Last out of the gate...and yet

I have held off from starting a blog for so long, I'm almost blushing. I'm a late adopter to start with, and on top of that the kind who babbles on and then regrets it all afterwards. And I'll rework a sentence to death.

And yet here I am, a few years after the fact, jumping into the pool. This is more than anything a personal record of our strange adventure, moving home with my Finnish partner after six years abroad. You would think this would be a relatively simple thing. It's not. So I will also post any resources I find along the way that might be of use to anyone reading.

When I moved to Helsinki my fancy new employer handled the paperwork, it cost me nothing (or next to nothing) and it took two months. I figured I'd be here for a year, maybe two. The plan was to hang out and travel around Europe, maybe Asia. Long story short my boyfriend is now my husband, and we're thinking if we want to move back to Canada, it's sort of now or never. I'm getting comfy here in Helsinki, I love my friends, and we have good jobs etc. But Mr. O has always wanted to live in Toronto and I would also love to move back. It's been so long that I can't claim to know it the way I used to, and it will be interesting to see where we end up. I have all kinds of anxieties and at the same time big plans for starting over.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we have to get there...and this is the reason I started this blog. While our "plan" all along has been to move back, neither of us really realized just what was involved in this - the amount of time, money, and patience. Canada is built on immigration and yet I wonder how many people living there have really experienced the fearsome foe that is the Canadian immigration bureaucracy. One look at the maze of vagaries on the CIC website is enough to discourage many potential new Canadians, I'm sure. Not to rag on public servants - it's obvious the system is overloaded - but the site is light on the kind of details that a good immigration lawyer will tell you for free. Our little case file (now just a zygote, really) will be one of many and relatively straightforward, no refugee claims or extended family members to consider. And yet we're looking at 9 months before Mr. O gets his permanent residence via in-country family class spousal sponsorship. Did I say daunting?