Working in Fort Mcmurray

---

I came to Alberta for one reason, to work and make a lot of money. My friend Sebs parents own a cleaning company and I have experience in this so they were asking that I come. We were going to come in November but we both got bored of Moncton and decided one night to leave earlier. I have never been to Alberta and I love to visit new places. We had a flight connection to Toronto and had a few hours to kill so we decided to go down town. I always wanted to visit Toronto but never got the opportunity so I just had to. We took a cab there and back which was fifty dollars. very expensive but I just received my last pay from the Marriott so I didn't care. We went shopping at the Eaton centre, a huge mall right down town. I really liked Toronto everyone there is very nice and helpful. It was good to visit, I was planning on moving there soon.
So we had a flight delay and didn't get to Fort Mcmurray till 11pm. Seb dad picked us up at the airport, we just went home and slept. We were very exhausted from flights.The next day we start work around one. We cleaned a small trailer. The trailers here are not like in New Brunswick, they are nice. The rent here is so expensive that people will rent those instead of buying a home. Even apartments are one to three thousand dollars a month. A lot of people just come here to work so people are constantly coming in and out of the city. That's also why this cleaning business is doing so well. Every time someone moves out we go and clean the apartment, condo, house. The work can be pretty hard but it is worth the pay for sure. If we are getting paid hourly we get 25$. But lets say me and Seb have a contract worth 300$ we split it. It could take us four hours or maybe all day. Like yesterday we had a trailer and it took us seven hours.
There are so many people from all over the world here. There is a lot of people from India, Mexico, Africa, everywhere. It is one of the best places in Canada to make money. The reason why theres so much money here is because of the oil sands. Some of the men here that work in places like that make around thirty dollars an hour.
The city itself is pretty small but its constantly growing. There is a lot of construction everywhere. This place is also pretty dangerous. I guess there is a lot of gangs and pretty bad drug problem. If you do not have a good job its hard to make a living here with the rent being so high. There are quite a few crack heads that hang around and are homeless. Like yesterday when me and Seb went into the mall his parents were waiting in van and I guess a bunch of them came up to van and were trying to get in or something. Also in the past week there has been a bank robbery, stabbing, store robbery, and murder. I don't want anyone to worry about me though, I just work and that stuff is pretty much gang/drug related.
Aside from work me and Seb started going to the gym. We need to lose like ten pounds or so for our next vacation. The biggest recreational centre in Canada is here. It has a big gym, pool with big water slides, tennis courts, three ice rinks, basketball court, curling rink, steam room and sauna, golf course, library, daycare. They are also adding on a football and baseball stadium. The membership is only fifty dollars a month and extra for classes like yoga.
Fort Mcmurray is surrounded by the Athabasca River, a lot of people go boating and seadooing in it. Sebs father owns two sea-doos and we really wanted to go before it got to cold. So we woke up early this morning and it was a beautiful day to go. It was a bit chilly and I wish I had brought my sunglasses because it was so windy and hard to keep my eyes open when we went fast. It was very beautiful though the leaves already changed colours and it was a really nice view. We got close to the large bridge and we both were sketchy about going further as the water looked shallow. We both lean on one side too much and well we tipped the freaking sea doo. It was so scary we both were panicking and yelling at this point. Luckily we moved fast and I flipped the sea doo over and got on than Seb got on back. I lost my sandals and Seb lost one of his crocs (lol). The water was absolutely freezing and now with soaked clothes riding the sea doo we felt very uncomfortable. So we decided to take a break and go to the island and dry off a bit. We took our sweaters off and sat for a few minutes. Than we thought of bears and couldn't stand being there much longer so we had enough and wanted to go back. On the way back of course we had to get stuck in shallow part of the river. There was a lot of sand in the area and we had to get off the sea doo and walk in the freezing water and push it into deeper water, that took about fifteen minutes. It was very frustrating but at the same time it was an adventure and kind of fun. All we can do is look back and laugh at ourselves. We did learn a lesson, do not sea doo in the fall. We'll stick to sea dooing in Mexico with clear warm water and a guide.

---