropriate layers, it was actually a really cool experience (no pun intended)! The point is literally a point of land that sticks out into Lake Erie, formed by two conflicting currents. It was really cool to see how different the weather was on each side of the point-- on the east side the wind was calm and there were just patches of ice on the water, but on the west side the wind was awful and biting, and the ice was packed densely together on the water and sprayed all over the trees. It created such a surreal landscape.
Here's the very tip of the point! You can see the difference between the east (left) and west (right) sides here.
We stopped for lunch and were going to go check out the Pelee Island winery afterwards, but Brendan wasn't feeling well and there was a snow squall coming in, so we decided to head back before it got too bad to drive in. It ended up being a total white-out once we were closer to home and it took us an extra half hour or so to get home, but Brendan was able to drive us safely back without any problems.
We spent New Year's eve together just hanging out alone at home, as Brendan wasn't feeling well and his parents were out at a friend's. We rang in the new year two (maybe 3?) times thanks to the 2-minute delay on his roku streaming the ball drop from NYC, and we gave each other our first new year's kisses.
We also shared some wine he had bought for us back in the summer. Despite feeling so unwell, Brendan tried really hard to make it an enjoyable evening for both of us. He's such a sweetheart.We took the next day to recover and baked some koulouria, which is a traditional Greek cookie made of twisted dough. They came out REALLY good and I think half of them were gone by mid-afternoon. I ended up taking some of them home with me because Brendan asked me to pack his train snacks in my bag on our way to Toronto the next day, but we forgot to take them out and put them in his bag before we got to union.
Catching the train was quite an affair-- we were up at quarter to six on a Tuesday and his dad drove us to Tim Horton's to get breakfast, then waited at the tiny train station in town for the train to come. It was absolutely FREEZING, so I'm glad he let us wait in the car.
And what an adventure the train was! It was so cold that the attendant had to smash ice off the drop-down steps when he opened the door to let us board. Fortunately the train is usually very warm and comfortable, so that wasn't an issue. We were all the way in the back of the car we boarded on, right in front of the bathrooms. We both used the bathroom shortly after boarding, and boy, it's a good thing we did, because about half an hour later they made an announcement that because of the extreme temperatures, the pipes for the other train cars had frozen and the bathrooms were therefore no longer usable, so everyone would have to come to our train car to use the restroom. Then a while later they locked one of the bathrooms in our car because the sink appeared to be broken and was overflowing. People were just standing around near our seats waiting to use the one functional bathroom on the entire train.
A while later the train came to a stop unexpectedly and the conductor came on to let us know that apparently the track was broken up ahead... but that they were just gonna go over it anyway because there didn't seem to be any problems. And then a while after that, there was a road that went parallel to the train tracks that had some cop cars stopping traffic at one end. We were wondering what happened, but then we saw it-- about halfway down, a tractor-trailer had turned over and collided with a pole right in the middle of the cab. Yeesh.
We reached Union station about half an hour late (not a problem, I was still ahead of schedule), and we walked to the UP express together so I could go to the airport. The shuttle didn't depart for about ten minutes when we got there, so we spent a few minutes just hugging quietly before we said goodbye. Brendan waited for my train to depart before he left to take his own train back towards school. His brother was kind enough to pick him up from the train station and bring him the rest of the way so that he didn't have to wait for a bus and then take a cab. I made it on my plane without a problem-- no dreaded "X" on my customs form this time. Bought a cute Toronto keychain souvenir for my sister and boarded just a little late due to another plane coming in at the neighboring gate and blocking our onboarding ramp. My sister picked me up (very, very late... but that's another story...) from the airport and brought me back home that evening, and thus we returned to distance again.
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Since then, we've been missing each other even more terribly than usual, and I think we've reached a point where we know we're good for each other and really want to close the distance. You may have seen in my previous post that I'm going to be applying for PR through Express Entry in Canada. Well, at this point I've submitted my academic credentials for assessment and I've taken my language test (currently awaiting results), so I've taken the two preliminary steps towards applying. Hopefully my masters is rated as equivalent to a Canadian masters and I can get full points for my education. Also, I'll be pretty disappointed if I didn't manage to score at least a 10 out of 12 on the language exam, considering I am a native English speaker with exceptional command of the English language... :P
This past week has been extremely stressful, unfortunately, and I've been worrying a lot about my future. I mentioned elsewhere that my company had announced layoffs on Tuesday. It ended up that pretty much my entire team, save for me, my manager, and a handful of other people, were laid off, and now we're struggling to pick up the pieces and figure out how we're supposed to continue working with what we have left. It feels really awful being one of the few who didn't get laid off, because nearly all of the individuals I know who were laid off were extremely intelligent, well-respected scientists who consistently contributed significantly to our projects. It wasn't about skill or performance, though... seems it was just about money and slashing anything that wasn't producing the results the company wanted.
Anyway, that all sounds terrible, but there is a silver lining, I guess. Initially I was very hesitant to tell my manager about my plans to move on from the company next year and to move away, as I didn't want to jeopardize my job or my career. Now that the layoffs happened, though, my manager has been talking about focusing on getting him and myself the experience and connections we need to move on to better positions in a year, whether with the company or not. This lines up really well with my own timing, so I'm thinking I may begin to discuss it with him once I've gotten my results back and I'm ready to apply for EE.
Overall, I just miss him. I do wish in some respects that he could come here, but it's just not that realistic. I think at this point I'm ready to move on from my job, and my skills are transferable enough that I wouldn't have a super difficult time finding work up there. I just hope he doesn't decide to move to Alberta or something the moment I lock something down. He's been saying that he wants to focus on staying in Ontario and try for something permanent, though, both for me and for himself. Here's hoping, I guess.
I’m sorry to hear about all the layoffs at your company, but it sounds like your future is bright! I’m keeping my fingers crossed for your journey in closing the distance