Canada

Since my wife and I began to talk about moving from El Salvador to Canada, 3 years had past. Even now if I think about it, this was one of the most important decisions in my life; just after asking my wife to marries me.

It was a big, a really big step moving from the tiniest to the biggest country in America (just considering the countries in continental land). Doing the math, El Salvador can fit more than 400 times in Canada. This means moving inside of Canada it’s a big trip itself. This was no a big issue in El Salvador because you can cross it from border to border in almost 5 hours.

One of the big differences we have to consider is the language. Canada has two official languages, English and French but also you can listen to many different languages in your neighbourhood, streets, work, etc. This is because Canada is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. In El Salvador, we just have Spanish as the official language.

Canada and El Salvador have beautiful natural places. Both countries have volcanoes, lakes, mountains, etc. But if you consider the size of Canada, it’s amazing the quantity of beautiful natural places that you can find literally anywhere. One of the places I miss in El Salvador is the beach. El Salvador has amazing and beautiful beaches with warm waters, and you can still go to the beaches all year because the weather allows you to enjoy it even in the winter. El Salvador just has a coast line with the Pacific Ocean and Canada has coast lines with the Pacific, Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean; this is another example of how big Canada is.

Both countries share many things like public healthcare and public education, but the difference between the quality of those systems are so big as the size of the countries. Each time you look in the world rankings, you can find Canada as one of the first places in best quality of life, peaceful places, and most educated population, etc. In contrast, El Salvador most of the time is located far below in those rankings. Thus, it’s easy to notice all the services and benefits offering by the local and federal government.

Canadian and Salvadorian people are very kind, but it was a kind of shock coming from a country where the people are very welcoming and you can feel it each time you speak with somebody. In comparison, Canadians are more reserved people. This is not a bad characteristic but for a Latin person this could be an enormous misunderstanding if you don’t know this in advance.

There are more differences I can list like the sports; Canada’s official sport is hockey while El Salvador doesn’t have an official sport but everybody knows football is the king. Also, the weather in Canada is very different, and this is so important that it’s a recurrent topic in small talk every day. In Canada, you can see the four seasons during the year and you have to be prepared to experience a very cold winter and also a very hot summer, passing through mild weather in spring and fall. In El Salvador, you only are going to see two seasons; summer and winter. However, the entire year you can feel very hot weather typical for a tropical region.

Living in Canada has been amazing; I’m still discovering and enjoying tons of things every day. The memory of El Salvador is still fresh. Maybe for that reason, I don’t feel homesick yet, but I’m 100 percent sure I’m never going to regret deciding to move to Canada.