Expat Empire Podcast 19 | Leaving the Bay Area for Canada with Melanie Wartenberg
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Episode Description
In this episode of the Expat Empire Podcast, we will be hearing from Melanie Wartenberg. Melanie spent the last 25 years living in the Bay Area with her family but started getting an itch to uproot her life and make the move north to Vancouver Island, Canada. She moved with her husband, teenage son, and pets across the border on July 1, 2020, as soon as the borders opened in the middle of the pandemic. She has spent the last five months getting settled into her exciting new life abroad and has a lot of great stories and tips to share.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The 18-month process that culminated in Melanie moving with her family to another country in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic
- How to decide which city is right for you when you decided to make your first move abroad
- Some out-of-the-box immigration routes to get you and your family abroad
- How the universe can work in your favor once you make your intentions to move abroad public to your family and friends
…and much more! You can catch David and 20 other expert expats on Melanie’s Goodbye America Series starting on December 14 through January 3 at https://goodbyeamericaseries.com/event/david/.
Eli Hermit produced the music for this episode, please check him out on Bandcamp at elihermit.bandcamp.com/.
Please leave us a review at ratethispodcast.com/expatempire.
Expat Empire updates:
Learn more about Expat Empire and schedule your free consulting call to plan your move abroad at expatempire.com!
Episode Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the Expat Empire Podcast, the podcast where you can hear from expats around the world and learn how you can join them.
Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today for the 19th episode of the Expat Empire Podcast.
Before we jump into today’s interview, I want to take this opportunity to give you a quick update on Expat Empire. We have been busy since the last podcast episode was released!
If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you can get our brand new free Moving Abroad Budgeting Worksheet right now! It has a monthly budget plan including everything you need to think about when living abroad, including your travel plans, as well as a calculator for your initial moving costs so you can forecast how much you will need to save before making your move! If you want to start planning your budget for your new life abroad, this is the worksheet you need!
We are also currently running a survey to find out more about how people just like you find your information about moving and living abroad. Two lucky winners will receive a $25 Amazon gift card and entries close this Friday, December 11, 2020 at 5pm GMT, so please don’t wait to fill out the survey.
In today’s episode, we will be talking about our guest Melanie’s new interview video series called Goodbye America: How to move to another country and make your expat dreams of peace, prosperity, and freedom come true. I’m joining 20 other expert expats to discuss how we made our moves abroad and help people around the world start making their plans for moving in 2021. The series starts with an interview with yours truly on December 14 and continues through January 3 with a new interview released daily. Be sure to sign up for the series today!
I continue to receive many consulting requests from individuals just like you who are looking to finally make the move abroad that they have been dreaming about as soon as the current situation gets a little clearer. It is never too soon to start planning for your next big life change and it’s best to be ready to take the plunge as soon as the window for international travel reopens because you never know when it will close again.
Whether you are looking to make your first move abroad, transition into life as a digital nomad, or just want someone to talk to about your travel and moving dreams, we are ready to help you think about the next steps in your journey abroad. We are currently offering a limited number of free 30-minute consulting calls to help people just like you to jumpstart their moves abroad, so please contact us to book your time before it’s too late and all the spots are taken!
You can get links for all of these updates in the show notes for this episode.
With all of that said, today we will be hearing from Melanie Wartenberg. Melanie spent the last 25 years living in the Bay Area with her family but started getting an itch to uproot her life and make the move north to Vancouver Island, Canada. She moved with her husband, teenage son, and dog across the border on July 1, 2020, as soon as the borders opened in the middle of the pandemic. She has spent the last five months getting settled into her exciting new life abroad and has a lot of great stories and tips to share.
Without further ado, let’s start the conversation.
Conversation
David McNeill: Hey, Melanie. Thanks so much for joining us today on the Expat Empire Podcast.
Melanie Wartenberg: 100%! Happy to be here.
David McNeill: Awesome, well, I’m super excited to ask you a lot of questions about your recent move from the US to Canada; so I suppose that kind of takes the surprise away for our listeners, but if you could just talk a little bit about, you know your current situation whereabouts you are now and how the last months have looked for you? I guess it’s kind of a big, probably complicated question, but feel free to take your time and kind of going through the steps or the overall situation that you’ve been looking at for the last few months.
Melanie Wartenberg: Sure, absolutely; so my family and I, and that are myself, I have a husband and a 15-year-old son and a dog. We moved from the San Francisco Bay Area in California after 25 years of living there to Victoria British Columbia on the West Coast of Canada on Vancouver Island. We crossed the border on Canada day, July 1st, 2020, so it’s been about, I think 4 months since we have been here, is that right?
David McNeill: Okay.
