Hello from Herkimer Street in Hamilton, Ontario

       Well hello everyone! It's been a couple days since our last post and those days have been filled to the brim busy! We arrived in Hamilton at around 4:00 on Wednesday (Sept. 1) and headed straight to Eric and Tim's place. Tim was there to greet us and we hung out with him for a bit. I then called our potential landlord and, shortly after, Tim, Matt and I were walking to check out our hopeful apartment. We met with the landlords and took a quick peek at the apartment and it was settled! We got the place! Tim then took us to a little pub on the main street right by our house and we had an early dinner. 
       A little info about our home/area. (Pictures to come once we're a wee bit more settled!) We live on a one way street called Herkimer, right off of Locke Street in Downtown Hamilton. We live right across the street from a gorgeous cathedral complete with church bells that ring on the hour (cool at first, now getting a wee bit annoying...:P ). We live about 5 blocks away from my brothers and one block from the New City PCA church. We walked over there for church this evening and it took us less than 5 minutes. The location of our house is quite central and great! Matthew can walk up the street 2 blocks and catch a bus to the main street where all the buses from there then head to McMaster. Locke Street is a great street with lots of little local boutiques and shops and salons and the like. Its a really cool neighborhood! Matt is a little bit more hesitant about living right in the heart of the city... He said he would much prefer the suburbs, but I think he is getting a bit more used to it and he definitely enjoys how close we are to everything.
          We got the keys to our place on Thursday morning at 10 and by 11:30 with the help of Tim and Eric, as well as Eric's girlfriend Joy, we were moved in! We took the crew out for lunch at a little local home grown pizza place as a thank you and then were off to ditch the U-Haul that had been trailing us for far to long! We shopped for a couple essentials and stopped by MacDiv to ask a few questions before coming back to begin the unpacking process. 
          Friday we drove with Eric out to Redeemer and checked out the campus there and then headed to Wal-Mart to take a huge dent out of our furnishing and decorating list. We went and took care of a couple more errands before again tackling more things at our place. 
          Saturday was a pretty low key day spent organizing and unpacking and doing a bit of groceries before having Eric and Joy over for a B.B.Q and some card games. It sure is nice to have some friendly familiar faces in the city. It is helping to make our transition a bit easier! 
          Today we slept in a little bit and then went for a drive down to the Waterfront in Burlington. I was hoping to just take a nice stroll along the waterfront but there was this crazy Ribfest going on and there were crowds of people EVERYWHERE! So we just did a quick stroll and checked out a couple places along the waterfront before heading back home. We went to church at 5:00 and then came back here for some tacos. Eric and Matt are now enjoying some playstation while I catch up on the internet world!
          When Matt and I decided to move to Ontario I think we somewhat expected it would just be the same as home but there sure are some things we've had to adjust to! The heat and humidity here the first couple days was INSANE! It was almost bad enough for us to consider turning around and heading right on back to Alberta... :P Matt kept on making comments like "Whose idea was this anyways???" Ummm... that would be YOURS dear! :) It has since cooled off quite a bit and people tell us fall is on the way. Let's sure hope so cause if we get another heat wave, I might just get on the first flight up north! Another thing we are having to get used to here is the way they sort their garbage. We moved in and were shown the 4 different bins that our garbage go into, depending on what they contain. There is one blue bin for recycling paper, one blue bin for recycling plastic, one green bin for recycling all things organic and then we are allowed one regular sized bag of garbage per week. Our landlords gave us a little chart to hang on our fridge that shows the different classifications for things but it is sure taking some getting used to! I have also been warned to empty the green "organic" bin at least twice a week so as not to encourage maggots to take residence under my sink! GROSS!! One last thing that we find a little odd is that everyone here drinks milk from bags... not jugs or jars or cartons... just a weird plastic bag that gets shoved into an odd shaped jug and then you snip the corner and voila! Milk! I wasn't too impressed with this option so Tim told us about a market that sold milk in jugs but when we got there we found out that they charge the same price for 2L of milk in a jug as they do for 4L in bags... Guess we're getting used to the bags! :)
          This next week will likely be pretty busy as Matt has orientation for his program all day Wednesday, starts classes on Thursday and then we have a retreat that includes the spouses all day Saturday. In between those things we will be finishing up resumes and seeing about me/him/either of us getting a job. Please pray for us in this area as people haven't spoken too highly of the job market here!
          Well folks, I believe that about catches you up with what we've been up to here... In fact it's probably more information then you want or need... but it is what it is! :) We hope you are all having a great Sunday wherever you are and we will talk soon!


Much love, 
Matt & Jacquie