It's official!

As of Friday, June 12, I am legally a "Permanent Resident" of Canada! After a long process of many headaches, I am delighted that I can stay in this trillium filled (note flower to left) and maple leaf flag country. I would guess it's a similar feeling like parents with two children - it's not that you love your first one any less, you just have more love to give. I do have to say that for all the horror stories I was fed as an American child, I have not seen any of them be true (yet)! Immigration was David's project since December 2007 when we got engaged, while I planned the wedding. I think I had the nicer one between those two projects!

In the year of time that I've been living in Canada I have had to adjust to some changes/quirks of a new country some consciously and others without my knowledge...

-I'm told by American friends and family that I now "speak like a Canadian" something I can't notice in myself until it's pointed out!

-Learning that the "Collector Lane" does not mean there's a toll booth , it's just where all the traffic collects in a multi lane highway in the Toronto area

-Money can be determined by the color, without even looking at the number on it!

-Hockey is a nationally loved sport (I love that!)

-Tim Horton's is the "all Canadian coffee shop" which I would miss, but there's a lot of days that I definitely miss places like Caribou Coffee, Target, Cub, Kohl's etc... yet somehow I've been brainwashed in this year and am starting to forget what other stores exist outside of the Canadian chains

-Free Health Care is certainly going to be a perk for living here (once I get it in 3 months)

-Over all the biggest thing that I miss living in Canada is my family and friends, yet I've had to realize they live their lives with or without me and now if we ever move from where we are, I would miss the David's family and the friendships that we are forming. I've really come understand in a deeper way why the apostle Paul talks about this world not being our home but that we are foreigners awaiting our true home in Heaven...then we'll all get to party together- those from the U.S., Burkina Faso, Canada, all together with our Lord!