We officially became residents of Canada on September 4, 2002 when Tara got her work permit to teach at Simon Fraser University. This marked the end of 790 days off of work for her and meant we'd be staying in Vancouver until at least May of 2003. Since we were already settled in Vancouver with a furnished apartment, becoming residents instead of visitors wasn't a drastic change at first. It was a very good time to be offered an unexpected job actually since summer was just drawing to a close. Slowly, we began to build a more permanent life and aquire those things that don't travel well in a backpack. For example, a car.