Melanie Wartenberg: October, November, five months since we’ve been here.
David McNeill: 5 months, time flies, that sounds amazing. How long did it take for you to sort of make the general plan for that move and everything that went into that July 1st crossing the border?
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, I would say the idea to move abroad and specifically to move to Canada probably started about 18 months before we actually made that move. So at the time we first came to Victoria, as many Americans do on a cruise port day on the way back from a cruise to Alaska and that would have been two summers ago, I suppose. So the summer of 2018 and we thought it was a lovely city just had the day to do some things and look around but had never been here before and just thought that it seemed like a great city. Subsequently, I had the opportunity to travel here for an organizational survey, which is sort of an adjacent work thing that I do where you travel to different places to give consultation to organizations in my field, which is nonprofit, mental health, and social justice. So I came a day early; so at that point already, I took a picture of myself with a realty sign that said “Your home is here.” So apparently the idea that we potentially would move here had already been planted. And I wandered around in that extra day in neighborhoods and did some extra stuff that you would want to do to figure out if you would feel comfortable in a place and you know what different neighborhoods are like, different places outside of what tourists would do.
And you know, again, it reinforced that I really liked it. I went home and we started to discuss what it might be like to leave the United States and to move, and the idea kind of grew. There were a number of configuring circumstances that I think intersected at the time correctly for us to make an international move. I was no longer really satisfied at the job that I was out at the place I was in my career, so that was one thing. I was thinking about potentially going back to school in order to get a second master’s degree, to learn some new things that might help me some more in leadership. My son at the time was going to be finishing 8th grade and going into high school in 2020. So in terms of that happening, we knew there was a window from my perspective as a parent, where there would have been big changes happening anyway for our son. So, you know those were probably some of the circumstances that appeared to us to create a window that was reasonable to make a big change in life.
David McNeill: Right. So it sounds like all of these different factors kind of culminated, coalesced in this great opportunity for you to make the move. How did you decide that ultimately that was not only the right country but the right city and you know, there are so many places out there? What was it about it that, that drew you, and I mean, of course, you enjoyed the city, you could picture yourself there, you took the picture in front of a real estate sign, but other places that you considered or anything in particular that just made it stand out so much that it was like, this is the spot?
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, I think for us, there were probably several things that are common things that I would encourage people to consider when they’re considering moving to another place. One to start with was the weather; so we came from California. I grew up as did my husband in Pennsylvania. So we grew up where there was a winter climate, but I was not interested nor am I suited for living in a heavy winter climate anymore.
David McNeill: Sure.
Melanie Wartenberg: So that was definitely a factor and then in considering Canada, that’s most certainly a factor because Victoria is the most temperate climate in Canada. And so I tracked the weather on my phone app for about a year looking where we were and looking at what was the temperature in Victoria on any given day. And saw that, you know, generally the temperature was maybe five or 10 degrees colder for the most part, but it was not significantly colder than where we lived in the Bay Area, which is also very neutral. So that was one thing; and there were a lot of things that I would say we loved about the Bay Area. We love having an opportunity to have different foods, to have every kind of ethnic food you could have to have a walking life where you can walk from your house to a neighborhood or; here we call it the village. And where, you know, opportunities to do fun things are available where nature opportunities are nearby, where we had wineries nearby, there are brewery tours, things like that and all of those things are as well available here. Skiing and snowboarding within reasonable drive water around us, so living near a beach, living near water.
So Victoria has all of those things in common with where we came from, however, Victoria is like a scaled-down version. What I think was where some of the things that were creating unhappiness in the Bay Area were the density of the population and the density of driving anywhere.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: I would drive, I had an office at 1.3 and a half miles from my house and sometimes it would take me 35 minutes to drive that three and a half miles.
David McNeill: Wow.
Melanie Wartenberg: So it was just the density of the population and the complexity of sort of level of aggravation that, you know, that rises in your day-to-day life and being able to do things I think overtime wore on me.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So, you know, the idea of a city that had all of the amazing things that we had there, but also didn’t have the traffic congestion, didn’t have as many people yet had all of the things that we loved and were important to us. It really seemed like an opportunity.
David McNeill: It really sounds like in fact than that it was sort of a perfect spot for everything that you wanted to do. And have a similar experience to the Bay Area where you were living before, but yet make some improvements or some changes to your lifestyle there that was more fitting for what you were looking for. So how did you think about how you would actually be able to move because I’ve heard from many Americans, “Oh, I’m just going to move to Canada or just basically drive north.” So I know it takes, you know, certainly as you said, the 18 months, much more work to think through it, not only to figure out a location but naturally, you know, your visas and what you have to do to actually make the move physically. So if you could just talk through that a little bit and what your plan was or how you sort of went about figuring out a really concrete route to getting there, that would be great.
