Foreign Living

Unfortunately, blogging from China was harder than I thought it would be. We had so many issues trying to use the internet with any reliability, and even the VPN's we paid for had issues most days with blocked sites like this one. For some reason, this web site was very hard to reach (Great Firewall of China) and consequently it's been 10 months since my last post. I updated regularly on facebook, and that will have to be the place where my e-journal remains. I just went back over the past year in photos on facebook, and wow....what a ride. BIBA and Beijing and the year in China were...amazing....It was really challenging at times, and I made a lot of mistakes, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. Hard times like repeated floods in our apartment due to notoriously terrible pipes, as anyone who has lived there can attest to. Wonderful times like our trip to Guilin and Yangshuoa with our friends.
We made a last-minute decision to take a year off from life abroad. Instead I am having a Foreign experience right here in my own country, in the very same province where I did most of my growing up. Paul has put his Fitness career on hold to take a job here, in Fort McMurray, Alberta. And so now........we live here....!!!!....for now.....GULP!
Growing up, everyone has heard of Fort McMurray, but few have ever BEEN here. That is because it is very very very far NORTH of the capital city of Edmonton, another four hours on mostly single lane highways to get here from there. That makes it seven or eight hours NORTH of Calgary, and ten hours NORTH of Lethbridge, where I was a kiddo. The population is the same as Lethbridge was when I grew up there, but it doesn't seem like it at all. Maybe due to the topography, but definitely due to the demographics of the population, it seems very rural here. Unlike the prairie of my childhood, Fort Mac is up in tundra country. When I look out the window, I see acres of evergreen and deciduous trees. BEARS are apparently a common sight in peoples' yards. There is MUCH less retail here than I am accustomed to. A high percentage of the population is male. A high percentage of the population ALSO has a home in Calgary or Edmonton (or Newfoundland or etc.....) and likely shops and recreates there instead of here. So the mall is quite small and depressing, and there is no Costco (yet) or IKEA (boo hoo). There is one small and very old movie theatre, but I went to see Lucy there, and had a good time.
What there IS here that has impressed me so far, is a lot of modern and beautiful indoor recreational facilities. Mac Island, for instance is home to a massive multipurpose complex that is expanding all the time. It presently contains a huge, beautiful, modern gym, a track, an Olympic sized pool with diving tanks, hot tubs, waterslides, lazy river, and children's water park, an ice rink, courts for tennis, badminton, squash, and anything else you could swing your racket at, a library, cafes, a frozen yogurt spot, a huge empty space for trade shows or other similar events, and (currently under construction) a MASSIVE sports field that will host the first CFL game north of Edmonton in June 2015. They already have the t-shirts made.

Of course, all of these great facilities are made possible by the big oil companies; Shell, Syncrude, Suncor, and so on. Hypocrit no longer, I can no longer criticize the oil sands (out loud). Arguably, almost anyone living and working in Alberta can attribute their prosperity to the bloody oil industry, although it is much easier to pretend that's not true as a Calgarian living and working 900km from the oil sands, in the education industry. Now here I am. And I will confess, it is not easy. I am very grateful that my husband knows how to use these huge trucks, because we seriously need the cash, but when I visited one small site earlier this summer, it was shocking to see what this industry really does to the earth.

Now I know that these guys do all sorts of land reclamation and so on and work very hard on PR, but....I think the worst part is the cannons. You can't hear them when you're zipping along the highway, but when you stop and get out, they go off continually, warning birds and other wildlife to stay away from the water...the tailings ponds...toxic pools of biproduct and filth. Ultradepressing.

I am interested in getting to know this community. There are some cool things that give me hope, like a farmer's market every other Wednesday and a magazine highlighting contributions of women in the community (the mayor is female!). It also seems like the community wholeheartedly welcomes and needs those who want to contribute, so I am on the lookout for volunteer or similar opportunities. Just like living in Qatar, I am meeting a huge amount of people from Atlantic Canada. Like any large country, regional differences are glaringly apparent. Honestly, it is like getting to know a completely different culture, but it is not a bad thing. I am enjoying it a lot. I haven't spent much time exploring my own country, or its people, and this is a unique opportunity to meet people from everywhere in Canada by staying right here and reaching out.

This has been a long post, so I should wrap it up. I have lots more to explore on blog, because I really feel that I have come to yet another foreign country. So....more soon....ttfn...I will leave you with some stats. Check out that average temperature for January. Yes, that is a MINUS sign. As the AVERAGE. Whimper.

 At a Glance

• Location:  435 Km northeast of Edmonton on Highway 63  
• Population:  76,797- city and 104,338 - Municipality
• Average Temperature:  January -19.8 C July +16.6 
• Annual Rainfall:  334.5 mm 
• Annual Snowfall:  172.0 cm
• Hours of Sunshine/Year  2108.9
• Elevation:  370 m 
• Industries:  Oil sands, natural gas and pipeline sectors, forestry, tourism, retail