Canada: so freakin freezing new.

We often think of an awesome, colorful adventure when we think of moving to another country. Which may be true at some point, but not without the long process you have to go through before really settling down on a new place. Lis Velasquez told me how she decided to leave her old life in Guatemala and start a new one in Canada.

“Many people could think I moved to Canada by choice, but it sure didn’t feel like it. My life took an unexpected turn 22 years ago, when I tragically lost the love of my life and my best friend, the father of my two boys; he died too young and with him many dreams we had together. So, two years after his death, I left my family, my culture and my country to start a new journey in Canada.

I arrived in spring of 2000 at a small town in Alberta, called Red Deer. I didn’t know anyone and nothing was familiar to me then. It was really hard to start meeting people and making friends, because the new culture, the new people are so different. They didn’t make close contact, they didn’t shake hands or give a kiss or ask you about personal things. I even had trouble finding someone to babysit for me. It took time to get accepted.

One of the biggest challenges was to raise my children in a new culture. They had grown up in a different one because they came here when they were five and eight, and it was hard for me trying to keep our Guatemalan culture at home, and there is another culture outside. With that, a lot of challenges add up. At some point, they didn’t want to continue speaking our language, even though I was trying to keep it at home, because they were so immerse in the new one. Plus, you don’t have the support of your family, so you need to rely on your friends for a lot of things.

It was cold, but not the cold I was familiar with. The weather here in Canada, and mainly in Alberta is extreme, temperatures from -20°C to -45°C, very different unless you come from Russia. One time, somebody gave me a turkey for Christmas and then somebody else gave another one, but that was too much turkey to feed three people and I couldn’t fit them in my freezer. Then a friend told me to just put it in the balcony, since the temperature outside was the same as in the freezer, and a week later it was still frozen.

I remember my first winter, my first Christmas, it was so nice to see snow coming down and all that nature that Canada offers, but not so much after my first fall in a parking lot, because it was so icy. There are many days you want to keep yourself inside, plus the days have very short hours of daylight, it is so dark at 4:30 pm and the sunrise starts at 8:30 am, and then when you realize it’s been almost six months long.

Learning new ways was a lot. Everything was unfamiliar, everything was new. But another huge challenge was the sense of belonging. I had lots of nice people that were welcoming us, but you have an accent. So they ask you all the time “were are you from? What are you doing in here? What brought you here?” So, some days you feel like an outsider, you miss your food, your celebrations, you miss your loved ones. Not seeing your family for a year or years hurts too much. And then when you go back home you realize things have changed, and you realize you have changed as well. Because, how can you not change when you have immigrated to another country? To a very different world.”