Melanie Wartenberg: Absolutely. There are over a hundred immigration paths to Canada, I believe and in some ways, the system is very simple and you can do it on your own. And in some ways, it is complicated because it has multiple layers and you have to figure out what those layers are and how to navigate them. Luckily, I am super good at puzzle solving and so I was able to navigate through and figure out what was most effective. So I began looking at various immigration streams, and then as I said, happening at the same time was this idea that had germinated in me that maybe I wanted to go back to school.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So I also began looking at schools in Victoria and found that the University of Victoria had an amazing weekend MBA program for people who had been in leadership for a particular number of years and that MBA focuses on sustainable innovation. The professional crisis, to some extent that I was having had to do with that, is I no longer felt after many, many years that my ability to innovate and be effective in the nonprofit space in the United States was really where I wanted it to be.
And so I had the idea that going back to school and being in an environment where people were really learning, people were coming from all sorts of different industries. People were applying business knowledge to complex problems would allow me to sort of revitalize my innovative thinking and apply new frames to potential problem solving for the space that I had come from. And amazingly, the University of Victoria had this program that really felt right to me and also was very progressive in terms of its focus on sustainable innovation and that sustainability both in terms of environmental impact, as well as human rights and social impact.
So it’s an amazing program and then that led to me following that path down to seek a study permit. Americans do not need a visa to come to Canada, they need a permit, either a work permit or a study permit, so those are some of the ways that people can come to Canada. And there is online the place I would advise people to check initially is the express entry system. The express entry system is a huge system that the government has in place that is number based, so it’s purely based on math. And you get a certain amount of points for different things like your age, your level of education, your work experience and you can run all of those numbers at no cost just to see what number you come up with. The system then has a lottery system where every week, every two weeks they will put all of the applications through a system and they’ll come up with a point’s threshold. And the applications that are above that point’s threshold will get an offer to seek permanent residency in Canada. So, fortunately, or unfortunately that system favors people who are younger, so there are a hundred points for age and once you hit 45, you get a big fat goose egg, zero.
David McNeill: Really, wow.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah.
David McNeill: Putting quite, how do you say, a finger on the scales?
Melanie Wartenberg: So you can tell for me having said, I lived in the Bay Area for 25 years and wasn’t raised there that I was past the 45 mark.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: As was my husband and so the express entry system was not going to be a workable system for us, even if we wanted it to be. Alternately, you know, I was at the appropriate level of education and experience to join the wonderful program that I’m in. And I used the online system to seek a study permit. And I did that prior to COVID, so I had been accepted to my program in the fall of 2019, and with that acceptance, you turn in the documentation to the Canadian federal government seeking the study permit. And the online system actually tells you how long the processing time is and at the time the processing time said it would take two weeks. That was like maybe in January of 2020 and in fact, it did come back within a week.
David McNeill: Great!
Melanie Wartenberg: So I had that study permit and then my spouse, the spouse of a student is entitled to what’s called an open work permit.
David McNeill: Great.
Melanie Wartenberg: So that meant that my spouse at the time that we hit the border could ask for an open work permit that would allow him to seek employment with a Canadian employer while we were here under my study permit.
David McNeill: That’s amazing; just all kinds of, I mean, not to say it all came together exactly because there’s obviously a lot of work involved. But it’s awesome that you found this great program, managed to get your visa and then indeed, to be able to sponsor your spouse. And of course your son as well, and get the whole family to come over through this program that you were really excited about, so that’s great.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll tell you the double luck; my husband was on a social Discord channel, he’s a tech guy. He was on a social Discord channel in the weeks prior to us moving; just building connections, looking at what was out there, commenting on people’s posts and things. And saw a job ad interviewed indicating that he would be legal to work in Canada as of July 1st and was offered a job about a week prior to us leaving the United States.
David McNeill: That is so awesome, and especially to be able to indeed say, I will be legal to work there. You know, Mr. or Mrs. Employer, you don’t have to worry about getting me the visa and doing that whole process. And so I can imagine what the right skill set, the right expertise, which obviously has, you know, is an easy decision for the employer to make, so that’s fantastic.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, so that ended up working out great because initially looking at immigration as well, he was self-employed for many years running his own business. And that was a tricky one to navigate through the immigration system unless you want to do what’s called entrepreneurial provincial nomination, which is one path you can take. But you have to invest, I think $250,000 in starting a business in Canada, submit a business plan, and employ at least one Canadian.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So as a sole proprietor where he was just working for himself, he wasn’t really interested in doing that. And he was open to going back to working for somebody else and found a wonderful company.
