Application heaven!

Great News! No sooner had I clicked 'publish' on my last post than my phone started flashing like an old man at a bus stop. My other half has received his Letter of Introduction today - only two weeks after his application was forwarded to immigration (the expected wait is anything from 6 weeks up!)

This means that he could get a flight tomorrow, receive his work permit at immigration and start working straight away! Of course, this isn't our plan - but it's nice to know its in the bag. You have a year from the date of issue to enter Canada and receive your work permit so we have plenty of time to get everything in order.

I am still waiting for my LOI. As my application was forwarded to Immigration at the London Office a few days after his I am hopeful I wont be waiting too long!

Next job....flights and medical insurance.

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour

Application hell...

So today I find myself six weeks on from my last post and the pangs of guilt for not keeping it up to date have finally had effect. The last six weeks have been hectic for all kinds of reasons (nothing new there) and the next six dont seem to be slowing down either!

So whats been going on since my last post? Well the first thing that happened was that we recieved our police certificates back (no shaddy pasts here!) and I finaly got NatWest to sign my proof of funds form. That meant that all we had left to do was to make sure our application forms were complete and signed and send them off. Incomplete or incorrect applications are automatically denied - which meant an evening of obsesively checking applications for us. It didn't help that the IEC changed the forms mid way through us filling them in either! But such is life.

One Application

So we sent our applications of to the Canadian Embassy in Paris via Airsure at the Post Office which, we were assured, meant we could track our applications all the way to their destination. WRONG!

The estimated delivery time to France is 2-3 working days. By day 4, I was nervous. The online tracking on the Royal Mail website only told me that the package had been handed over to the French Postal Service and there was no other information. So I called Royal Mail to ask where my package was. The guy I spoke to told me that once it had been handed over to the French it couldnt be tracked at all and Royal Mail had no responsibility for it being delivered, the best I could do was put on my best French accent and pettit-pois my way through a conversation with La Poste.

Needless to say, I was less than impressed. Why did I just pay you £10 to track my item to Greater London, Royal Mail?hhhhhhmmmmmmmmm?
Luckily on 24th April, I recieved an email stating that my application had been received and I stopped harrassing Royal Mail.

Then on 3rd May I recieved another email stating that I had been accepted on the condition that I wire the visa fee of £90 into their French bank account within 10 days. Once again, NatWest failed me. I dont know why I was surprised, but surfice it to say that I am looking forward to taking my business and substantial overdraft elsewhere! Thank the Lord then for the lovely man in Barclays who rescued me with only a few days left to upload my proof of payment and not only asked why I was transfering the money and went through it all with me to make sure that I had included all of the mandatroy information on my reciept, but also waived the £25 fee because of the stress caused by other banks! What a lovely guy!

My proof of payment was recieved on 10th May and my application forwarded to the London High Commission for immigration to look at on 11th May. While all this has been going on my other half has been studying for exams and I have recently found out that I face redundancy. Although the last few weeks have shaken us up, made us question our initial plans and prompted me to start playing the lottery (so far I have won £5.70 - begginers luck) we are determined that we will make it on to that plane!

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour

Print, complete, post, repeat...

Print, complete, post, repeat.
Since my last post this is pretty much how I've been spending my time. The International Experience Canada visa is a bit of a minefield to get your head around at first, but when it comes down to it the form itself isn't that hard to complete, it's the additional forms that go with it.

The first thing we needed to do was to each complete an ACPO Police Certificate form, which takes 10 days to be processed and the certificate to be returned to you, confirming your good character (naturally). The cost of the certificate is £35, but BUNAC recommends that you obtain a copy to show any potential employers once you arrive in Canada which is an extra £5 per copy. Again, the form itself was straight forward and self explanatory, with the only time consuming part being that you need to have a passport photo certified by a professional (from a list of occupations) who has known you for more than 2 years. More information on ACPO Police certificates can be found here.

While we're waiting for our police certificate we've got on with completing the other necessary parts of our visa - and therefore spent most of Saturday having passport photos taken (these need attaching to the visa application) and visiting both of our banks in order to get our all important 'Proof of funds' form signed. I was already a bit apprehensive about this as I had read on both the Work Canada facebook page and also the BUNAC twitter feed that it was notoriously hard to get your banking establishment to sign anything , and judging by my past experiences with banks - I knew that they are not renowned for their helpful nature!

The proof of funds form looks like this:

All that it requires a bank employee to do is check my bank balance before adding their name, my name, a signature and a bank stamp - taking all of 5 minutes. Unfortunately it took me 2 separate visits, a bit of a fuss and a 30 minute wait before my bank would consider signing my form! I, like many others I suspect, was told that "banks don't do things like this anymore" and that they were not permitted to put the banks stamp on any documents whatsoever. My argument that thousands of people take part in this scheme every year, therefore it must  be possible to complete the form fell on deaf ears...twice. Third time lucky and I managed to convince the lady who was helping me to seek advice. 5 minutes later I had a completed form in my hand. Simple when you know how, eh?!

So now my completed visa is sitting waiting for my Police Certificate so that it can be sent off. The Canadian High Commission reserves the right to implement a cut off date for applications at any point, so I hope it hurries up!

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour

A thousand trees...

First steps...

Yesterday we made the first step in obtaining our Candian work permits and officially started the ball rolling. After talking at length with my partner about how he  feels about all this and reading all of the available literature on the permit itself, costs involved and job prospects we decided to apply for our visa through BUNAC.

BUNAC are the UK’s leading non-profit travel club and, as the market leader in work and volunteer abroad programmes, has enabled hundreds of thousands of travellers to explore the world. You can find their website here.

