Settlement

I immigrated to Canada last September. I resigned from my job in China and was excited about the change at that time. Now I have been living in Canada for 7 months. I am not used to the new country and new environment here. I have not been able to get used to it here until now. Every day I feel that I live under stress.

Firstly, I feel lonely. The city I am now living in is a small city. Compared to Shanghai, the city that I live in China, there are huge differences. For example, there is little entertainment here, except for a mall and several supermarkets. I can hardly go shopping or window shopping here. I have few friends here. Everybody seems to focus on their own business. Although my neighbors are 2 Chinese families, we hardly talk.

Secondly, I feel useless. I had been working as a marketer since graduation. I think it is the most fun and challenging job in the world. I like it very much. Now I do not have any job. I am a stay-at-home mom. Every day I drive my son to school in the morning and pick him up to come back home in the afternoon. That is pretty much all I need to do every day.

And it seems that I do not have any interest in being involved in this community. For example, I would rather exercise on the tread-mile at home than going out to the gym where it is possible to make friends.

However, I understand that I need to work hard to adapt myself to Canada. I started to pick up my phone to call someone that has recently moved here. I visited her and had afternoon tea with her at her apartment last Monday. It was a nice talk. We talked about our life in this new city. I realized that I am not the only one that does not like the life here. However, we all agreed that we need to try harder to make ourselves happy here. I plan to be more active and call another woman who moved here at the same time as I did. I will visit her and chat with her sometime this week. I think this kind of communication may help me reduce my stress.