Arrival in Canada

  I began this blog a while back, and as a newbie blogger never really published it until now.  I still feel weird about having strangers view things right out of my head without me knowing they are even looking, and without them knowing me at all- we'll see if i can get used to it.   on to the post....

  My arrival Canada was uneventful... well eventful for me maybe, but basically you get your paper stamped and walk away from the counter and that's it.  After thousands of dollars and waiting for years you just walk out and there you are- a new Canadian ...sort of.  It seemed to lack some kind of fanfare, but then again i'm not really canadian yet and have never been a quiet midwesterner.
  So how did I land in Barrie, Ontario, Canada? I'm in Barrie because my fiancée got a job here.  We met in college in my beloved state, (northern) New Jersey. She's canadian, but not exactly Ontarian, no.. she's canadian by way of MTL (you know, the rebels with the hyperactive language police). However, she lived ten years in New Jersey- much of it so close to manhattan you could see the Empire State Building.  In fact, in my hometown you could see the Empire State Building from everywhere- and my family was there for five generations! She and I tried very hard to stay in the United States but due to federal marriage laws it didn't work out.. you can just string together so many low-paying TN-1's before you have to admit you need to change everything. So here I am in the very strange position of a forced self-imposed exile from my own country (which i am rather bitter about because I loved my state and loved having manhattan a short bus or train away).
  I'm an urban chick.  Compared to where I'm from, Barrie would not be called a city. It would be called a small town and so I'm finding there is a bit of culture shock for me here since I've never lived someplace place so rural. Not only would Barrie be considered a small town where I'm from, but that small town would be surrounded by much more densely populated areas, surrounded by even more densely populated areas, on and on until you reached the epicenter of dense per capita square footage, Manhattan.   That kind of population density, money and motion feeds into the way that people live and experience culture. It's where culture is often times generated. The contrasts between these lifestyles are the reason i began this blog.. though i'm sure, by far, it won't be the only subject.