It is possible to apply for your working visa directly through the Canadian High Commission usig the International Experience Canada program (details of which can be found here) however, we felt the BUNAC programme fee of £254 was worth the peace of mind that their step by step advice during the visa process and walk in resource and advice centre in Vancouver itself would provide.

There are a lot of costs that I was not immediately aware of when preparing for an experience such as this - for example, it is a visa criteria that you have both medical and repatriation insurance for the entire length of your stay - for a year this adds up and my initial quote with BUNAC's in house insurance team Endsleigh, who have a work abroad policy ready to go, was in the region of £550. This does not include ski or snowboard insurance, so it will also have to be topped up and leaves you with the question, "if I broke my leg on the mountain, could I not hop down for free?"

I am hoping to receive the confirmation that we are booked onto the programme in the next couple of days, after which the visa application, including police certificate and proof of funds ($1,000 a month for the first 3 months) will begin in haste. The application officially takes 8-12 weeks to process, but as the scheme has recently changed (from one 1 year visa to two 1 year visa's) the Canadian High Commission is dealing with a huge influx of applications and is currently outsourcing the processing of the applications to the High Commission in Paris in order to meet demand. Therefore it could take much longer to receive our letter of introduction - without which you should not book flights or travel. As we plan to leave at the end of August/beginning of September in theory we have plenty of time - lets hope it flies by!

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour

Universally speaking...

I'm not the sort of person that believes in signs or fate. While I feel that fundamentally, if you are a good person people are more likely to be considerate towards you, I don't feel the need to label it 'fate' or state that it's the 'universe repaying me' for my good deeds. Having said that, the following headline made its way to my inbox this morning...

Vancouver: The World's Most Liveable City 2011

So, not fate nor the universe, but perhaps more a reaffirmation of my own values. Either way, I must admit, I did crack a cheeky little smile.

View the article here or find the top ten most liveable cities in the world here.

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour

Oh Canada!

I hold my hands up! I've been neglecting my blogging duties of late. Like many of us, I got caught up in a spiral of festive buying, eating and visiting. Christmas and New Year came and went and before I knew it I was into February, with nothing to show for all my well wrapped presents and carefully planned outfits but a bit of festive weight gain!

 I started to write many a time, honest, but the truth is I just didn't know what I wanted to say.

I started a blog so that I would have something to create, a project to nurture. The trouble is that until recently, I didn't really know what I wanted it to become.

Those that know me will know that travelling is a pretty big part of who I am. The importance of understanding and appreciating different cultures was instilled in me by my parents and is something that has always stayed with me. To me, the value of travel is not about ranking destinations in the order you like best, but in understanding the ideas and community that creates both the good and bad in your guide book.

I was lucky enough to recently visit British Columbia in Canada whilst on a trip to Whistler. Now I know what you're thinking, ski holidays aren't known for their diverse culture and eye opening experiences, but this holiday re-acquainted me with ambitions I held as a youngster, and forced me to ask myself why I had let the aspirations of a 14 year old Aimée fade into the shadows?

10 years ago I spent a summer travelling north along the west coast of North America with my parents and younger brother. We started in Las Vegas and continued through the Utah desert to the Grand Canyon before winding our way through the Rockies and up through British Columbia, culminating at the top of Whistler mountain. As a know-it-all teen I took it all in my stride, Vegas one day, Vancouver Island the next, whatever... but something about that trip inspired us all. Upon our return my parents hastily looked into a move to Canada. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, it was not a feasible decision and their ambitions, as well as my own, were shelved.

Over the next 10 years we would share our pipe dreams of spending our summers sailing and mountain biking and winters snowboarding amongst the picturesque backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, with Downtown Vancouver being the destination of choice. Discussions, often prompted by newspaper cuttings and text book photocopies my grandad would send in the post detailing the booming Canadian economy, low greenhouse effect and Vancouver's 4th place in worldwide quality of life polls (with handwritten comments such as "You have to go now, they will close the doors!"  scrawled along the edges) would ignite the light behind my eyes and my mind would wander. But its not that easy, is it?

As the coach steadily made its way down the boisterous Sea to Sky Highway, which as the name suggests, stretches from the coast all the way up to the mountain resorts, I felt myself well up. It had taken me 10 years to return,  and I damn well wasn't ready to leave. Every street we turned into took us one step closer to the familiarity of home, yet I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under me and each lurch of the coach was taking another opportunity away - an opportunity that I was yet to explore and had my name written all over it. By the time we arrived at check in I was more than emotional.

I decided there and then that I was not not going to let any more ambitions get the better of me, and so I sat in the departure lounge using the free wi-fi to look into visa's and flight information. This was all a bit of a shock for my boyfriend to say the least, but he has, at least so far, been more understanding than I could have hoped for. I'm lucky that he shares my sense of adventure and knows me well enough to know when I'm serious about something and when I'm not.

I've been back less than a week, but I have already made visa enquiries and have found that I can, in the first instance apply for a years working visa, which can then be extended for a second year if I am accepted. I'm not thinking that far ahead. I will go with one year in mind and see where life takes me. I'm lucky enough that Vancouver offers a metropolitan city which means I will have a greater chance of furthering my career than if I stayed in England, and I am hoping this will satisfy the other ambition in me - to be a success.


So there we have it - I finally have a reason to blog. My blog is about achieving my ambitions, how and why. I would like to think that I will make a concerted effort not to let dreams slip away. You cant do everything in life, but I'll give it a go....

Here is a little of what inspires me:

  

Whats your ambition?

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour