The Move, the Drive and Marble Rye Bread

Post #2! I have arrived. 

Well, now I'm at least in Winnipeg physically.  It's a good thing.  All things considered, the move went pretty smoothly.  But, hiccups do happen. A lot. Getting out of Montreal was tedious at best since driving in the city is a death trap/nightmare.  The other nightmare occurred when my dad and I went to pick up the truck and U-Haul had cancelled our reservation.  My folks had to rebook the truck a week ago and instead of changing the reservation, U-Haul in Montreal just cancelled it. Fantastic.  Luckily there was still a truck available for us to use and thanks to some of my pretty awesome friends (Stevie, Neal, Ari - major props) we got out of Montreal with a fully loaded truck by 1:00PM.  My dad and I decided early on that we weren't going to kill ourselves in terms of driving; nothing more than 10 hour days.  Since we were exhausted from the move (2 flights of stairs, up and down and up and down), we stayed in Pembroke for the night.  Then we did a big drive to Hearst, which is on the Trans-Canada north (after much debate on which highway to take).  Sometime in Hearst I got extremely ill and couldn't keep food down.  This led to a fun drive to Ignace (we wanted to make Dryden, but I just couldn't do it) and then the next day we were in Winnipeg in a matter of hours.

Unpacking everything has been taking forever. I still have three boxes full of kitchen things that I need to go through to see if my roommates already have them or not.  This has been further complicated in terms of time by the fact that I lined up two job interviews (today and tomorrow) even though I'm far from what I consider settled. Today's interview went well and I ended up getting the position, but my interview tomorrow may be better, so I'll have to see where that goes. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Winnipeggin'

Starting Saturday I decided that I needed to start learning more about the city. I had been in Winnipeg a lot in my life (ever summer when I was a kid plus spurts here and there up until about age 16) so I figured I'd catch on pretty quickly. Hah. I was very VERY wrong.  See, the problem with Winnipeg is when you stay in an area (for my Winnipeggy friends, for me this is East Kildonan), you learn everything about the rest of the city in relation to that area.   Since I'm living further south than EK and on the other side of the river, I never have any concept of which direction I'm going in.  So far the only knowledge that has assisted me in getting around is, "well, if I can just get to Portage, I'll be OK". On Saturday I decided to buy a 10-pack of bus tickets (which to me was laughably cheap - $21 dollars for 10).   My first adventure was to Polo Park (for the non-Manitobans this is a major shopping mall).  One of my interviews was really close to Polo, so I figured a lay of the land prior to going Monday morning would probably be a good idea.  I successfully made it to Polo, but not without a lot of confusion.  In my EK days, it was simple. Find Henderson or Watt, take bus downtown. Switch to Polo Park bus. Now it is much more confusing. So what do I do? I still take the Watt bus even though I have to walk a longer distance.  To me it is worth my peace of mind.

Since arriving in Winnipeg, my family has largely been looking after me and I haven't had to worry about meals or social interaction or anything  It's been really nice and I'm eternally grateful.  Yesterday was the first day that I had to search for my own food, so I decided to do the most convenient thing and buy a sandwich from Safeway since I remember them being really good from my Kelowna days. But you know what makes them extra-good here? Marble rye.  OH MAN, how I have missed marble rye.  For my BC/QC/American homies, marble rye is essentially a light rye swirled together with a darker rye.  It's the best bread in the world!!