“It took me a while to feel Canadian,” writes Gael Melville in a recent Mundo & Correo ensayo, describing her experience as an expat who relocated to Toronto from her native Scotland.

She bemoans the difficulty of wading through the bureaucratic issues:

“What’s a SIN tarjeta de?” “What’s OHIP?” “Why does the bank charge us for taking our own money out of our account?” …”Why can’t I register to vote?” “Why is my credit card limit a measly $250 when I have the proceeds of the sale of my apartment in my bank account?” “Why can’t I use my professional accounting designation in Canada?”

Sin embargo, “what proved significantly more difficult to fix,” escribe, “was the yawning gap in my cultural knowledge.”

“¿Quiénes son los Grupo de los Siete?” “Who are Margaret Atwood y Leonard Cohen?” Canadians indulged my lack of knowledge of the arts with patient explanations and visits to cultural sites, but pop-culture references were omnipresent and perplexing. “What is the Humidex?” “What is a two-four?”

¿Y tú? What were your bureaucratic challenges when you first came to Canada? ¿Y cuáles eran las deficiencias de su cultural knowledge?

Post a comment and let us know.

Foto por odolphie (Flickr)