I can say that these friends have become my small family in Canada

Original author: Shivaang Antil (he/ him)

Editor: X Helping Hands

A view of Morrison Hall captured on December 5, 2021. Copyright @art_nouveau___

I am a Bachelor of Business Administration student at StFX. My hometown is Delhi, the capital of India. I arrived in this close knitted town during 2020, and as an international student, I did share lived experience with homesickness and struggled to manage my life in a totally new country.

As a high school graduate from India, it was a big decision of leaving my country and most importantly my family, to start a new life, with unknown people at every step of my journey here. As a result, I did faced homesickness, which is one of the most common problems, international students face during the initial months of living in a new country, and it affected my school life at X. However, I was soon able to understand that making friends could help me overcome homesickness and other associated issues connected to it. So, I made friends with other international as well as canadian students from X and the town, and I was actually able to see the difference in how I felt about myself, which reduced the feeling of homesickness.

Eventually, as time passed, I started working at McDonalds, which was actually the first job I ever did in my lifetime, and then, there was no looking back. I met some wonderful people there, starting from the awesome staff and the amazing customers. I loved working there and cannot forget everyone’s favourite Double Double, which most of the customers would order. Many of my co- workers, some of whom were students at X and others full time workers from different provinces of my home country and Canada, became my lifelong friends. Spending time studying and partying with them made me feel happy, a feeling I really longed during my first couple of months in this country.

Now, completing almost three years in Canada and this town, I can say that these friends have become my small family in Canada, who actually consider me their family and we all live together in this amazing province, which has offered me so much. As a suggestion for the incoming or current students at X, just be yourself, never panic in any situation, and trust your inner self in every circumstance. Honestly, this is such a beautiful country, that you would actually love your life here in Canada.