Summer's over! It's back to school time!

 So schools, colleges, and universities reopened this week.

For us parents with school-going kids, the two-month break from responsibilities like ensuring kids go to bed at a good time, waking them up in the morning and urging them (actually low-key yelling) to get ready, and packing lunches (easily the hardest part for most), was over even before we knew it.

This week for us was also the anniversary of our arrival in this city. Exactly 13 years ago on September 1, 2012 we rolled into Winnipeg after leaving Guelph, ON on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2012. 

On Tuesday, September 4, it was my first day at the University ot Manitoba, the biggest opening day of all of my academic years thus far!

The three-day road trip we made driving a 1998 Toyota Corolla and pulling a U-Haul trailer containing a few of our belongings brought us 2,100 Km westward through Northern Ontario.

I believe this trip prepared us for the many road trips we were to have much later. Like we do now when we plan a multi-day road trip, we booked hotels a head of time. We slept at the Sleep Inn in Sault Ste. Marie and Victoria Inn in Thunder Bay which we had booked two weeks earlier. 

With the fall colours setting in, it was a beautiful drive that we have always wanted to recreate. We planned it such that we drove approximately 700km or about 7 hours on each of the 3 days it took us to get here. 

We left Guelph late morning on Thursday because we were still painting the townhouse we had rented and taking the things that couldn't fit in the trailer to the dump as late as midnight. Our first overnight stop at Sault Ste. Marie was just after midnight of the following day! 

Ealier, we made a stop at a Walmart in Barie to buy some electronic gadgets to entertain the kids in the back seat. They were 2 and 3 years old at the time. The next stop was Sudbury to have an early dinner.

We had heard about Sudbury but everyone used to say it was way too far north (from Guelph) and now we were there, with still 3.5 hours to get to Sault Ste. Marie where we were to get our much-needed sleep for the night before the start of another full day of driving the next morning. 

On Friday, we woke up early and were already on the road by 7:00 am with our next stop being Thunder Bay, ON. We arrived at a good time and were able to explore the city a bit. We still remember how huge Lake Superior was! An older gentleman talked to us and was so impressed that we were driving that far with two young kids and pulling a trailer that he gave us $50! 

 

On the first day, as the only driver at the time, I didn't know how the old car would behave pulling a trailer as it was my very first time doing so. I drove slowly and more carefully but on the second and third days, I had become a pro and was even going slightly above the speed limit after realizing how powerful the Corolla VE (most basic) was. 

The third and final day of our driving brought us 700km to 99 Dalhousie Drive in Winnipeg, MB. This apartment building, which a friend of ours had secured for us became our home for the next two years. It had a daycare center in the lower level which was ideal for us since we didn't need to go far to drop off the kids when we finally got 2 spots for them.

That building is also the place we met some of our friends who are now like family after keeping and building those relationships for over a decade. 

We thought we would just be in Winnipeg for two years max but we are still here 13 years later. 

When we quit our jobs to move to the Prairies, many of our friends in Guelph, especially our colleagues at St. Joe's Health Center where we both worked asked us if we knew what we were getting ourselves into moving to Winnipeg. 

We had quit our jobs in Kenya a few years earlier to move to Canada so although we were not sure how life would treat us in another strange place, at least we had some prior experience. 

As for moving away to another province which some of our friends who admitted they hadn't moved away from their families ever and were skeptical about how we could cope, we were experienced in that fact too since we had literally moved not only to another country but to another continent, too far away from our families. 

Although we miss our friends in Ontario, Winnipeg and Manitoba has been very good to us. We have truly improved our lives here through hard work and sacrifices perhaps in ways we wouldn't have had we stayed in Ontario. But we never know, maybe we might find ourselves going back some day.