Happy Canada Day!

Overall, the Canada Day long weekend turned out to not be super exciting for me (lots of people went away and the plans I had made with people who were here didn’t work out).  So mostly I stayed at home alone all weekend except for babysitting for my advisor’s grandson for 8 hours on Sunday night.  By the way, people here do NOT pay as well for good childcare as they do in the US.  It seems the average here for someone like me (educated, almost 27 year old with 15 years of babysitting experience including kids with special needs, allergies, etc. who will actually play with your children rather than sit them in front of a TV) is only $10-12/hour whereas at home in the US I was making $14-20/hour and in Philadelphia the cost of living is lower…but that’s another story.

At 3 pm today I decided I was tired of sitting around doing nothing so I was going to go downtown and see the Citadel – which was free today for Canada Day

The great furniture hunt

This past weekend was the annual Curbside Giveaway event in Halifax.  Basically, people can put things they don’t want out on their lawn for other people to come pick up.  The items can range from books to clothes to furniture to household goods and more.  This was extremely exciting for me because of my severe lack of furniture and extremely tight graduate student budget.

My main goal for the weekend was

American football in Canada (again) – ladies tackling!

I went with my friend Dianne to an information session for a women’s tackle football team yesterday.  I had avoided seriously playing football in all my years living in the US because I thought the whole Powder Puff football thing was a little wimpy.  Where was title 9 on that one?  No tackle because we’re girls? what? I did agree to playing co-ed flag football with our graduate student BME team at Virginia Tech – for which my nose is ever so slightly crooked for…

So Dianne told me about how there is a team here called the Halifax Xplosion, which is in a ladies’ tackle league.  I decided to go to the info session thinking this would be a great way for me to meet new people other than those I work with, get some exercise, and have something else to do with my time!  Despite these all being things my parents have hinted that they want for me, they didn’t seem too excited about the idea of me playing tackle football.

Well…Mom, Dad…

Techie stuff

I got a ride home from work today with Dianne and on the way back we stopped at Staples to pick up a few supplies for the lab.  We actually first stopped at Best Buy, which didn’t have what we were looking for, but did sell vacuum cleaners and a whole wall of guitars (there were probably close to 100 electric guitars on the wall).  So, same brand of store as the US but slightly expanded merchandise selection…

We did get what we needed at Staples, though, and when we went to check out the sale table Dianne found 1 terrabyte LG external hard drives on sale for $50!  Yes, that is twice the size of my less than one year old mac book pro that cost over $1200

Bad day for banking

So, it has been a frustrating day in the financial world for me.  It started with me trying to get a credit card in Canada and ending with me trying to pay a credit card bill in the US.

Update on me-and-me banking by TD

I finally figured out how my US and Canadian TD accounts are linked up.  They do not show up together on either of my log-ins but I can make as many free wire transfers between the two accounts as I want by calling a toll free number.  But the transfers can be done on the same day if they are called in before 2 pm so at least it is quick.  Not quite as easy as I had hoped but it should still work and at least it’s free!

Canadian tax and adult beverages

Ahh, gotta love the 15% tax in Canada, especially when they add tax on top of that for special items like gas and alcohol.  I have been told that this 15% includes national and provincial (or maybe it was city? I forget) taxes though so it might be cheaper in other areas of Canada.

But I was thirsty so I bought something anyway.  I decided to go with the big bottle because it was a better price per liter.  But I do feel a little strange having spent $45 on whiskey just for myself (Gillian is not a fan).

On Friday I am going to a presentation being held by the international student center about taxes and the possibility for international students to get some sort of money back as a “tax subsidy.”  So maybe I’ll get some money to put towards my Kerry travel fund!

Difficulties of banking in a new country

It has now been 9 days since I arrived in Canada and I am still not quite set up with access to all my money.  I switched from a Wells Fargo Bank account (of which I had been a customer since 1994 – so sad to leave!) to a TD Bank account because TD also has branches in Canada while Wells Fargo does not.  TD unveiled a new cross-border US and Canada banking program this fall called “me and me banking”.  The idea is