“It took me a while to feel Canadian,” writes Gael Melville in a recent グローブ & メール エッセイ, describing her experience as an expat who relocated to Toronto from her native Scotland.

She bemoans the difficulty of wading through the bureaucratic issues:

“What’s a SINカード?” “What’s OHIP?” “Why does the bank charge us for taking our own money out of our account?” …”Why can’t I register to vote?” “Why is my credit card limit a measly $250 when I have the proceeds of the sale of my apartment in my bank account?” “Why can’t I use my professional accounting designation in Canada?”

しかし、 “what proved significantly more difficult to fix,” 彼女は書いて, “was the yawning gap in my cultural knowledge.”

“誰ですか セブンのグループ?” “Who are マーガレット·アトウッド と レナード·コーエン?” Canadians indulged my lack of knowledge of the arts with patient explanations and visits to cultural sites, but pop-culture references were omnipresent and perplexing. “What is the Humidex?” “What is a two-four?”

あなたは何について? What were your bureaucratic challenges when you first came to Canada? そして、隙間には、何だった あなた cultural knowledge?

Post a comment and let us know.

写真で odolphie (Flickrの)