David McNeill: Awesome; so now it’s been about 5 months since you crossed the border and what are your first impressions? How have things been as far as trying to get settled down and finding your first housing and just getting ultimately the lay of the land as now a local, as opposed to a tourist?
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, the listeners can’t see me, but I’m smiling super huge.
David McNeill: Great, I hope that’s good.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, we have largely had… I’m so grateful for this because it doesn’t always happen this way. But it seems to me that once the decision was made for us to come here, a lot of things fell into place on their own.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: Initially we did not think that we would find a house prior to moving here because there is a lot of, across the world obviously, rental fraud and things like that online. So it feels concerning to answer an ad for a house you’ve never seen to send someone a deposit in another country you never know what’s going to happen there. So at the time as well that prior to COVID, the rental market had been very, very tight here, so there were not a lot of vacancies. And we had been told by a realtor that we contacted, that places that were for rent would be rented very quickly and that you needed to be able to look on Craigslist or Kijiji and, you know, make an appointment to go see the house tomorrow.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So we had initially set up, I think, 2 months of Airbnbs to live in when we first got here so that we would be able to look at properties. But as we got closer to the move, it certainly couldn’t hurt to look online. And so I was looking online and I had been in contact with someone that had a home in the area we wanted to live in, that I was really excited about. And that person was concerned about renting to Americans because the border at that point was already closed. And, you know, understandably, they were concerned that if we didn’t get in, for some reason that they were going to be stuck, so that was fine.
And about maybe a month or so, I’m guessing on this before we left, I reached out to a very, very small handful of people, like 3 people, maybe 4 people that we knew here who were friends of friends. So we had sort of gathered this little grouping of people who were friends of friends. And I said, you know, almost as a joke, like, “Hey, you know, we’re going to be looking for a house, we want to live in this area. If anyone knows anyone or stumbled across anyone who wants to rent a house, definitely let me know.” And sure enough, one of our friends here who at that point we had actually never even met, but I had met in an online community called InterNations. So there are, you know, some online communities for people who expats, who move abroad from one place to another. I had met this person in the InterNations community and we had been chatting back and forth a little bit. And he just knew someone who right, basically at that moment in time these folks had been about to rent their house as a sort of like an Airbnb’s short-term rental, but the bottom was falling out of the short-term market because nobody could come here. So they had just sort of seeded the idea that maybe they would look for long-term renters instead of selling the house. And right then was when I asked my friend, he asked his friend and the house was in exactly the ideal location that we wanted to live. We came to an agreement.
I had another friend living here who I had, sort of long and complicated story, but weirdly we had been here on a family trip and I had been wearing a sweatshirt from a camp that we go to in the Bay Area. We were at a farmer’s market, this was like in the year prior, a woman got up from where she was sitting and ran over to me and said, “Hey, I know that camp, you must be from California.” I said we are and she said, we’re from California too, but we live here now half of the year.
David McNeill: Oh wow.
Melanie Wartenberg: And basically we became friends and so when we found this house, she graciously agreed to go over and make sure it was a real house. And make sure that, you know, the people really owned it and all of that and did that speculation for me and then we agreed to move in. And then even better than that, the two Airbnbs we had said that it was the people that asked, well, do you want to move in right when you cross the border? And we said, well if we can you’ll have to leave us some furniture and things because you have to quarantine for two weeks.
David McNeill: Oh, right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So we couldn’t move into a dead empty house, right? So they left us some things; they sold us some things and the two Airbnbs allowed us to cancel. And we were able to tell the border when we crossed that we had an empty house to quarantine in that the keys were in the mailbox for us. And here we were, and this house feels strangely like we’ve lived here forever.
David McNeill: That’s amazing.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, it’s quite strange I feel like we’ve been here forever, but in a good way.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: But it’s really odd, so it just feels very at home, my son can walk to the high school, we can walk to the beach. We’ve gone up Island and, you know, some wine tasting and getting oysters from the oyster farms and exploring different things. And that was part of what had gone stale for me in the States in the Bay Area was just like nothing was new anymore.
And I felt like I had lived a couple of places as a student when I was in college getting my bachelor’s degree when I was younger and I think that I always wanted to wander. But one of the things that happened for me, that are very United States-specific, is that when we became parents, you know, everyone is different, but at least I think what happened for me is that I then felt a sense of responsibility as a parent, to create a stable and safe life for this little person who’s relying on you. And part of that had to do with ensuring that you have health care and your health care comes from your job. And my husband always being self-employed all that time meant that I was the one who was employed by someone elsewhere all the health care came from. And so I think that that created like sort of part of how I ended up getting boxed in, in a way, because it felt really vulnerable. If you would lose your job or you lose your health care, then particularly having kids that make you vulnerable in a different way.
