When I thought about Canada as a country to live

Many people can think this is crazyness, but the first time when I started thinking about moving to another country was when I was 15, 16 years-old. I always thought about doing an interchange in another country, like Australia, so I would learn English and I would have an amazing experience.
So I went to Rotary, international organization known for having house exchange for young students. Things were working out nicely at Rotary, but I guess at 16 years of age you need more than a desire to go abroad, you need parental help. Money.

My parents were not so fond of the idea of me living in another country for a whole year, so I think they were treating my aspirations as a teen's fun, and this trip never happened. Not too many details in why my parents never supported me on that, I was angry at the time.

Anyways, I went to the University in 1999, and I was loving it. Food Engineering. Different city, far away from home, new friends, new responsabilities. But I still had that dream of going abroad for something great. You now, some people have this itchy thing about traveling, and I am one of them. I started researching other universities, but at this time, mainly in Europe.
Somehow I got a brochure about Education in Canada so I read and was amazed by the high level of education, and bla bla, all that neat stuff about Canadians.

This was my first contact with Canada: a brochure found on line. Then my ideas were growing, I googled more about Canada, and initiated my learning about immigration. Reading a little bit here, a bit there... the process doesn't seen so difficult when you compare with other countries, it is not so expensive as well.

Some time later, when I was bus traveling from Campinas to Bauru (it's a long and boring trip), I bought a magazine to distract me, a cheap one, on sale. It was a travel magazine and it had a great report about Vancouver Island, what made me in LOVE with the place (I still have the magazine with the receipt inside). At that point I was at my last year of university and already had a job (with vacations ahead), and some money saved: the right ingredients to cook-up a trip. Of course I called some agencies in Sao Paulo to ask about English courses in Canada, packages including the school and homestay. It would be a study/exploratory vacations. When the agent emailed me back with the costs, I was really surprised how "cheap" it was, compared to London. I thought to myself "Wow, I can do it!"

So I did it. I booked my flight, my school, the date. It was October 2005 when I had decided everything about my vacations in March 2006.