Adventures in Immigration!

The mere thought of landing on a foreign land is exciting and a "dream come true" for many but it isn't the same when you land to start afresh right from the scratch. Its a new beginning though and takes a lot of courage to move into a new country specially couples having infants. Its a challenge!

It takes a lot of time to learn what to expect and what is expected out of you. Just shortly after we arrived in Canada, we had high hopes and expectations but tension crops in when you see families who arrived months before you, are still jobless or still looking or barely making something. We felt frustrated, confused and depressed. We dealt with different kinds of experiences and feelings. At one point even thought of going back...thinking this is not worth it....why take all these struggle when we already climbed the "ladder of success"....but thought to oneself....let's give it a try...Eventually you do become comfortable, may have few good experiences, some less enjoyable ones but the "feeling of being at home" takes time.

Babysitting is another problem that most families experiences. Finding the right one and then your child adapting well to it, is another point to be taken into consideration. Its more of a concern for those moms who never left their child with anybody and as a result kids are more attached to their mom as well. But on the other hand kids are very adjustable and they well adapt themselves with every situation. For example my daughter never cried when I first began to leave her with a Spanish babysitter on a trial basis... in fact I had tears in my eyes!

Medicare in this country is again so different from your own native land. How it works here is that you first have to register with a family physician and then get referred upon, depending upon the nature of problem. At the first sight it sounded ridiculous to me but it took good 4 years for me to understand the system and now I would proudly say that medical system here is par excellent! It looks silly in the beginning as we were so used to directly approaching a specialist in our hometown. But here its very systematic. Again needless to say we have heard about people having bad medical experiences as well and which is everywhere!

Coping up with weather conditions specially when you hail from a warm country is another challenge. Best way to overcome the severe winters is to be prepared and be well-layered. Summer is undoubtedly beautiful. What is worth mentioning is that during "autumn the city looks really beautiful when the leaves change colour, turn yellow and red and falls on the ground".

Lastly and the most important one is Job Hunting. Its the hardest part to handle and most of us loose self-confidence in the process, gets demotivated, low energy and financial hardship. This is the only country which doesn't recognize any International Qualification and the idea of studying all over again is kinda difficult. Not that immigrants don't do it but for me it was next to impossible. At that time "Sustenance" was more important than anything else.

Overall the journey wasn't too bad. Though the journey is still on and we have a long way to go. For most of you will be glad to know that we finally made it. On that note I would like to conclude that "There is light at the end of each tunnel"