And it’s quite amazing; I remember when we first came here and Canada offers healthcare not only to all of its citizens and permanent residents but as well, healthcare is available to international students and to their families. So international students do pay a $75 a month fee for that in Canadian, so you can say that’s roughly, I don’t know, $60 or something a month, and families of students don’t pay at all.
David McNeill: Oh, wow, that’s amazing.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yes, you can even see when we quarantined. Right, so you come in, you give them a plan of where you’re going to quarantine, the provincial health calls during that time. It was so interesting to me, just what I really perceived as a cultural difference around sort of health and wellness and care for citizens and residents. Was that the person who called had a very sort of social worker flair, like they weren’t calling like, are you where you’re supposed to be?
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: They were like, how are you doing, do you need anything? Like, are you able to get food, is everybody feeling well? We’re just checking on you to make sure you’re okay. So, it’s a very interesting, just sort of, there are many things like that that are sort of like Canada has similarities to the US but it also is its own country and it has its own culture and its own way of being.
David McNeill: Yeah, definitely. And it seems to align with once again, what you were looking for. I love what you talked about there, about your family and the healthcare requirements, and how those responsibilities fell on your shoulders. And I was curious, well, first of all, where you spent those months when you were younger in university, but also in the 25 years that you were spending in the Bay Area before you made your move. Had you had any points of considering other places or were any other countries ever in the back of your mind at any rate before you made this move now?
Melanie Wartenberg: Sure; so going back to the way back, I did an interim study thing when I was in my bachelor’s degree for, I think, 2 months in a study abroad in Israel. And then 2 years later I did a work-study program and lived in London, England for 6 months.
David McNeill: Nice.
Melanie Wartenberg: So I worked 3 days a week in a residential treatment facility and then I went to school 2 days a week. And then I did; you know what many Americans of a certain socioeconomic status do and traveled around Europe for the summer after that. And have had lots of opportunities to travel vacation wise since then, though we had never lived long-term in another country.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: But I think I had definitely thought about it and in relation to making this particular move, I think briefly, we thought about potentially Germany we thought briefly about Portugal. We thought about; so, you know, we thought about that EU citizenship, which allows you a lot of opportunities that said, you know, I think education for our son, education opportunities for me and perhaps distance as well were a factor. We do still have some living parents in the United States, I don’t know how this would have played out differently, but we do have a dog.
David McNeill: Yeah, yeah.
Melanie Wartenberg: So it seemed a little easier to take our dog and a car to Canada than to have to ship him to Germany or something.
David McNeill: Right, probably true, yeah.
Melanie Wartenberg: I think those were factors that led us here, as well as just thinking about the ways that Canada is generally known for having some differences than the United States; Canada being a little bit more inclined to have social programs, to have healthcare for everyone. The way people interact with marginalized people here in Canada, the way that Canada interacts with its own past of having harmed first nations and indigenous peoples is attempting to grapple with that history in a way that has some differences, in my opinion, from the United States.
David McNeill: True.
Melanie Wartenberg: In a way that is positive and in line with our values and what we feel comfortable with. So as a person who has always worked with marginalized communities that are struggling in my career, the path for folks who are working in that here, those certainly never going to be easy does not seem as uphill in relation to perhaps the government, so, yeah.
David McNeill: Sure, that makes sense. And I just want to take, I guess, a quick step back, and maybe it’s a little ways back in terms of our conversation today, but I love this notion of the sort of when you made the decision that you made, where you put your intention towards making the move, then a lot of things seem to somehow fall into place. And I do feel, I know that I’ve seen this myself, I’ve seen it happen with other people as well. And there is something kind of, almost magical about it, that doesn’t always happen this way, but you can sometimes look back and indeed see that. And I just wondered if you could expand upon it any more, just sort of any other ways that you’ve seen it happens or how can people make use of that? I mean something that’s sort of abstract and hard to necessarily give advice on it, I know, but if you just have any further thoughts on that and how people can kind of find those opportunities and, you know, put their mind to it, but also their intention as well, I think that would be very interesting.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that I’m optimistically cautious about, you know, always putting forth the idea that there’s some sort of like the universal energetic force that rewards us for, you know, doing what we should be doing. Because you know, over a long career, I’ve seen many people suffer for things that they most certainly were doing everything they could to get out of hand, you know, align their lives in a particular way and nothing ever fell into place for them.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So that said, it does seem like sometimes there’s a little bit of magic and so, as I said, that happened for housing. It happened additionally for housing in the Bay Area; we sold our house in the Bay Area. We had to move out as is the way there, so they can make your house look all fancy and like a Wayfair catalog or something and stage it. And you’re not allowed to have yourself or your crap in it. So we moved into an apartment for three months, there’s like no vacancy in the Bay Area at all. And we were able to find an apartment for these folks who actually were off for 6 months on an adventure to Mexico, to live remotely and work there. Immediately having moved into that apartment, basically, the Bay Area went on COVID lockdown, so the folks whose apartment it was, were stuck in Mexico, decided to come back to the States. But couldn’t come back to the apartment, because we were in it, our house had been destroyed by construction and then put on hold because construction had then been restricted. So the folks who own the apartment were lucky to be able to go to a home that their family owned in some other state, we were lucky to stay in the apartment until we were able to leave. But I have to say never in that time, did I think we’re not going to be able to make this move or we’re not going to make it across the border when they shut the border down. I mean, it was very unclear for people and I kept researching everything, but you know, I arrived at the border with probably a hundred-page border binder that had the, you know, everything they could have possibly wanted to ask for.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: And I’ll never know if the border agent to this day just thought, “Oh, this is not the crazy lady to mess with.” You know, only asked for one thing I think, you know, or if that was never necessary, to begin with, but you can never be more prepared.
