The Outside World Known as Canada

For a 10 year old girl from Africa I thought connecting with the Canadian life style was hard, but mostly the language was difficult.  English was a hard language to learn and to this day I am still learning. Back home they tried teaching us both in our language and English, but not much pressure was given to learnimg English so I wasn’t interested in learning it either.

 When I came to Canada everyone spoke English, no one knows my language and even though my teachers back home had tried to teach us English, I didn’t know English. In fact the only words I knew how to say were hi, and how are you.

 On September 1^st I when in to my first class, it was social I think, I had no idea where I was.  At  first I thought I was at a super market in the morning when dad drove me off, as lots of kids were outside with milk curd on their hands.  I asked dad and he laughed and then told me that I was in school and the school sold milk to kids which we both found odd and weird because kid’s don’t have money so by selling things in school aren’t you encouraging them to steal money from their parents?

 My social teacher ask me to introduce myself and I couldn’t.   I couldn’t because I didn’t know what she was saying, she tried using her hands to show me what she was talking about but I wasn’t even looking at her, all I wanted to do was cry.

 I didn’t want to be here at this strange place.  I wanted to go home, back to Africa, where I knew everyone and everything made sense. I was quiet for two years.  I only spoke when I had to and said little, as I was uncomfortable with English. I didn’t want to speak because I had an accent and most of the time what I said wasn’t understood or made sense.

 Making friends was also hard because I couldn’t speak English. It was hard to make friends or talk to people, I made friends at the school park but we didn’t talk they would talk to me and I would just nod for no or yes. You could say I had two pretty easy  years of head nodding.

 I didn’t like the food so much, and I absolutely hated pizza.  The first time I tried it, it was Hawaiian, I was disgusted that Canadians put things such as fruits on their pizza. I didn’t like chocolate either it tasted gross, the water had it’s own taste, it tasted as if someone dump a whole cup of sugar in it, eating was dreadful. Mom tried to make our traditional African foods but they didn’t taste the same. They had some weird taste them, at the end she gave up and forced me to eat Canadian food.

-Edwin Jada

http://www.miis.edu/student-life/world/stories/node/24722