“It took me a while to feel Canadian,” writes Gael Melville in a recent 全球 & 邮件 文章, 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 card?” “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?”

但 “what proved significantly more difficult to fix,” 她写道：, “was the yawning gap in my cultural knowledge.”

“谁是 七国集团?” “Who are 玛格丽特·阿特伍德 å’Œ 伦纳德·科恩?” 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 湿热指数?” “What is a two-four?”

你怎么样? What were your bureaucratic challenges when you first came to Canada? 什么人的空白 您的 cultural knowledge?

Post a comment and let us know.

摄影： odolphie (Flickr的)