21st August 2008

We arrived here on Tuesday and on Wednesday afternoon we went to a barbeque at the Flight (Richard’s work). It was nice to meet people, although it was mostly chaps from work. It was great for the children because really they could run about as far as they wanted. The prairie is so flat and open that they could just run and run and we’d never lose sight of them! We only stayed a couple of hours because it felt like midnight to us when the BBQ started, so we were on our knees with drooping eyelids by the time we left!
Richard started work almost immediately and was in the office getting to grips with running the Flight (an independent unit consisting of pilots, ground crew and maintainers) as well being on Casevac standby – launch within 30 minutes. Casevac (Casualty Evacuation) is for the soldiers on exercise on the prairie. The helicopter takes a doctor to the casualty and then on to hospital if necessary. Having Richard round the house in the evening, dressed for flying, attached to his mob waiting for the call, takes me back 13 years to when we were first married and living in Northern Ireland and he just lived in his flying suit. Poor chap, it’s really hot at the moment – hot enough for the children to be down at the splash park all the time, and he’s having to wear a poloneck, flying suit, thick Army socks and heavy Army boots!
One of the wives showed me around on Friday – the base is MUCH more compact than I thought! The walk to school will be about 1 minute! I haven’t got out and done anything on the base yet as we have been so busy just getting the home set up. We’re still a little in limbo as I don’t want to fill the cupboards with cooking ingredients yet as we still have a hotel to stay in before we move into our permanent house. So the food situation here at the moment feels a little like we are on holiday - there’s a lot of repetition going on!
Things are very different here. The way of shopping is different – it seems there are a lot of what we would think of as industrial parks in which are superstores. It is set up that the shopper drives between each one. We haven’t yet found anything resembling a high street. It is all extremely spread out – but there definitely is room to do that here! I’m not one for shopping in supermarkets really, I like using independent shops (apart from my all time favourite at home – Lidl!), so now I am trying to get to grips with these simply enormous stores. All dairy products seem to be priced through the roof but fruit and veg is cheap (yey!). The meat is delish – hurrah! The Canadians don’t sell alcohol in their supermarkets and only in liquor stores (I just love saying “liquor” – feels like I’m in a Country and Western movie!). We joined at Costco yesterday and it’s fantastic. Guess what – they sell Kitchen Aids! Yes, my brownie making, bread proving, cake baking friends, all is not lost! I will be back in normal cooking mode soon (well, once I can persuade Richard that it really is a very good idea to get one..... I’m, three quarters of the way there.........(another good reason – I’m going to be making my own bread again as not only is bread very pricey here, but I don’t want to have to travel all the way into Medicine Hat to get it).
Well, I have managed to fill up some more space talking about pretty much nothing (you’ll be glad to hear I haven’t changed at all then!). Just thought you might like to know roughly how things are going...........XX