David McNeill: Exactly.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, I do think that things happen and you make things happen. And it’s a combination of those things, you know, for people who are moving, like I came here and I found out there was a community Facebook group, right. So I got on the community Facebook group and I would ask questions and when people would mention that they were new to the area, I would message them and say, hey, do you want to get coffee or, you know, we’re also new. And I made a great mom friend who also had a son going into grade 9 at the high school.
David McNeill: Oh, that’s perfect.
Melanie Wartenberg: And then we colluded and got them to be friends and so, you know they never had to go to school on their own. Or have that weird first day where all the kids are eating lunch together and they’re like staring, you know, like, “Oh God, I have to, you know, I don’t know what to do.”
David McNeill: Yep, I’ve been there. I think we all have.
Melanie Wartenberg: Because Canada and the US have many people who are connected by family and friends, we did find this handful of a group of different people from people that I knew Or, you know, my husband knew or whatever, who just when we started saying we’re moving to Victoria, they would say, oh, you know, I know someone from college who’s lives in Victoria or whatever. And then people were quite welcoming and lovely and all those folks were frankly, enough to build like a pretty full network during COVID times when people here, even though we have very, very low COVID rates here. We tend to be rather conservative in Canada to make sure we keep it that way. And so the number of people that we knew coming in, or you know, a couple of people that we were able to meet are enough of a social network for the limited socialization that people really have right now anyway.
David McNeill: Yes, it is a difficult time to make connections, so it’s great to hear that you’re able to tap into your existing network. And of course, on social media as well, to be able to find new people to connect with, you know, are you sort of able to, I guess, see them much in person, obviously, I’m not sure of the exact situation there. And, you know, there are different regulations all over the world, but sort of how are you as a family as well. Able to kind of remain social even maybe with people back in the Bay Area or otherwise in the United States around the world, just to stay connected in these days.
Melanie Wartenberg: Sure, for most of the time we’ve lived here, we have had a good amount of freedom. The rates in, well in British Columbia, in general, are nowhere near in Canada in general, nowhere near the United States and British Columbia and nowhere near, you know, any state in the United States and on Vancouver Island where Victoria is not even a teeny tiny portion of what’s even in British Columbia.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So generally people do wear masks and try to keep a distance here when they’re moving about perhaps not do as many things as they normally would, but people do restaurants, stores, things are open here. You know everyone makes their own determinations as to what they feel comfortable with us generally if we do eat outside, we’ve eaten outside a couple of times at restaurants that have patios. Now that it’s getting to be a little bit rainier season here, I just saw the other day, some restaurants are building sort of domes over, and you know outdoor tables that allow people to be in their own little dome.
Vancouver Island has a tremendous amount of nature to take advantage of. So when walking outside, you know, we do a lot of walks, we go to the beach and all of that for me; for my perspective is reasonable for an Island that doesn’t really have a whole lot of COVID cases at all anyways.
David McNeill: Yeah, that’s great.
Melanie Wartenberg: So, you know, you can move about fairly easily here and, you know, we were recently asked as rates are rising a little bit in British Columbia and again, nowhere near the United States. But just to, you know, to not make extra trips that are non-essential folks were asked not to take the ferry back and forth between Vancouver and the Island, unless it was essential because obviously then there are more people on the ferry.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: I believe that it’s optional to stay in your car at some points, it was mandatory to stay in your car on the ferry while it was traveling. There are no ferries between the United States and Canada at this point, so our options off of this island are definitely limited, but we just got here, so we weren’t in any big hurry to get off.
