Besides being positive and perseverant, you will also need to be mentally prepared to handle other aspects of Canadian life:

Do It Yourself (DIY)

Have you ever installed a ceiling fan in your home, or installed the latch in your door, or set up the entertainment unit in the living room. Well, I have since I have come to Canada.

I would never of thought of doing these things when I was back in my former country. If I wanted these things done, I called people and they would come and do it for me. It was just the way it was, since labour was cheap.

In Canada, you cannot do this. You will need to pay a lot of money if you call people to help you with these things. Take installing the latch example. I paid $11 to buy the latch, came home and installed it. In my building, there was a notice posted up of someone offering to install a latch. When I called them they said they would take $110 for the whole job including buying the latch.

It is not difficult to do these things here. When you buy stuff here, it is manufactured in such a way that you can set it up yourself. Like when I got my first apartment in Canada, the rental company sent a painter to give my apartment a fresh coat of paint (they do that for all new tenants). One guy came and finished the work of painting my apartment in 2 hours. In my former country, a crew of 3-4 people would have come and taken 1 week to finish the job.

So if you are not handy with things, don’t worry. You don’t need to be an expert handyman to do all these things. You just need have an open mind to trying, and you will be able to.

No Maids!!

As I said before, in my former country labour was cheap. Therefore I had 2 maids (sometimes even 3) come and do all the housework. In Canada, only the super rich can afford maids. So how do we handle the housework after never having done it before? Easy…you set up a system; and share the work with your spouse.

The house work here is not so much that you cannot manage. Also, there are products available that will make the work easier. So don’t worry, once you come here you will learn to manage it easily.

But it can get overwhelming for one person to manage all the house work for a family. Both partners need to share the responsibilities equally. So if you are the partner that usually avoids the house work, prepare yourself to start doing it, otherwise you are going to have a huge problem managing your spouse. And if you are the kind of partner that wants to do all the work yourself or have it done only your way, watch out. You will end up with all the housework, be tired and miserable. You need to learn to let go, it does not matter if everything is not done your way.

Keep an open mind and be ready to change your ways; this will keep you happy in Canada.