Life in Canada

In my second summer vacation of college, I saved some money and decided to go study abroad with my best friend, Jenny, for one month. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Canada, people there are culturally inclusive. Our host family is the fourth generation of Japanese immigrants. You can’t see any characteristic of Japanese from them except their appearance. I still remember that our host  was  not good at cooking. Poor students like us, there were no  extra  money for snacks, so we felt starving all the time. But we still love them and thank them  for the comfortable home they provided. Life in Canada was a whole new experience for me. In language school, I met diverse people from different countries, like German, Korea, Russia, Switzerland, and Brazil. In the class, we talked about drugs, and I was so  shocked  that most of my classmates had  tried drugs before. In addition, since my friend is a bisexual girl and just had a fight against her parents because of the issue, we were really interested in opinions of these foreigners. Just as we predicted, people from Western countries were highly  accepting of   homosexual, but classmates from Korea or Japan didn’t think so. Apart from life in language school, we did lots of outdoor activities during our free time. Walking in Stanley Park, bathing in the sun  on the beach and exploring  the new world of our neighborhood was our favorite time. The most memorable part of this trip was hiking Grouse Mountain. Because the slope is very steep, many local residents like to do physical exercise on  this mountain. After climbing  for a little while, I started to feel out of breath. I couldn’t help but eagerly  give it up and take a  rest. Fortunately, I had my best friend by my side; she kept telling me to keep going and believe that I can do it. Through  her encouragement, although I got a cramp in my feet, I conquered the mountain with slow but steady paces.

Wow that sounds like a really wonderful experience! Good for you .