Au revoir, Montreal ....

The most amazing five months ....

Our time in Montreal is coming to a close and we are preparing to leave. Packing up to leave Montreal is significantly easier than packing to leave Australia! Still, we have acquired a significant amount of "stuff" and working out what to do with it now is the challenge .... four boxes have been sent home already!

I don't think I could cope with this scene and these
temps every winter!

So as we prepare to leave, we have been thinking about what we've gained from this experience.

Some thoughts ...

The things that we gained from this experience .....

- the opportunity to participate in another culture and live as locals do has been invaluable;

Farewelling some of our lovely neighbours

- meeting locals and make new friends. In particular, our neighbours have been so kind and generous to us. They've invited us to their houses, to their winter cottages, lent us bikes, collected mail and looked after bins - and all this, barely knowing us. Our little part of Chemin Laval was a great community. Farewelling them was hard!

- experiencing an extremely cold winter and learn how people continue with their daily lives surrounded by so much snow and when it is freezing cold. We loved watching the snow clearers; learning about the process; realising that snow didn't just disappear and physically had to be removed; all things you don't realise when you visit for a short time;

- the privilege of being able to do so much skiing and really improve our skiing abilities;

- learning that I don't want to live in an extreme winter environment for any extended time again (only to visit for skiing trips!);

- spending so much time together as a family - we feel very much a "tight unit" from this;

- furthering our skills in a second language;

- exploring another city, away from the tourist traps - to really explore the side streets and find new and fun cafes.

- watching the change of seasons has been fascinating. There is so much moisture in the ground, so there only needs to be one day of sunshine and warmth and the amount of growth is phenomenal!

- a new appreciation of the Saeco coffee machine that is in the Dostaler's house ... we will miss that! Tony and I look forward to our coffee each morning. We started visiting the local cafes around but then decided that we love our coffee at home just as much!

Love the coffee machine!

- learning about the French Canadian culture. The Quebecoise (as the people from Quebec province call themselves) are so proud of their French heritage and see themselves as different to the rest of Canada. Maintaining the French language is very important to them.

- tasting new foods and then learning to cook them at home! The cheeses...... and maple butter ...yum!

- experiencing living in a city much bigger than Canberra. We are all very comfortable and familiar with the metro; and Tony and I have a pretty good sense of where everything is in the city.

- an appreciation of so many things back in Australia. These range from people firstly; to our house, to some of our belongings and the ease in which we can do things in Australia. All of us have missed people - both family and friends - and we all have new appreciation of people in our lives. As Australians, we have so much to be grateful for and so many opportunities.

- school in Australia. The children have loved their school experience here in Canada but it has been challenging at times and they now appreciate their school community in Canberra even more.

- being forced out of our comfort zone. It takes guts to do it. We've all had our weak moments, but gosh, it's good for us and changes and challenges do make you stronger! There have been many occasions for all of us where we've taken big deep breaths and told ourselves that "we can do this", even if our heart wasn't quite believing our brain!

- the opportunities offered through house exchange. Isabelle and Pascale have been so generous to share their house with us, and in many ways, their lives. We've become friends with their friends, used their belongings and made ourselves at home in their home. We've become great friends and hopefully our paths will cross again ... if not ours; perhaps our children's paths will cross in the future. This was the hardest goodbye of all!

The "before" photo - January...

... and the "after" photo - July.

Things that we haven't really liked or found challenging ....

- the weather. It has been the biggest accomplishment but also the biggest challenge ... and we survived! For the weather not to go into positive numbers for a month was unbelievable ... and to hover around -18 for most of the day, for weeks on end, was equally unbelievable! But we managed.

- it has been hard to meet people. We didn't meet as many people through the school environment as we had hoped;

- with lack of familiarity to a city, things are hard. So often we would comment that ... "in Canberra we would just go/do ..... ". But to work these things out here has been challenging at times. This has become easier as time passed, but simple daily tasks like buying school clothes and shopping were huge challenges, with the snow also, back in January.

Ice on my boots ... ice defrosts and falls off but you are left
with salt stains. Good boots do not get worn in the snow!

- driving on the right hand side of the road. I'm still terrible with giving the correct left/right direction. Tony knows to follow the hand which is usually pointing the correct way!

- the salt that lingers on shoes, after walking on the snowy footpaths;


So the positives certainly outweigh the negatives! We are so lucky to have had this opportunity. We are thankful to our work places for giving us the time off, to the bank for help with finances and to the Dostaler family for agreeing to swap houses with us! This is an experience we would highly recommend to others. We probably won't do a long term exchange again for a while, as we want the children to have long term stability for high school. But as for the longer term future, Tony and I see it as a fantastic way to travel and get to know a place. In the short term, we see it as a great way to have cheap holidays and we will be looking at holidaying around Australia using house exchange locations.