Our Year in Canada (Briefly) (The Australian Manning’s Perspective)

The Canadians have been a very welcoming, helpful and supportive group and we have made some life long friends who we will miss greatly when we return home.

Best things about our experience:-
i) meeting and sharing our experiences with a whole range of people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, we have either taught, taught with or socialized with people from every continent on earth. (We attended a Ukrainian Catholic Wedding with lots of Cossack singing and dancing).
ii) Winter sports, e.g. Ice Hockey (Go Calgary Hitmen and Flames!), ice skating, ice fishing, snow sledding - (Though I didn't enjoy "Ice Skating" on the road in a 1 _ tonne minivan)
iii) Summer sports and travelling, e.g. Golf at some of the best courses in the world and we travelled to Quebec and Ireland. (Ireland was another wonderful journey)
iv) Sharing some of our little language differences - whilst we both speak English some of our meanings are very different - the children in my class had a great deal of fun learning some Aussie terms and they love "Minties".
v) The Calgary Stampede - Just like the Royal Easter Show only friendlier - I did volunteer work for the Calgary Lions at Stampede and met 1 person out of thousands who knew where Kyogle was!!
vi) One of the funniest things was trying to teach the Canadians to pronounce "Kyogle" - it usually took 3 or 4 attempts
vii) Learning some new languages - e.g. French, Spanish and Chinese.
One parent/teacher interview involved a Chinese interpreter who spent most of the time asking me about Australia!
viii) The children in my class were fascinated with Australian animals and their parents were also interested in anything Australian, for some reason they were very pleased that their children were learning about a culture different than the one they are constantly exposed to!
ix) No bugs or insects in winter and few in summer.
x) No snakes or poisonous spiders.
xi) Janelle really liked the shopping - lots of it and the prices of most things, especially clothing, were a lot less expensive than home.
xii) No 40 degrees with 90+ humidity.
xiii) A lot of our new found friends want to come and visit!

Worst things about Canada: -

i) It is so far away!!
ii) We have to wait 2 or 3 years before we can apply to exchange again!