David McNeill: Sure, sure, there’s plenty to explore, that’s good.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, absolutely.
David McNeill: And how has it been with your son’s transition to, I believe his first year of high school but also just, you know, obviously moving to a new school, like you said, moving within a new country, a new system. Has there been anything that has surprised him or been a challenge or has it been a pretty comfortable, smooth transition?
Melanie Wartenberg: I would say it’s been a pretty smooth transition, of course, you know, this is a time when the internet is very available. And in my son’s particular case, I do have one of the 15-year-old boys that many people have who loves video games.
David McNeill: Sure.
Melanie Wartenberg: And, you know, so he is definitely online with his friends in the Bay Area. He and his friend, who I mentioned to the mom before they had moved here, actually are American, but they had moved here from Costa Rica for several years in Costa Rica.
David McNeill: Oh, cool!
Melanie Wartenberg: And so, you know, as well, his friend is on video games with his friends at Costa Rica, and then they’re on video games with each other. So, and school here has some adaptations systemically to address, you know, increasing safety measures, but they do go to school every day and in the Bay Area, none of the kids have ever gone back to school since last March.
David McNeill: Right, right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So I do feel very, very grateful that he is able to walk to the high school here and goes to school every day. And you know that with some modifications, they do have all of the things available that they would normally have, so that’s really wonderful. I do think kids are really cramped up inside a lot these days and as a person who worked collaterally with mental health and education, I do worry about the long-term implications of that for kids.
David McNeill: Yeah, that makes perfect sense and I’m glad it has that opportunity as well, especially in a new environment, it’s so important to make those in-person connections. Do you expect that he will probably; I mean, assuming he goes to university will try to do that within Canada or, I mean, have you had any conversations about that or any expectations?
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, well, here’s one of the big things as well, you know, I think one of the things that were going on in the Bay Area, there were several just long-term things that I personally would consider concerning to me about the Bay Area. I was working in management with a very young workforce coming out of a graduate program with a tremendous amount of student debt. And so that made it very hard and I was very aware of how hard it is for young people who do not have families to pay for college you know. Or do not have multiple generations of wealth accumulated in the United States to really take on the burdens of higher education.
So Canada has a much more affordable and equally quality university system. Frankly, even from the standpoint of that, I’m paying as an international student to get my MBA here. If my son goes to university here, I will still save thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars because, by the time he goes, he’ll be a permanent resident.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So…
David McNeill: That must play a big role as well.
Melanie Wartenberg: You know, in some ways I see my extra master’s degree as kind of free. Because I’m going to end up getting such a difference in his ability to get an education that’s affordable here and not have to have either a huge debt to myself and my husband or to him.
So that’s a huge benefit, and then I mean, you didn’t ask about this, but I think in terms of having a child going into high school. Where I came from and across the country, there obviously have been increasing stories of gun violence in schools, in the United States and that’s really not something that happens here. You know, I think when we were exploring it, I would ask people like I would ask waitresses, we were here on a family exploration trip and, you know, I would say, “Oh, we’re considering moving here. Did you grow up here, you know, do you know anything about the schools, this and that?” You know, I found some people who were, again, friends of friends who were teachers. And if I would ask something about active shooter drills and stuff in school, people would look at me like I was nuts; they were like, yeah, we don’t have that here.
David McNeill: We don’t do that, yes, right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So it’s just not a concern in the same way that unfortunately tragically it is in the United States.
David McNeill: Yeah; no, these are all important things to think about for people that are looking to go abroad. And I guess that kind of moves into some of the last questions that I have. So what advice would you give in general to people who are interested in living in Canada or just, you know, moving abroad, especially coming from the United States, given that you’ve done it fairly recently?
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah. I would just say that don’t get discouraged because COVID is happening now and, you know, there are lots of border closures and restrictions on travel. In my mind though, some people may be more positioned to make quick decisions, I definitely was not, or was not going to make the decision in that way. We, you know, sold a house, I had a family to move all those things. So to me, this is sort of the perfect planning time to really think about, you know, is the life you have really the life you want. And if in fact, this is possibly the only life you get to know, what do you want it to look like? And I just you know, your box is only as small as you make it.
David McNeill: Right.
Melanie Wartenberg: So at a certain point, that box was just too small for me and my family and we started looking at things a different way and each of us had our own reasons and have our own relationship to the move, it doesn’t have to be the same for everyone.
I would say that you know, some of my concerns as a mom or my concerns about work are totally different than my husband like just was like, yeah, it’s like going to be a great adventure. So that doesn’t have to be exactly the same for everyone. You know, take your time looking at different things, think about what you’re looking for, and learn about different places that would be good fits for that. And reach out to people because the information is out there, I would say probably on the other end of the continuum are people who just feel like it’s so overwhelming.
