So now I'm about two weeks in, I have homework, about 40 lab reports to grade, and need to find a sub for my lab TA section. I've gotten a social insurance number from the government of Canada (the Canadian equivalent of a social security number) and it seems likely that I might get paid this Friday. Now, while I have a few minutes before I go upstairs to get to better know some of my new colleagues over lunch, seems like as good a chance as I'll get to go over what I've been thinking about since I started here at the IQC.

First, dealing with office staff is always frustrating. As a foreigner, even from the US, it was a mess of people not telling me what I needed to do in time. I still laugh thinking about the email that came out a week or two before classes from the international office explaining how to put off coming to school for a term because they hadn't really told people in time to apply for visas.

Getting my study permit was something I got done well in advance and, consequently, without much help from the university at all. The SIN was another one of those things. Sarah and I biked out to the service Canada center on a hot day and arrived sweaty, carrying our stacks of documents, only to find that Sarah, who doesn't yet need a SIN because nobody is paying her anything, could get a number, but I – the reason we were in the country in the first place – hadn't been supplied the right paperwork by the University to get mine. There were a number of other small things as well, but that was the one that required the most physical effort by far.

I'm now slowly being won over to the idea that the university might actually care about some of us, but they certainly didn't show it at all until long after I'd arrived and started attending classes.

Now that I'm here, though, it's nice to be teaching a little (as a Teaching Assistant) and good to have some things to think about during the day. The minor office snafu's keep coming (I wasn't given a key to the room I TA in yet), but we'll iron them out and hopefully I'll have less and less to ask of confused people in offices as time goes on.

There are people from a lot of different countries here. It's hard to tell how much is the university and how much is Kitchener-Waterloo generally, because both seem to be fairly diverse. The grad students from India have commented that they can get some of the same food as at home since there's such a large population with Indian heritage here.

After our year in Evanston/Chicago, I think we're doing a pretty good job of setting up a life here. Making new friends is hard, and takes a lot of time. Sadly, I don't really get to see the other grad students much other that at lunch, which I try to make the most of. Hopefully, some of them will be friends, and perhaps someday, we'll make it to Food Not Bombs here in Waterloo or in Kitchener, closer to home, and meet some people there, too.