Well. 

It’s been quite the experience already and we thought the adventure would be in NZ, not Canada.  We showed up nice and early Christmas morn to fly to Edmonton where we would catch a connecting flight to Vancouver, stay the night and then fly to NZ the next day.  

Apparently not.

Our flight out of Saskatoon was delayed by 6 hours(!) because Air Canada lost a crew member and had to fly in another.  We weren’t too worried considering our connecting flight out of Edmonton wasn’t for some hours and Air Canada was nice enough to switch us to a sooner flight and buy us lunch.  Le sigh.  It wasn’t meant to be.  On our arrival into Edmonton we were greeted with the news that all flights to Vancouver were cancelled but you were only privy to that information if you were fortunate to have access to a computer because the poor 2 agents that were left to deal with 300 stranded passengers on Christmas day were too overwhelmed to give us any information other than they would make an announcement as soon as they could.  Well, given the tears in these girls’ eyes and the two large RCMP who were called to guard them, we took matters into our own hands.  We booked a hotel, took a shuttle and were cosy in our beds by 9pm. We didn’t actually get through to Air Canada until 5:30 this morning but we were fortunate enough to reschedule our flight (they brought in a Boeing 777 to accommodate all the stranded passengers) and we are presently waiting in Vancouver for our flight to Auckland!  Although the delays of yesterday were the fault of Air Canada and the fact they didn’t have enough flight crew to fly us anywhere, we think that we may be seeing a little more of Vancouver than intended since (and I type this as I look out the window of the international terminal) there is a fair amount of snow coming down.  It is supposed to rain so who knows.  

And people mocked me for packing pillows!  HA!  

So that is it for now.  We’ll keep you updated and hopefully soon enough you’ll see us in all of our pastiness in shorts and flip flops.

~Sarah

Well guys, it’s official… not that we’re on our way to NZ but rather that Jonathan is far more involved and excited than even I am!  

So 99 days to go and I still don’t know what to pack.  We plan to do a lot of camping and tramping while we’re there but I have to remember that this is also about me studying so I still have to get that organized.  The University of Canterbury is finally stepping up and getting things in order on their end and after 9 months of waiting for a reply I should be hearing from them in the next week.  Apparently they don’t move at my speed so we’ve all had a crash course in patience around here.  The next big thing to get done is apply for our visa’s.  Hopefully there won’t be any surprises there…

The boys are pumped for the trip but we’re making sure they understand the process and what is going to be happening as we go.  Jackson can’t wait to check out the beaches in January and Will has requested we not live near a volcano (otherwise, he’s told us, he’s not going).  As you can imagine, getting two children ready emotionally for a trip for this long away from friends and family is a process in the works.  We have maps on the wall and talk about what we’ll be doing and how they will play a part in our adventure.  What an opportunity!