A copy of my first email to everyone

Hi All,

I am in Winnipeg!! It took a lot of organisation and support and patience (Thanks to my mom and my dad esp as well as to my friends who supported and helped me so much). Sorry, that sounded a lot like a Oscar speech!

It was a VERY long flight, as those of you who are on the other sides of the globe from Zimbabwe will most likely know. It is enough to say that it is not something I would like to go through again in a hurry! Even today, two days later, I am still absolutely exhausted and a bit jet-lagged! Unfortunately I did not sit next to any very interesting people for any of the flights (no-one for the Hre-Jhb leg, an older woman from PE who was a bit slow for the Jhb-Lon leg, and a strange, virtually mute Belgian guy for the Lon-Tor leg!). I have to say that after the two long hauls I know exactly why people call "Economy Class" :Cattle Class", there was hardly enough room to sit upright with your arms crossed!!

When I arrived in Toronto it was a bit of a rush as I only had two hours to sort out all of the immigration stuff and work permit etc and also check into the Winnipeg flight. I was given wrong directions at first and ended up running around the airport like a headless chicken, only to be told that I had to go to a different terminal by bus. As I was rushing up some stairs one of the handles on one of my suitcases snapped off!! At that point I just lost it, as can be imagined! The people around me must have been a little worried for their lives, but I think I handled it fine for someone who was already jetlagged and had been travelling for over 30 hours with very little sleep. Needless to say I JUST made the flight after pleading with the check-in agent!

I arrived in Winnipeg and was met by a relocation agent called Peggy, who has been very very sweet to me, helping me open up a bank account and get a Social Insurance Number (which apparently you need for lots of things). She has also shown me around town quite a bit and I will be going to a Barbeque (a braai for those still in Zim) with her daughter and her next Saturday afternoon.

What I have seen of Winnipeg so far is very impressive, everything actually works!! The shops (or stores as they call them here) have so much choice, I thought stores in South Africa had a lot of choice, but this is just plain mind-blowing.

At this stage I am still in a bit of a state of shock as everything is new, but I have a feeling it will all get familiar and things will work out well! (A lot better than my first impressions of Botswana at least!!)

I will endevour to keep in touch with everyone individually in time, but I just thought a decent length first email was in order to bring everyone up to speed!

Well, thats all for now people, I will email again next week when I have more time and my own PC (I am at Rick's house - my boss in Canada, also was my boss in Zim - and he is very kindly letting me sit on his PC and email away)

If there is someone I may have forgotten please could you forward this on to them!

From me in Canada, this is Geoff signing off!

Love to all

P.S. If you do not want to receive these sort of emails or you have another address you would like to receive them at, please just email me and let me know.