MY LIFE IN CANADA

First of all, I want to apologize because of what you are about to read, because sincerely, I have no idea of what I am doing. This is a book we decided to write in our English as a Second Language class (ESL), to prepare international students who will come in the next years about what they are going to live and experience in their time in Canada. We decided to write this dual language book, because when we arrived to Canada, we didn’t know what to expect of our stay in this country, and one day, we were talking about that in our ESL class when the teacher had a really good idea to show a little bit about our experiences to other students who will go through the same than us: “Why don’t you write a book where you explain everything you have lived in these months, that is also written in your own language and English?”, and we decided that this book would be our “special ESL project”; so here we go.

I am from Mexico, and my name is Alejandro Garcia Rendon Laureano. In Mexico, I live in a state called Sonora, which is part of the hottest desert in the country, and when I arrived to Canada, the cold was one of those little details that I had thought about, but in a short period of time, exceeded my expectations in an amazing way. I came to Brockville, and when I talked to people they all asked me “Have you been here at the winter time?” and when they heard that my answer was a No, all they could do was look at each other and then tell me to prepare myself to the most different winter I have ever lived in my life, but ‘How different can it be? I mean… they must be trying to scare me or something…’ Well, I came to Canada in September, and the weather was really nice, but at the middle of October, I was literally freezing, and I can tell you I was the only crazy guy who came to school wearing his biggest jacket when everyone else was only wearing a little sweater; and when November and December came, I thought that it could not be truth what I was living at the moment… ‘How can it be possible for someone to live in this kind of weather?’ The temperatures were below 25 degrees Celsius, with really strong winds that made you feel like if you were at a temperature of -50°C. With the time you will get used to the cold temperatures, but don’t let them surprise you.

Even when the weather differences impacted me the most when I got to this country, another thing that took my several weeks to get used to was school, because the system is really different to Mexico’s. The first thing you will notice is that the time schedules change each week. One week the schedule goes 12345, and the next one is the opposite way, 54321; the week after that, the schedule changes again to be 21354, and the last week you just have to change it backwards, just to start again next week with week #1. Also, in BCI we have the period called MSIP, or study period, where if you manage your time properly, you can make your homework, read, use the computer, or even talk with your friends and relax a little bit; us, the international students, do not spend our MSIP time in the same classroom than the other students, because we go to a special room where we take English as a Second Language, where we have a teacher who helps us if we have doubts with our home works and gives us exercises to strengthen our English, she also makes us read a lot to amplify our vocabulary and all of that stuff that will make us better English speakers; once a month, all the international students get together at the lunch time and share characteristic foods and other stuff from our countries, just to chill a while with our friends and show them a little bit about our customs and traditions.

I usually go to the YMCA after school; the YMCA is Brockville’s gym. It is a good gym, and a lot of the students walk from BCI just when they go out of school. There they have weights machines, bicycles, climbers, tennis and basketball courts, ping pong tables, and a lot of stuff I don’t remember and I will not make a big effort to remember, because I’m writing at 12 in the night one day before turning in this book, but honestly, you should try to go to the Y.

I spend most of my afternoons at the house where I’m living in, and the family that I am living with have been receiving international students since four years ago, and this year I am not the only one in this house; I live with a Korean and with a Chinese guy, and this has been one of the most difficult things about living here, because I had never lived with people who is not part of my family, and less, with people from different countries, with different ways of thinking or acting, or a lot of times, with languages barriers between us. A lot of times I have got upset with them, just because we are really different, and when we live together, those differences look bigger than when you just hang out a while with someone. But as in every relationship, we have learned to get along pretty well, and even when sometimes I don’t want to see them, not even in a picture, most of the times we can talk and play and have really good times, and I know that they are becoming part of my family with the time. I think that I did not prepare myself for this either, for living with people who would be so different of what I was used to… I never thought that living with other countries people was going to be so different than living with my family; I mean, I did think it was going to be different, but I never thought it was going to be this different, I did not imagine that other cultures, no matter how far away they are from each other, could have so many differences with me.
 
And talking about different cultures, something I just loved about Canada is the fact of seeing so many countries and cultures getting along with each other. Is the first time I see so many people from so many different places, living in the same place. Here, I have made friends from all over the world. I have two friends from Germany, who go to school with me and honestly, I never thought I would like them so much, their names are Daniel and Stefanie; another of my friends is Ada, who asked me for a special mention of her in this book, she was one of the first people I knew in BCE and I liked her a lot since the beginning. I met a friend from India too, her name is Christlyn and I like her a lot too, and a friend from Mexico, who lives in the same city than me and I had never seen her before. I met people from all over the world: Germany, Portugal, Taiwan, Korea, China, India, Mexico, and more. And you have no idea of how fun it can be to listen to the stories every one of them has to tell. And the best of all is that you will never stop surprising about how different every one of them is and how similar they are at the same time, with you and between them. You never think that two countries that are in the two opposite corners of the world can have so many similitude, when they are actually so distant from each other and you never expect the things they can tell you about, or the way they will react, because at the same time, they can be really similar and completely different to you.

Being completely honest, there is not much to do in Brockville. We have a movie theater, Walmart, a shopping mall without a lot of stores and where no one wants to hang out, and downtown, where you cannot do a lot of things either. Most of the times you can just be hanging out and spend time with your friends near the river or just walking around the city. But it also can be fun if you are having a good time with your friends.

Another of those little details I didn’t think about before coming to Canada was the money, because thanks to the exchange rate, most of the things I see on sale look really cheap, because ‘When have you seen a Doritos bag at the price of 2?’, but when I make the conversion, my price in pesos would be 26, which is a lot for a chips bag; and that does not only happens with snacks or drinks, but it happens with most of the products. It happened to me a lot when I just arrived here. You need to take care of the money a lot, because a lot of times, the number, that seems littler that what you are used to, can play you a joke.

The food... A lot of people in Canada have heard me talking about the food, and most of the times, I don’t say pretty things about it, because I need to be honest, and the food in Canada does not have flavor at all and most of the times it is the same meal over and over again. Canadians love potatoes, every day and at any hour of their day… smashed potatoes, baked potatoes, potatoes with beef, more smashed potatoes, just potatoes, potatoes with egg, more smashed potatoes, and more stuff with potatoes. Oh! I almost forgot this one: Smashed potatoes! They also eat a lot of pork and broccoli, and they are not able at all to have some spicy food inside their mouth without changing the color of their face from a white-pink tone to a red tomato one while they desperately look for some liquid that could help them to spit the spicy flavor out of their body, thing that can be really funny most of the times.

I think that because of what I have lived in Brockville, I could keep writing about my experiences, comments and suggestions for pages and pages, and I would not mind to do it, but I think this was just a little bit of what this is going to be like… And for me, one of the best things about coming to Canada was that my expectations were all exceeded in every way you can think they were exceeded, and everything was completely new, and everything was a surprise, and all or this made me change my thinking about so many topics and changed my attitudes to a lot of things. I think that the best advice anyone could give you is to enjoy the time you will live here, because, as my dad once told me, you don’t know when you will have the opportunity of living this experience again in your life. So enjoy it, meet people and know places, take the time of talking with the people who you live with and learn everything you can from them, learn from your teachers, from your family and learn from your friends, but most of all, learn from you, because trust me, in this time living here, you will realize a lot of things about you I can be sure you didn’t know, and most of the times you will amaze yourself in ways you never thought you could do it. I will say goodbye and I wish you the best of luck in Canada and in Brockville, because I tell you, you will need it. I can assure you that this, will be one of the most different, weird, difficult and fun experience you will live in your life.

ALEX GARCÍA RENDÓN LAUREANO