Regina Bound

So, after a fairly easy 3 day drive (we only drove about 5-6 hours a day) my mom and I are in Regina, Saskatchewan, my future home (at least for the next 3 years). It’s fairly large city. Based on what i haveheard about Saskatchewan, I thought it would be a lot smaller. But Regina has exceeded my expections. I’ve only been here for 8 hours, but I already love it. True, theres not a whole lot of trees in the area, but there is a cute little river and an extraordinarily nice park surrounding the university. I’m sure it looks absolutely beautiful in the summer, short as summer is in saskatchewan.

On saturday we had passed the Canadian border and spent about an hour and a half trying to get me a student visa. It went fairly smoothly. We had all of the documents in line, and the border guy decided to let me have 4 year permit to go to school at te University of Regina. At first he was only going to give me one for 1 year and I would have to renew it, but then he decided to be nice and gave it to me for the whole time. One less thing to worry about.

The drive to saskatchewan is a little less than exciting. The country side is lovely, but for the most part its pretty much the same flat prarie the whole way through. the farther north you go, the less leaves on the trees there are. there are even patches of snow still in the ditches. Still, pleasurable enough, relaxing, comforting.

So, on friday we made it to Grand Forks, North Dakota. On Saturday we stayed in Brandon, Manitoba.. and now we are in Regina. It my mom’s birthday today, so last night while she was sleeping, I left a card from my dad and a card from me and a little box on my laptop, knowing that first thing in the morning mom would probably write in her OD (shes been writing a log about the trip. if you are interested, her diary is Dionesiamn). I had bought her a little set of austrian crystal sun catchers in the shape of a star and a moon. She hung them on the rearview mirror and they cast rainbows all over the place. It was about a 4 hour drive to Regina from Brandon. When we got to Regina, we checked into our hotel and decided to eat at this chain resteraunt in Canada that I had been to when I went to Edmonton to see my boyfriend. Its called East Side Marios and basically.. it serves American Italien food.. for some reason I find this a little sily. but I like it. I made sure to tell the waitress that is was my mothers birthday, but we came at kind of an odd time so there weren’t many people to sing for her, however she did win a free desert coupon out of the deal.

After that we took a drive around the city. Its really nice. a little bit congested but I like it. It has a big city feel but a small community attitude. Very friendly place. We found the University of Regina, and drove around it. it looks very nice. some of the buildings have very interesting but beautiful architecture . There is nothing really around it though. They left a lot of room to expand. The nearest apartments are still far enough that it would be hell to have to walk to school during a canadian winter, and yet not really worth it to drive. But those apartments find of freaked me out. They it was so busy around there.. cars and students everywhere and the apartment complexes were so close together. I could have lived there if I had to but… I prefer not to. Well we copied down the numbers to some of those places, and then came back to the hotel. I set up ye ole laptop and we searched the student union for some places too. Mostly it was just people looking for roomates, but we found one that was a townhouse that someone wanted to move out of because they were getting a house, and the lease wasn’t quite up yet. So we called them and they said that Boardwalk Apartments had control over it now and they didn’t know if it had been rented out or not, so they gave us the number. We called boardwalk and they told us that that particular townhouse had indeed been rented out, but that they knew one was becoming available July 15. well that was perfect for us as we want to move in in August, but we were willing to ent for july to hold it. We were going to wait until tomorrow to go look at it, but it was still early in the day and we wanted to look at it tonight. It was a little far from the school. maybe about a half hour walk. But Nathan will have a car, and they said there was a bus line that went straight to the school too.

Anyway, to make a long story short… I LOVED it, and so did my mom. The complexes were arranged into little houses that were divided into 4, 3 floored parts. very cute. They showed us one of the display apartments. It had a front and back door. On the bathdoor there was an adorable little patio. and on the first floor there is a large kitchen/dining room with an oven, nice refridgerator, and a dishwasher, and then there was a good sized living room. On the second floor there was a decent sized bathroom, a large bedroom, and a smaller bedroom/office. This place even had an unfinished basement that came with a washer and a dryer. Very very nice. They allow quiet pets. and since Yuki (our guinea pig) is caged, we don’t even have to pay a deposit on him. I’m thinking he can have the small bedroom. Nathan hasn’t seen it yet but I knew he would love it, and I really didn’t want to see the townhouse go to someone else.. so.. we are paying a deposit on it tomorrow. We didn’t even have to look at any other places. This is it. Its like having a small house. the best part is that the townhouse we are gettting it directly across the street from a large grocery store, and the bus stop is pretty much right outside our door, if thats the mode of transportation we might use to get to school. Just a block away there is this gorgous park where you can take a stroll along the river. God this place is just so frickin wonderful. And its not all that expensive either. The rent is 679 CAD… thats only $490 or so American. And since we are signing for a one year lease, all of our water will be paid for. And did I mention that my mom is paying for all of the rent? Even Nathan’s half? She must truly be one of the wonderfullest mothers in the world.

Anyway, I am very excited. I have my study permit, and place that Nathan and I can live together. This dream is becoming a great reality. theres still just a few minor details to work out, but… I am going to be living in Regina come August. I know Nathan and I will be very happy in this cozy little town house. I can’t wait! I wanna move in noooow. Although.. I do really want to spend some time with my remaining friends this summer, so I will be returning home on June 5 and will be there through August 7. I hope I get to see everyone. I will really miss them a lot.

At the same time… I’m looking foward to living in Canada.

I have to get to bed. I am very tired.

This is a picture of the outside of the townhouse we are getting. Nathans and my door is the second from the right.