MY THREE MONTHS IN CANADA
I've always wanted to live in another country, to completely change my life, to know how other cultures are and the way people from a different culture live and think. This fall I finally had the chance to experience all of that by staying in Canada for three months.
I've lived in Hamilton, a big city with 500.000 inhabitants on lake Ontario, from the end of August till the beginning of November.
When they told me I could go to Canada as an exchange student I was very excited and it has been hard to wait till August to leave Italy. I was getting very bored of my life in Parma. Every day was almost the same as the previous day, I wanted to change something and to prove myself I could leave everything I knew since I was born to start a new life, even if I knew I would have missed my family and my friends here a lot.
My Canadian family helped me a lot since the first day I was in Canada and also thank to them it didn't took me too long to adapt. It's a crazy but very funny family and very different from my Italian one. But after having understood and discovered how their lifestyle is, I started to trust them and to feel part of the family. I still think about it as my "Canadian family" in which there are: Hayley, the sister who's doing the exchange with me and will come to Italy in February, Kataija, the little sister (she's 12), Elijah, the little brother (he's 5), the mom Carla and the dad Rafael.
Canada is a very different country from Italy. The first things I've noticed when I got there were that distances are a lot longer and there is a lot of space and "green". There are trees and parks everywhere and it felt strange to see so much green grass because when I left Parma in August lawns were yellow. But the weirdest and most amazing thing were squirrels. In Hamilton there were squirrels everywhere that came by you as you were walking on the sidewalk. The first time I saw a squirrel I was with Hayley and told her: "Look, there's a squirrel on the street, there's a squirrel!". She was very surprised we don't have squirrels in Parma.
Canadian culture is very hard to describe, in Canada there are many people, who come from other countries and who brought their traditions to Canada. I think more or less a third of the students in my school weren’t Canadian and to meet them has been very interesting. I learnt lots of things I didn’t know about oriental cultures, especially Arabic culture. At school I took an ESL class (English as second language class), which was like a normal English class but for students from other countries. So I made friends from all over the world (India, Russia, Guyana, Iraq, Colombia etc.). I loved my English class because we talked a lot about the places we come from. Everybody had many things to tell and distinct opinions. I really liked to hear what they had to say and also to tell them about Italy and how life in my country is.
During these three months I felt like I were living in an American movie because I’ve done things that I’d only seen in movies before: I’ve seen the school’s football team playing, I went to a drive in cinema, I’ve seen a car demolition derby, I went trick or treating on Halloween, I had a locker where I could put my books at school. I had never seen a locker before and everything was very strange at the beginning.
In Canada there are also many very beautiful natural landscapes like Niagara Falls, which is the place I liked the most. Niagara Falls are huge and very impressive waterfalls and don’t look as big as they really are in the pictures. I went there with my family, we went in a tunnel under the falls and it was fantastic because you could see the waterfalls from very close, except that our clothes got very wet, but it has been worth it! I liked Niagara city too. It’s like a little Las Vegas and we went in a haunted house there.
I also liked lake Ontario a lot and to go to Bayfront park, a park near the lake in Hamilton. It’s a very relaxing place. There’s also a beach and even though the weather was very cold there were some people that went swimming in the lake.
However, it has been a great experience. A part of me is still living in Canada and I can’t wait to go back and visit everybody, especially my family. I’m also looking forward to have Hayley here so that I can show her Italy like she showed me Canada and so that she can finally see everything I told her about Parma.