English

My name is Mariela, I am a Venezuelan. I have been living in Canada for 1 year and 8 months. I am sure that each of the new immigrants has gone through perhaps more difficult situations, but today I want to tell you, my story.

I came to Winnipeg for love, I got married in 2017 to a Canadian whom I met in Cuba in March 2016. We were both on vacation, and it was an incredible story. I invited him to visit my country a month after we met, and he was there for about two weeks; I showed him the most beautiful things that my country has, its Caribbean coasts, my culture, my family, and my traditions. And, then he did the same and invited me to visit his city, Winnipeg. I applied for a tourist visa, (this is where the suffering began) and was denied three times for not having the necessary reasons to travel to Canada, so I couldn’t come to Winnipeg. Yet, after 1 year of dating, he asked me to marry him and we got married in my country. After that, it took 4 years until I was finally able to come to Canada as a Permanent Resident, I had no previous experience in any North American country.

Darryl and I always communicated with the translator, he was always writing to me in my language and translating everything every time we spoke, that way he learned many words in Spanish. Finally, when I got to Canada my husband introduced me to his friends. It was terrible for me, as his friends talked in English, and I didn't know what they were saying, nobody was interested in me, they didn't even ask me questions like, for example, do you like Canada? Where is your family? How do you feel here? etc. It was simply not of interest to anyone to talk to me and I am a super sociable person, I love to talk, and I like parties, and friends and those times were horrible for me. During the first months here, I didn't like the city, and I didn't understand the language either, which gave me a headache and I often felt like a fish out of water.

I was also afraid to leave the house, go to restaurants, to shop in the supermarket, I felt intimidated to talk to the cashier, so I preferred to go with the automatic machines. Isolating myself, I felt alone, I didn't have my family or friends and above all, I had to live with my husband, we had married and met a long time ago but in reality, we had never lived together for more than 3 weeks, so adapting to all that, new culture, language, family, friendly city, rules, coexistence, getting a job, all of this was very difficult. The first 3 months were very hard for me, I cried every day, and my husband and I argued frequently, he had his own rules and I had mine, I really didn't want to continue here, but then we thought about all the sacrifice we made to be able to come to Canada and be able to live together, and we had finally achieved it. So, I decided to work on my life here by learning English. We decided to find an English school for me.

Today I can say that I understand more than 70% of English and I can communicate way better. I still have a lot to learn but whatever English I have learnt now makes it easier to adapt and feel better in the society I am in. I have incredible teachers in my school, English Online, I have an instructor who calls me every week to see my progress and assign me homework, I'm working and I can go shopping by myself, I'm not afraid to go out and meet my husband's new friends, I can talk to the ones I didn't before, I'm very happy with the whole process that I have had and in the position in which I am now, my marriage and my home are also improving every day because we can understand each other and we can even discuss without using the translator.

I have a job that allows me to be able to connect to my classes without a problem, and I try to balance my personal life and my school. It requires sacrifice. There are days when I don't want to attend classes but in each class there is something to learn.

Finally what I would recommend to you who are starting this path, is that you think about where you want to be and you will establish a limit so that you can measure your productivity yourself, attend classes as many times as you can and pay attention, you do not have to understand everything, don’t compare yourself with others who participate and who know more than you in the classes, just be willing to learn!