You know, we as humans can get decision paralysis because there’s so much information and we don’t know what to make of it. And so, you know, that might be also a position where you seek out a consultant or a coach or a community of people to get some support around decision-making and being able to actually create a plan that will work for you.
You know, you think about your costs of living your financial capabilities, lots of places in the world, you can live lots cheaper than the United States and Victoria British Columbia is probably not one of them. I might’ve taken a slight cost of living reduction moving from the Bay Area here, but it’s definitely not huge.
David McNeill: Yeah. As you say, different reasons, different rationales, and financial situations for people, but I completely agree with you that I think if nothing else, this is an opportunity for us all to take a step back indeed to assess our lives, our careers, our situations, and see if this is what we want. Especially when you know, activity increases and potentially, you know, offices open again. People have to go back to work and may not be able to enjoy some of the benefits of remote work as easily if they’re able to at this point. So yeah, just to spend this time, I totally agree, like thinking about what you can do, what you want to do and looking into possibilities.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah.
David McNeill: So to that end, of course, we’re also here to talk about a fantastic new video series that you’ve got coming out called Goodbye America, which I think says a lot in the title. And I’d just love for you to talk a little bit about your process and, you know, starting that, what was really, of course, you recently said goodbye to America. But what was it that made you think I want to create the series and what did you try to sort of turn it into, what was your goal with it?
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, so the goodbye America series is an upcoming free interview series that I created to help Americans who want to launch a life of long-term travel or move to another country. And I have 21 amazing speakers, including you.
David McNeill: Thank you very much.
Melanie Wartenberg: Yeah, thank you. Who have given interviews about their experience traveling the world, becoming digital nomads, moving from one country to another, leaving the US to live somewhere else? Perhaps some of them retired somewhere else; some of them took a job somewhere else, and all different ways that people have found to move from the United States to somewhere else in the great big world.
And it’s been an amazing series that is going to launch on December 14th. So we’re just about to promote and get the word out so people can sign up if they want to listen to all of the free interviews from all these amazing, wonderful people all over the world. We have people like in every different place in the world. So there’s lots of information about different countries, lots of personal stories, as well as you know, details about costs, about visas, about how long you can stay in one place. About how somebody else made their dream come true and if people want to tune in, I would definitely encourage them to do that. There is a link they can go to at goodbyeamericaseries.com/event/david, for you, David. And they would be able to put in just their name and their email there and then all the interviews get sent to their email inbox.
And the reason that I created this series really was in my own career, I have always been a helper, as I said, I’ve been in social services and social work and mental health and it just quite an experience for me that as my family really became, like we were really going to do this. And then we started to make that public to friends and family and people around us. I just saw so many people who have these, like either secret or, you know, sleeping dreams about living an international life or moving to another country. And yet they’ve never done it and then when you say that you’re doing it, people are like, oh my gosh, you’re really doing it. Like, you’re really, how did you make that happen? But like what about this and what about this? And they’re just so interested and enthusiastic that you can tell that there is just this energy and passion for so many people about living a life that is not the life they’re currently living. And that really spoke to my heart and made me think, you know, what, I really can take all of my long history of helping people in slightly different ways and use that to help people in this way. To reach out to folks who are interested in doing what I’ve done successfully with my family and to help them. You know, figure out either through the series or through some other things that I created that are support materials. Or through some consultation with me, like, can they make that happen and how and really change things for themselves if that’s what they want to do.
David McNeill: That is amazing; I love the story behind it, the real passion for trying to make a change in your life and helping other people to do the same. That’s a lot of what I’m trying to do here at Expat Empire as well, which is why I’m so happy to be on the series. I’m super excited about it; I love the great list of guests that you’ve put together for all these video interviews. So of course I will put that link in the show notes and I will be sure to shout from the rooftops about it. And yeah, super excited to be involved in and I can’t wait to see all the interviews myself and of course share them with friends and family.
Thank you so much for the wonderful conversation, it’s been great to hear about your move to Canada and everything that’s involved with that. I love the part about being able to put that intention out there and seeing some magic happens. So I wish the best for you going forward to certainly get some more magic sending your way as well as to our listeners as well. So thank you so much and look forward to keeping in touch.
Melanie Wartenberg: Thank you so much for having me, David.
Outro
Thanks to Melanie for sharing her story with us. You can find the full transcript for this episode at expatempire.com.
Music on this episode was produced by Eli Hermit, please check him out on Bandcamp and Spotify.
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Originally published at https://expatempire.com on December 6, 2020.
