Life Musings

Today is our one year anniversary in Canada. Whoop whoop💃🏾 (btw, ignore Teni's face in that picture above, she wasn't really interested in the picture, she just wanted to run around#ToddlerLife but I love the picture anyways). 

So, it's been a whole year since myself and my family made one of the biggest/best decisions to move to Canada. Was it an easy move? NO, Did we decide overnight, NO? Was it cheap? Hell NO but when we weighed our options, Canada was on the top of the list for me and I also felt that Canada was a better place for us to grow and also train our kids. It has indeed been a journey, lemme not even lie (bitter-sweet experience). Sometime last week, I was telling my husband that it doesn't feel like a year, it honestly feels like 5 years for me. Things have been moving very fast I must say. I am just back here to say I love the life, the people and the country as a whole. I will be using this post to share the top five things I love about Canada so far. Hopefully, someone out there will find this piece useful and can have a better understanding of what Canada looks/feels like.

Disclaimer: No place is perfect. I definitely have my reservations about some things about Canada but I choose to only focus on the positives on my blog as I hate to focus or dwell too much on negatives. So, if you are reading this, don't be fooled, no where on earth is perfect.

In other news, let's get right into it 👇👇👇

1) The people: Canadians are NICE (yes, I had to capitalize that). I have experienced this first hand a couple of times. This started from the first day we landed at the airport, we honestly felt at home. We had people helping us with our boxes, saying hi to Teni, asking us if we needed any support, answering our questions and all (I see somebody already saying "aww"😋). Honestly, I love the way Canadians offer a helping hand. There are many occasions I just stand on the road and I have people walk up to me to ask if i'm lost or need help. This was strange to me at first but I later got used to it and started loving it aswell. They are just nice and sweet❤️

2) Diversity: Oh my God. This place is so DIVERSE interms of people. Talking about culture and people. You are going to be meeting people from all over the world in this place. I mean all over the WHOLE world. I have met people from Guinea, Senegal, Congo, Bolivia, and even places I cannot remember their names again. My place of work is filled with different people from different places in the world #DifferentColours #DifferentAccents #DifferentBeliefs #DifferentCultures. One interesting thing for me is learning about the culture and beliefs of people. It allows you to have an open mind about so many things about life. In relation to diversity, there is also a lot of food and recipes to try here. I see a lot of similarities in Asian stores with ours but there are some things I have never seen before like purple fish (weird right, lol. well, it is what it is). I am planning to start exploring and trying different recipes as time goes on (fingers crossed).

3) My third point will be streamlined to Calgary where we live and that will be accessibility to transit. Our house is just a 2 mins walk to the bus stop and the train station is just 7 mins away aswell. Of course, not everywhere in Calgary is like this but the train has definitely made life easier for me in this passing year. No matter how far you live, just give me your address, I will find a way to get there. I like the fact that I can connect to so many places without any stress and if you can't hop on the train, then take a bus. Buses are definitely everywhere, however due to the fact that Calgary is a very big city, it might take a couple of minutes or hours before you get to your destination but that "accessibility" alone gives me joy and "ifokanbale" (peace of mind) that I can get anywhere I want to, at any point in time.

4) Talk about being a tourist in your own city, that's our situation for now. I have a couple of events lined up for me and my family this summer. I know we cannot even finish it. I mean the city is BIG. So many events. activities and places to go. I love the fact that Teni will be able to explore a lot of fun places as she grows. We have visited a couple of places like the Zoo, the newly built public library and some parks around us but we haven't had time to visit a lot of places yet since everybody's schedule is tight and we only have weekends off. Fingers crossed that we are able to visit more places and have some fun before the end of the summer. Otherwise, we will be visiting more places as the years goes.

5) Lastly is the Sun - I have a full post about this here. The sun in Calgary is AWESOME. I am not really a fan of the peak of the summer when it goes crazily high but the fact that we have that sunshine almost through the whole year makes me happy especially during the winter season. Trust me, I was living in a country where the daylight time was so short in winter (between 4-5 hours of sunlight a day) and a lot of people got depressed during this period. Experiencing a life where you get a lot of sunlight through the year is just bliss. Perhaps, this has to be one of my favourite things about Calgary #SunshineCity

All in all, it has been an awesome experience for me. I have made more friends. Btw, there are a lot of Nigerians here (I have seen people speak yoruba (my native language) in the train, so be careful when doing "gbeborun" (gossiping) with your friends, the person beside you might just have heard everything). I have eaten good food aswell. Btw the plantain here is AWESOME (one of my favs so far). I have been able to visit awesome places, taken beautiful pictures and generally just enjoying the ride as each day passes. Like I said before, it is not a perfect system but today, I choose to live by the positives alone. 

In conclusion, I am using this medium to also say a big THANK YOU to everybody that has made our transition smooth especially my sister and friends. I hope to keep sharing my experience as time permits me. I will be concluding this post by saying " HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO ME & MY LIL' FAM"...It has truly been a journey. Also thank you to you, yes YOU for stopping by in my little corner today. I hope to see you again soon...💋