New Montrealers: Australian couple falls in love with the city

Every year, people from around the world choose to make Montreal their new home. For the second straight year, CBC's Daybreak is asking some of these new Montrealers about their motives and aspirations.

Name

Zac Brandstater and Cait Brandstater.

Where they're from

Perth, Western Australia.

Whythey chose to make Montreal their home

Zac:We didn't have any concrete plans to move to Montreal, but we did have friends here and a small inkling that it might happen. When we arrived, we liked the city so much that we'd found an apartment and signed a lease within twoweeks.

Cait: I'd always wanted to visit Canada and so when we were planning our move it made sense to come here. It certainly helped that the cost of living is so cheap, too.This fed really well into our plan of taking a bit of time to get to know the city and the language before diving into work.

What surprised them the most when they got here

Zac: The lack of snow. We arrived on Christmas Eve 2014 and it was raining. It took a few days for everything to become as white and fluffy as we'd been groomed to expect.

Cait: Before coming here, the only squirrels, acorns andreal Christmas trees I'd ever seen were in cartoons or movies. It's so strange seeing them with my own eyes. Even pumpkins look like cartoon pumpkins here.

The best part about being here so far

Zac: Ticking off a life goal. I'd only ever lived in Australia, and I had spent all of my adult life living in Perth. Every day that we stay here makes it another successful day in doing something that I always wanted to do. And I love winter.

Cait: I've met some amazing and kind people and everybody seems to be working on really interesting projects.

Living and working in a bilingual community and having the chance to challenge myself with the language has also been great. I'm so jealous of kids who grow up speaking two languages they make it seem so easy!

The biggest challenge about being here so far

Zac: The language. The requirements for speaking French are quite strenuous, especially for engineering. But I'm learning, and I'm enjoying it. Hopefully I can be a more useful member of Quebec society once I can speak (somewhat) fluently in French.

Cait: The constant little run-ins with Quebec bureaucracy that we probably could have avoided had we settled anywhere else in Canada. We were planning to throw ourselves into the government's francisation course whilst still on "holiday"only to discover we had to be employed to do it.The trouble with this? It's been really difficult to find work without having completed certain levels of the course, and once we've got work, we don't have much time to do it.

What they can't wait to do in 2016

Zac: Everything. We were fairly restricted in 2015 because neither of us had work (again, French-language requirements) until the second half of the year.But having seen what this city has to offer we can't wait to be part of it.

Cait: Like Zac said, really having a chance to immerse ourselves in culture now that we've got a steady income. I really want to give cross-country skiing a go. We live close to the mountain, and watching people zoom down the tracks makes it looks like so much fun!

Meet more new Montrealers each day this week at cbc.ca/montreal andon CBC Montreal's Daybreak at 6:40 on Monday through Thursday and 7:40 a.m. on Friday.