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

My biggest critic

Recently I have been spending quite a substantial amount of time thinking about what I want to achieve and how I want to do it. At the tender age of 24 (is it still tender?Its not that old, right?) I am already feeling entirely conflicted between the pressure to progress in my career at the same time as fulfilling my life's ambition - a world tour.

Don't get me wrong, the pressure is entirely self inflicted. I am not a woman who stays at home cooking and you better believe it when I say I don't just want to be at the top of the tree, I want to be at the top of every tree. So while I am not yet on my world tour (watch out world I'm coming to get you in errr...December 2011!) I have set my heart, mind and life focus on creating the beginnings of a substantially successful journalistic/PR career. In Birmingham.

Now I don't want to rattle on about the economic climate and mass unemployment but at the same time, as a reasonably recent graduate who is massively ambitious, its fair to say that I'm furiously frustrated by looking up at the tree from a twig somewhere high enough that I'm on the tree, but still low enough to jump back down if necessary. To me, every unanswered email, unsuccessful application and forgotten phone call is another acorn hitting me clean between the eyes as I try to claw my way through the branches, biting my lip in an attempt to stop myself from screaming WHEN AM I GOING TO GET A BREAK!? No one said it would be easy, and yes the best things that come to you in life are the ones you've really worked for but to me those acorns are failures and "you'll never amount to anythings". I lie awake at night taunting myself into insanity, I think its fair to say I have something to prove. To myself.

This is my mother.

Yep, shes as barmy as she looks. Whilst my dad is highly successful - enough so that he is retiring next year at 50, a fact I am both proud and and enviable of as I will more than likely work 20 years past this, my mom (and I use the American spelling because that's how I say it, ok?) to me, has a different kind of success. Whereas my dad has been in the same career for the past 30 years, my mom gave up hers in order to support the family from home and in turn lavished attention, paint and mud on my brother and I. At the same time, while we were in bed she went to night school to keep her qualifications up to date and later worked nights - taking us to school at the end of her shift. Over the years as we have grown up she has had to carve herself another career, and has done a blooming marvelous job. In fact during a period of time off a couple of years ago her workplace was forced to employ two extra staff to cover her workload!

So perhaps I do know where this ambition and soul destroying perseverance comes from after all. Just maybe not the dress sense...

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour

Nationwide in November...

London, Brighton, Lewes, Brighton, Sheffield, Liverpool, Birmingham.


In September a winter tour of the country without a break sounded like a great idea, what more could you ask for? Well, sleep, mainly. The non stop go go go amalgamation of work and pleasure has been both great fun and thoroughly exhausting and now, halfway through the itinerary, I have the tell tale Rudolph nose and a bin of used tissues to prove it!


All is not doom and gloom however, it has been a fabulous opportunity for me to see old friends and introduce newer characters (namely the live in bf) to old haunts - prompting extended trade-offs of embarrassing Aimée stories...


The month started with a weekend in the big smoke for the London Freeze Festival. As my partner and I met in a ski resort, skiing and snowboarding is a great shared passion and proves a nice reminder of those early days.


The event was held at the usual venue of Battersea Power Station (which is much further from the tube than you would think!) and the imposing structure provided a dramatic backdrop for the near vertical big-air ramp the pros launched themselves from (backwards).

Unfortunately my camera died so my photos aren't the best, but you get the idea - its pretty high!

After a few hours of ooohing, ahhhing and lusting over double back flips and expensive equipment we decided to head back to Kensington to visit Harrods for the first time. However due to GPS malfunction/male stubbornness we ended up going in completely the wrong direction and instead happily stumbled upon The Ritz and the designer boutiques of Old Bond St, happy days!

Sunday presented us with a dilemma: rain. The idea of standing outside in wet clothes all day and evening didn't really appeal so instead we took a trip to the Natural History Museum to take in the new Darwin pod.  



                     

The pod looked great, but I couldn't help but be disappointed by the lack of content inside. Maybe as the pod allows visitors to watch environmental scientists at work and we visited on a Sunday there was less to do, but I couldn't help but feel deflated.

We finished the day off with a flying visit to Camden to take in the stalls, Chinese food and overpriced beer before heading back to Freeze festival for the grand finale of Great Britain vs The World and Skindred who, quite simply, make me dance my pants off.

We were originally staying with a family member in London until he had to cancel and instead we found this great hostel at the last minute. 2 mins from Kings Cross Station and opposite the Scala, the hostel was quiet, clean and the staff were friendly, We managed to get a private room for a great price and I highly recommend it.

Next Stop....Brighton.

Aimée L’amour x

www.twitter.com/aimeelamour