My first three months in Canada
I started out my school life in a sports
center, learning swimming, until I became 8, when I had to go to elementary school.
For the first three years in elementary school, ‘studying’ was not one of my
priorities. I would play soccer, basketball, the flute and piano, game, do baduk
(바둑), and swim. But it was not like I hated studying; I
just enjoyed other things more than studying. Then, at the end of my third year
in elementary, my parents decided to send me over to Canada, so that I could
learn English. So, I went to Canada with my older brother and mom. At the time,
I only thought of it as a little trip to a foreign country, nothing more.
Upon arrival at our new home, we bought
furniture and every other thing you need to live in a house. The sudden
departure and arrival did not quite affect me a lot. I loved Canada, all the
new environments, and I especially loved whole new different kind of food.
After we took some time adjusting to Canada, parents applied me to Montroyal
Elementary School, in North Vancouver, Canada. The real story begins from here.
When I first set my foot in my classroom at
Montroyal, I was overwhelmed by blonde, western looking children, who all
stared at me. Me, not knowing anything more than ABCs of English, literally,
could not understand at all what my classmates were talking about. On that
first day, my first assignment was to write a simple one-paragraph-letter to
one of my family members. I think I wrote the letter to my grandfather, and
remember getting the paper back with so much red-inked-correction-marks on it,
which I could not understand, along with the explanation the teacher told me. Days
passed and all I could comprehend was my name, simple nouns and verbs such as
I, you, him, her, play, do, hi, etc.
So, I decided to study; I decided to
memorize words. I got myself a very simple children’s book, highlighted the
words I didn’t know, and memorized them. Book after book, the number of words I
had to memorize reduced, and at the same time, I was able to guess little bits
and bits on what my classmates and teacher was talking about.
Thus, my daily routine was to go to school,
come back, read books or study English learning books, sleep. Every day was a
struggle, a succession of stressful frustration that kept me study English and
practice pronunciations. And after three months of this struggle, I could finally
have a conversation with my classmates on any topic without any difficulties.
At the end of a year and a half in Canada,
and three more years in Korea, I am right now living and studying in KMLA. When
I look back, I most certainly believe that those first three months made the
current ‘me’. Those three months, when I studied harder than any time of my life,
learned English and its culture, enjoyed numerous other things, gave me the
strength and motives that made me to come this far.
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